So I've got to move a handful of co-lo customers on to new PDUs soon. all the dual power supply customers were easy; we are down to the single power supply customers. You know how it is, I really want a customer standing by when I reboot something, as they don't always come back up, and the customer is far better equipped to deal with that, even if they are remote (I have serial everything) than I am; Or, even if I'm better equipped, I'd prefer they were there driving. Last time I did this, one customer gave me a root login on his system and told me to just go when I felt like it. His PSU blew, and he was unreachable via phone. I ended up just replacing the PSU for him, I mean, it's not like I don't have a supermicro parts dump in my office, and it worked out okay, I told him to buy me a new PSU and then give me what he thought was fair for the labor 'cause he didn't approve it so I didn't feel right quoting prices. he was pretty happy and paid me more than I would have asked for but eh, it could have gone either way, you know? I'd really rather have the customer around rather than cleaning up myself.
So apparently there exists products for moving power plugs while keeping them powered. "Plug capture device"[1] - you pull the cord 1/8th inch from the outlet, slip this thing over that contacts the hot and neutral tong and you pull it out. this device then starts supplying power as soon as mains power is disconnected, and then you can reverse the process to put the plug into another outlet and remove the device. - it looks like the product is targeted at law enforcement (It comes with a USB "mouse jigglier" so the screen doesn't lock meanwhile.) but the demo [2] sure makes it look like exactly what I need to move servers from one PDU to another. (though, it also looks like it might increase my workman's comp bill. Well, I end up doing almost all the hardware work myself anyhow, and I'd be willing to do this myself, too, so eh.) Anyhow, the thing is reasonably cheap; if it works reliably, heck five hundred bucks would be cheap to avoid scheduling the moves I've got to schedule in the next few weeks. (let us just say I chose poorly when purchasing PDUs many years ago. An older and wiser me (with more capital) wants to rectify the mistake.) and if it is reliable, there are all sorts of uses I can think of for it in the future, especially as I've got to deal with a lot of customer gear that I don't have a login on. Of course, if the thing isn't reliable, it's not worth using if even one of the servers reboots uncleanly. [1]http://www.wiebetech.com/products/HotPlug.php [2]http://www.wiebetech.com/videos/HPLT_Demo.php Obviously, the "plug capture device" you see at the end is what I want- the power strip capture would do me little good, as the point of this exercise is to move the servers off the pdu, not to move the pdu itself. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
