Jungle data center

Years ago, my company took took over managing a data center in Taiwan when their network admin left. My first thought was, “I am going to need a machete to get the cables under control.”

They had a bunch of satellite dishes on the roof of a building and were selling a “Hosted Slingbox” service that let people stream over the internet.

One of the rules of cabling is, “If you can’t get the door of the rack closed, you are doing something wrong.”

I spent much of the first day chasing cables (all unlabeled). One mystery was how their office connected to the internet. Turns out that it was that Wi-Fi router hanging there by its cable.

The old network admin took the proper router when he quit (fled screaming into the night), because it belonged to him.

One night the air conditioner on that wall sprung a leak because the drain tube got clogged.

I was in there trying to fix it and it suddenly became “unclogged” and shot water onto the mains cable that supplied power to everything. There was a bright flash and then total darkness and quiet.

After I figured out that I was not blind, I went in the dark to reset the high voltage breaker for the entire floor. The electrical wiring was as bad as the network, and I had to reach into the back of a random electrical cabinet, with just my cell phone screen for light (the 2" screen on my Windows CE “smart phone”). I don’t want to do that again...

Sometimes I see those “wiring disasters” articles in Network World, and I am like, “Oh, how cute.”