I have an idea for a datacenter architecture which, I believe, would be very effective in terms of passive cooling.
I need to do air flow simulations to be sure that the idea is as great as I believe, before suggesting it to companies who design datacenters.
I've read about several air flow sim...
@Tanner Well, i mean, laws about containers that a brewery can fill, yes.
In california, it has to be a glass container, it has to be properly labeled and no other labels can be visible. It's only very recently that it was clarified that a big paper sticker covering up another brewery's label was legal, so most breweries would only refill their own growlers.
Only stipulation is that the container is sanitary.
Upon approval by the board, the beer and/or wine specialty shop licensee that exceeds fifty percent beer and/or wine sales may also receive an endorsement to permit the sale of beer to a purchaser in a sanitary container brought to the premises by the purchaser, or provided by the licensee or manufacturer, and fill at the tap by the licensee at the time of sale.
@voretaq7 that's an interesting discussion but if fails to answer the OPs off topic shopping question entirely as they are looking for software recommendations ...
@Iain I gave him one (though I don't know that it's a particularly good one as it's just "the only one I've used)
My bigger point to make with him was "Yeah smart people actually do design these rooms now, it's not like my first datacenter job where they had 60 tons of cooling flooding the place and prayed nothing melted"
@Iain (and I really do thing we should discuss whether or not datacenter design is on/off topic on meta - I still feel it is, but there's a good argument that it's its own special land and should really have its own special site)
<-- is decidedly old-fashioned in this regard: When a new room is getting built I want to be directly involved with its design so I know how it will break my machines.
Last time I had to get a room fitted out for systems I told someone what I wanted to put in it and what the expected heat generation was and he did the rest
@Iain A room with 500KW of power going through the floor and enough AC volume to start a jumbo jet's engine filled with racks of machines meets my definition of datacenter -- and if my company is building such a beast you're damn skippy I'm going to be in on that design.
@Iain when we did the expansion at $job[-1] we gave them the size (sq. ft.), power, heat load, and heat distribution, then sat down with them about 3 weeks later to go over the final layout and proposed design features
@Iain I don't think a sysadmin should be doing it (though plenty of us do: I've designed rooms from paper to plaster in my career), but I don't feel questions about it are de-facto off topic.
especially since we're the ones who will be expected to implement the monitoring for it, even when it's 90% designed by someone else (which is how I know ALL ABOUT Sentry CDU environmental monitoring, and the dark innards of Liebert Power and Cooling system SNMP cards)
I would look at the topic of datacenter design like many of the other specialities that are within the larger topic of system administration. I'm not a database administrator, per se, but I do administer databases in the capacity that I can (yes, yes, there's a separate SE for DBAs, but that's another argument I suppose). I'm not a strict network engineer, but I deal with networking. I'm not an electrician but I calculate load, amperages, VAs, etc.
I'm not a security expert, but I work with firewalls and ACLs. I'm not a compliance expert, but I work with PCI compliance issues, etc. and etc…
"Do we need raised floors or concrete floors? How do we handle hot and cold aisles? What kind of voltages are we bringing to racks? CRACs, UPS banks, etc." <-- SysAdmin stuff.
@voretaq7 That would be neat, for the three people that would show up to it. =P
@WesleyDavid well UPS banks are an electrician thing - but again, you're damn right I'm going to sit down with Ol' Sparky and say "We're estimating X VA per rack, at these voltages - what are you thinking in terms of keeping my lights on?"
@Iain The departure of Waffles makes me sad because I no longer have the excuse to link Amityville Toaster frequently.
@Iain ...and SysAdmins design datacenters. =P Or maybe my experience is around people and places that never had the budget or the wherewithal to actually pay someone with the title of "Datacenter Designer?" That could be it. In my experience, SysAdmins were the ones that even selected what tile to lay in the DC and if we should use Halon of FM-200.
The skillset to build a datacenter, deal with heat flow, walk the floors with heat guns, and worry over voltometers was up to people with the title of SysAdmin (or system engineer, or ops manager, or... you get the idea).
@WesleyDavid we had a "Datacenter Manager" at $job[-1] who did design rooms as a profession (we stole him from BMG) -- and even with Tim we outsourced a lot of the work because CFD is harrrrrrrd, but as the consumers of the room I really do think it falls in our purview to be able to at least speak intelligently about their design (which means, to some extent, being able to do it)
then again I also believe if you can't pump your own gas and change your own oil you should stay the hell away from cars
I see that as a false dilemma. First because the skillset of a developer is further away from the skillset of a sysadmin than the skillset of a sysadmin is from the skillset of a "datacenter designer" (whatever that is).
Second because a developer doesn't *of necessity* need to be clueless about operations to the painful level that we see every day. It's quite possible, if not probable, that a developer can be competent with systems administration, just like it's possible (and perhaps preferrable) that an ops person be competent in a code window.
Does $job[-1] mean something different in Perl or something? I keep seeing people use that... coming from a Powershell perspective, $job[-1] would mean ($job.Count -1) in a 0-index array which mean............. your current job.
@WesleyDavid that does depend somewhat on what you call a "sysadmin" -- an Exchange Admin probably won't know jack about datacenter design. They're specialized.
I am evaluating Windows Server 2012 Essentials. I have a variety of computers on my subnet, but not all of them are showing up under the NETWORK section of Explorer on the server.
Several Windows 7 computers are showing up, but my Windows XP computers are not. Nor is my Windows Home Server. ...
@WesleyDavid I R TEH SMART! S-M-R-T! (SMART ERROR: RANDOM BYTES ARE BEING DROPPED FROM YOUR READ REQUESTS. THIS PROBABLY MEANS YOUR HARD DRIVE IS FUCKED)
So who gets to make the "Is datacenter design off topic?" question?
I suppose it comes down to what is the common job description of an IT Professional.
In my experience, in all but the biggest, scariest datacenter spaces, the Venn diagram of "sysadmin" and "datacenter guy" circles would overlap by about 80% or more.
@WesleyDavid @RyanRies remember we did close the scope substantially (and I made /help/on-topic match) -- It currently says "Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators"
I/O datacenter here in Phoenix, half million square feet and a marvel of modern engineering? No, that's the CE and EEs for the most part. Once the building is built and the racks come in, then the system admins are there to take over. I guess... although the sysadmins should be involved in the design of airflow, heat containment, rack spacing... blah blah blah
@voretaq7 Fair enough... you're right. I would not consider "datacenter design" to be in the same scope as "professional system and network administrators."
because we as a community still don't agree - we bemoan the spawning of sites like Network Engineering, but I'll be the first to admit that Datacenter Design deserves to be its own site just like DBA did.
If it were my site I would entertain questions about datacenter design because #1) I think they're entertaining, even though my job title is not "Datacenter Design", and #2) there's no where better to ask it. Bring me your huddled masses, I say!
@RyanRies Not quite with you on the "bring me your huddled masses", but I believe if it's an area a sysadmin is involved with (and you're approaching it logically/professionally) it deserves the benefit of the doubt. If it was a crap question ("How do I build a room to put servers in") yeah - bang, NARQ/OT/dear Jebus go hire an engineer)
@Iain Ah, but what's the scope of what a sysadmin does? And who determines that scope? In the scope of my experience, sysadmins were directly involved in the design of datacenter space. So... that's kinda muddying things.
Our building is located approx. 100 meters from the explosive charges. They happen several times per day, and really shake the entire building a lot. This is going to go on for many days and the blasts are supposed to get stronger.
Our server rooms are nothing fancy; one of them has all the rack...
@WesleyDavid technically that's the job of HVAC and the site electrician (and your company's insurance people) -- but you could be sure I'd be making sure my servers aren't sucking dust :P
We don't really know. It's a scientifically unexplained phenomenon. But it tends to affect electronic equipment much more because of the use of tiny conductive bits packed very closely together. Putting lead in solder made the problem pretty much go away (in terms of whiskers growing from the so...
Right, I think that's perhaps the confusion that I'm having the most. When you say "they aren't the designers" does that mean "They don't fire up AutoCAD and plot floorspace out." Because if so... ehhh... does graphing paper and calling Corning up to talk raised floor materials count? 'Cause I'm fairly certain that's sysadmin stuff within reason.
But again, this is all experiential. It's just my experience that sysadmins pool their heads and figure out what walls to knock out, where the electrical lines are, what amount of tonnage cooling is needed, and then they give the specs to general …
Does that question need to be closed? Does a sysadmin need to worry about little pieces of metal getting sucked into his or her servers? Yes? Then I contend that the question is on topic.
Then again, there's some difference between the official definition of "sysatem administrator" and "system engineer" that might also be muddying things since there's a stricter definition of engineer outside of 'merikuh.
@RyanRies wow, I forgot about the predecessor to that question. I wonder if his whiskers were from his floor, or from crappy solder in his power supply?
...I don't... I don't know how to answer that because the first thing that comes to mind is "Isn't it self evident? Just... because that's what we do." Now if the vast majority of our time is spent on that stuff... well, okay, then I guess your more of a building engineer simply by virtue of your timesheet being more to do with buildings.
Anyway, my idea has always been that if some topic directly effects the systems, then I need to know about it, including environmental factors, building issues, etc. Maybe it's just that my experience has always been in places where you *had* to do it you…
Like, literally, get the impact drill out and start sinking holes for racks into the concrete.
@WesleyDavid it's entirely not self evident I have no idea at all about how to design a building to be a datacenter and it's entirely not my bailiwick - why would bricks and mortar, airflow, electrical distribution and sewerage be in my skillset ?
I don't know where the line is though. Maybe a pie chart of time spent on one thing versus another? Maybe engineering degrees? Maybe engineering certification?
See, I don't think there needs to be a hard line. I'm OK with subjectivity. If something is obviously off topic like "why does the abominable snowman keep eating me when I play SkiFree" then yes, of course close it. But I agree with @WesleyDavid that if something is even remotely related to "how do I keep my servers healthy and running as well as possible" then we should foster it.
Which at the end of day, includes a topic such as "datacenter design" just to use an example.
My idea is that the bricks and mortar directly effect the systems, so that's why I pitched a fit when there was exposed sheetrock and low pile carpet in an area of the museum's datacenter that I worked at. Same with cardboard unboxing duties being done across the DC space.
The airflow really, really directly effects the systems so I suggested that the vent placement in that DC be modified. Heat scans would have been great, but no money. Electrical distribution keeps the servers running, so one 40 amp circuit was being run at capacity and causing problems. I think we should have gone 208v i…
So, anyway, yes! There are people and firms who design that stuff for a living, and if you can hand the whole thing off to them, then great! Give them your capacity needs and they have a ball.
But, it's like DBAs. If you have DBAs, then hand them your database requirements and they handle all the provisioning and table splits and sharding!
So the idea is that while there are people who can put "Datacenter Designer" on their business card, that doesn't preclude a sysadmin from needing those skills, or at least being within reason to have them.
@Iain Having said all this, when the museum had a massive expansion, and we had 15 racks come in all at once, there was a company that designed the cable plant for 20+ miles of cable through the building, and also did the electricity. It's not like sysadmins were pulling mains lines in. But we did steer part of the design process.. not just suggestions, but actual factual design elements as far as I know. So I've done it on both sides of the table, so to speak.
@Iain Yes, this is true. Poor analogy... but reasonably similar enough to make a talking point?
@RyanRies the question in question has 2 answers neither of which answers the question posed. One says go google $something and the other waffles on without providing a real answer. Both have been upvoted - $deity knows why
Meaning, the idea that a DBA can have such a unique, singular workload that it is not technically "being a sysadmin" is true enough. But yet, it's not outside of the scope of being a sysadmin to need to work with databases and be fairly good with that topical realm. So, I view datacenter design to be the same concept. Maybe not exactly 1:1 with DBAs, but close. I'm not a structural engineer, or EE, or CE, or carpenter, or mason, but I still deal a lot with the physical infrastructure...
...that the servers, etc. sit in. So while there are people that can handle that side of things for me i…
Well I guess this is ironic because I just said "don't be black or white," but, it seems to me like we can either entertain questions on datacenter design, or we can open a datacenterdesign.stackexchange.com, and datacenterflooringtiles.stackexchange.com, and a datacentercracunits.stackexchange.com...
But I took on 5 major Exchange migrations, a few VMware deployments and got super-vigilant on my hardware pricing/margins. I also bumped my rate to $200/hr. and put a handful of clients on fixed-monthly charges versus hourly... (e.g. $2500-$3500/mo.)
Because everyone I talk to is all about "Yeah, we'll let you know..." or "So you're like an independent Geek Squad?" or "Do you fix laptops? My son's screen is cracked..."
I'm helping a (devops) client move their technology stack (VMware, Windows AD, Ubuntu Linux) from their old co-location facility to a new environment. Rather than move the hardware and systems outright, I've build a parallel environment in the new data center...
One thing I need to establish in ...
@WesleyDavid One of my biker friends is a dev for the firm. I heard that they were going to move into an Equinix datacenter. I'd just moved into my new DuPont Fabros datacenter... I offered to do everything for the firm to give them a turn-key datacenter move, new hardware, establish a vSphere cluster, migrate and build everything out, networking, connect their offshore devs in Belaurus, negotiate communications and colo...
The colo hooked me up with lower rates on my space because I've been bringing them customers.
@ewwhite That's the one that bites me in the butt. Because, yeah I can watch things, but when things go south, and people start freaking and expecting "Well we're paying you $500 a month, you should just go make this special tool that keeps this from ever happening again, and we want a web interface portal wingding on our Vista side panel to get live updates and webcam status pictures of the servers and..."
So, don't tell on me, but I need to register an internet domain name, but the corporate procurement process is so difficult at my job, that I'm considering just doing it myself with my own money, and then holding it hostage until my employer shows me how the @#$! to put in the PO.
My big problem is scoping clients so that don't turn into vampires and think because there's an open ended retainer, that I can stop and do 60 hours of work for them in one week because "Stuff is slow, fix it"
@RyanRies While you're figuring out the PO process, also figure out the unemployment filing process.
@WesleyDavid You take control... This place didn't want to make the move in one shot... we ended up doing it in two phases. It took longer. But it wasn't about my TIME...
I also sold hosted offsite produce software backup and got a few clients to commit to two years up-front in order to help cash flow... that was another $15k.
@FalconMomot Yeah, when you do that, you end up charging six figures, then people crap themselves, wipe with the quote, and hand it back to you while questioning the virtue of your mother and sisters.
I think project flat fee pricing is all about getting the relationship started so you can then sell residual income items that are legit (not just milking for income) but things like offsite backups, maintenance fees, etc.
@FalconMomot Nah, flat fee price and expect to make way less than hourly rate at the end, but then sell residual income items. It sounds skeevy, but if you're a good person, and I know we all are in here, you're selling real legit things like monitoring, graphing, alerting, and building in SLA times when you'll respond.
@FalconMomot Not to sound mopey, but I don't think I have the skills yet to really run with the right pack. I'm scraping myself up this mountain, but it's hard.
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I have a really strong instinctual distrust of troubleshooting items like "only one person experiences this issue, so it obviously can't be a system-wide problem"
@ewwhite right - good point. But I think my problem is that the clients I've been aligned with because of my historical associated with non profits are the clients that are literally going without heating and cooling in their building because they can't afford electricity.
based on what I pasted above, I determined that Wal-Mart was using an Exchange distribution group to send mail to my client... Gen14948f8@email.wal-mart.com
another one was a customer who needed changes made to their website, continentalsalesco.com
and their web devs were hosting DNS... but we needed to move away from it
I built a zone on Route53... but the registrar and the webhost both refused to delegate DNS
finger-pointing.
client spent a week trying to get it done.
I ended up working on it once he gave up... And it was about 45 minutes of my time... guessing email addresses, on phone calls, intercepting mail at the Barracuda...
got the domain changed, moved everything to Amazon and helped provide some value.
I have an idea for a datacenter architecture which, I believe, would be very effective in terms of passive cooling.
I need to do air flow simulations to be sure that the idea is as great as I believe, before suggesting it to companies who design datacenters.
I've read about several air flow sim...
I am evaluating Windows Server 2012 Essentials. I have a variety of computers on my subnet, but not all of them are showing up under the NETWORK section of Explorer on the server.
Several Windows 7 computers are showing up, but my Windows XP computers are not. Nor is my Windows Home Server. ...
