[rescue] FW: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100

[Bill Bradford]

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 01:03:01PM -0500, Steve Hatle wrote:
> Why should that take 30 hours? Hit the Big Red Button and BOOM data center
> is shut down.
> Should only take a minute or two at most...

My first day at $JOB-1 was like that.  I was sitting at my boss' desk,
filling out paperwork, when there suddenly came a quiet in the room (the DC
was on the other side of the wall).

People started popping up from cubes like a game of whack-a-mole, and then
everyone ran into the DC.

I walked in just in time to see the last bit of equipment with power in the
room, some EMC Symmetrix frames, shut down and go off their internal
emergency UPS backup.  It was eerily quiet.

What happened was that someone (who was new - but it WASNT me) had gone
into the other side of the DC and not shut the door properly, and it was
buzzing at her.  Someone else was waving at her to shut the door to make
the noise stop - so she figured that the big red button next to the door
was the "alarm stop" switch, right?

The following week EVERYONE in the building had to go through a short
course of "This is the PROTECTED[0] Big Red Switch.  This is what it
does, this is when you should and should not touch it, and if you touch
it without authorization you will be escorted out of the building and
your employment terminated." [1]

Bill

[0] Previously, it had not had any sort of protective cover, labeling,
etc - everyone just knew what it was.  Now it had a flip-up cover like
a fire alarm, along with descripive labeling.

[1] There was no corrective action taken against the perpetrator, as
she had not been properly educated on what the Big Red Button was,
and so forth.  The ribbing she got from her coworkers sufficed.

-- 
Bill Bradford 
Houston, Texas