And since we're talking electricity this reminded me of the time a large
possum decided to crawl into some electrical boxes and die for some
reason (this was well inside the building). The body was discovered
after a while by odor, and people thought he could not be removed safely
without cutting off power to about half the datacenter. I remember
managers asking us what was connected to what so they would have an idea
of what servers would go down, but I can't remember if they eventually
removed him by shutting down power or by just being very careful. The
big guy was laying right above some 3-phase copper cables that were each
about an inch in diameter - possibly the lines coming directly from the
power company.
Mullen, Patrick wrote:
Since we're recalling ancient history stuff...In the 80s I was at a site that
replaced a small HDS box (approx 4341 equivalent) with a much large one (approx
3081 equivalent). The UPS itself was big enough so they just plugged in the
same cables. Problem is nobody had rethought the cables, first time we flipped
over to test running on UPS the new box drew so much more juice that the cables
actually melted. Yes it was a government site (Elardus would know them), and
yes the electrical work was done by a lowest bid contractor.
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Ken Hume
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 10:08 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: OT: Electrician cuts wrong wire and downs 25,000 square foot data
centre
I remember an incident when I was in Atlanta.....
We had a new, actually our first, UPS installed. Everything was completed and
hooked up.
The electricians decided to test it in the MIDDLE of the WEEK DAY and WITHOUT
telling anyone.
Guess what happened.... Yep. Entire data center was down for almost 4 hours.....
Ken
On 12/13/2015 10:27 PM, Brian Westerman wrote:
In 2012 I was at a data center in Colorado where we were upgrading them from OS/390 2.10 to z/OS 1.13 and
simultaneously replacing their 9672 with a z/114. We had just completed the "2 weeks in
production" period for the z/114 and was going so well that the site decided to have the 9672 removed
early (we were scheduled for 1 month of hot backup). The 9672 still had some old power cables snaked around
under the raised flooring and I guess they were stuck around some REALLY old Buss and tag (from their 4381
they had in the late 80's) cables and raised floor stands. We offered to help the guy unwrap them, but he
told us that we were not "certified electricians" and that the union would crucify him if he
allowed us to touch anything. The electrician then apparently decided that since he had disconnected the
power cables from the wall and the CPU that he could just "give them a good yank". We were
discussing things with the client in their operations area, when we felt a s
ort of "vibration" and the consoles locked up. It turned out that the
electrician had yanked the floor supports completely from the safety stands and the 9672
fell about 2 feet to the cement.
Luckily it wasn't the new z/114, which was installed only about 20 feet away from the old
box. He did however cause our first hardware issue with the z/114 by simultaneously
severing the FICON connections to the DASD. The FICON cables ran a few feet away from
the 9672, but it was close enough for parts of the floor to land right on them and cut
them all but one. Unfortunately that "one" was to a tape control unit. It
took us 4 hours to locate and get 11 new FICON cables run. it was a Monday, so it could
have been much worse.
Brian
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