Quiet as the grave

We have a selective power cut - a quarter of the main corridor is out. Which means that we have no SIMS server, no admin file server, and our two main cabs aren't up.

 

It's definitely a Monday...

It's quite eerie when there's no noise in the server room isn't it

 

The whole school was wihout power for nearly a full day after workmen went through the main power feed into the school (images here), so everything was out... luckily one laptop had a full battery and I was able to play Solitaire at least

Heh, those pics take me back to last summer when I was out with the camera, snapping the builders driving over the optics in their digger

 

Server room's OK here, power cut's affecting just the one server that's over by the Admin dudes, so they're all kicking their heels. In the dark.

 

The electrician is pottering around, I've begged him for notice if he intends to kill power to the block where the servers live...

What? No UPS/Diesel Generator?

The electrician is pottering around, I've begged him for notice if he intends to kill power to the block where the servers live...

 

Keep hoping...

What? No UPS/Diesel Generator?

 

Heh

 

UPS yes, but not convinced it will buy us an automatic graceful shutdown.

 

Diesel Generator - hmm now that's a thought, or maybe I could get the admin staff with nothing to do to get on a treadmill...

We have an area wide power cut here every 6 months it seems. Usually last most of the day as well.

Yay! She's up again!

Been there done that not that long since, major power surge on the local grid, took off our village and another 3 at the same time. Power off all afternoon, damaged 1 server (was forutnate that we needed a new one soon, so the nice guys at HSBC bought us on ) Worked out well. Diesel Generator is on my request for next year. (oh yeah as well as a UPS for my desktop computer and phone)

Oh yeah, and as for that Monday feeling, go into my server room tonight, "splash" was the noise I heard when I stood in a large puddle, yup you guessed it, the air con has again sprung a leak, did it last year as well - the pump has either had its outlet pipe blocked again or worn a hole in its pipework again and water is coming out of the unit, and just missing the electrical daedo that supplies my servers that are not on the UPS. I left a bin under the dripping for tonight, it will be fixed tomorrow when the plumbers back in.

 

Oh yeah, and a tree surgeon took out a main BT phone line, but on further investigation by moi, I followed the wire into a building, and into a basement, and it was dead anyway, so just got him to cut it a bit closer to the BT pole, and remove the cable from my buildings, so I now got a large lump of BT external grade phone cable, perfect for my extention into my outdoor store room at home! So it was not all bad, appart from the fact that I got soaked wandering round in a monsoon tracking this wire.

Alan D had the same problem this morning due to a power outage that affected north Birmingham over the weekend. Kept me busy restoring connections for most of the morning! Had to ask him to kick our(LEA) school based Proxy server back into life too. :oops:

 

Ah well at least it gave us a chance to talk shop about edugeek!!!

Had to shut them down again yesterday afternoon cos the electrician needed to change a fuse for another part of the building :?

http://gallery.m0php.net/lan/lan07

 

Would that be STP for shielded twisted pair then rather than FTP???

 

Ben

Or (S)FTP, Foil twisted pair I thought I'd quote what was on the cable itself rather than be asked why does the cable say FTP and you said it was STP?

Looks familiar to a setup I did at my last place, but mine was 4 out of the end of the buildings attic space, cost in my time 0 to run 400M of CAT5 from one end ofthe building under ground, crawl under a mobile caravan classroom and up into it, would have been nicer to run 1 and then put a switch in the cupboard, but the sparks wanted £150 for a double socket installing!!! So my time was cheaper

@john: rather you than me Hope you didn't have a white shirt on for that work... It took several hours for me and the network manager to run a single cat5e extension to the opposite end of a large classroom (somebody wanted the computer moving!) along the suspended ceiling and run some trunking for it I enjoy cabling

This took me near enough 3 days non stop on my own to do, the site manger gave me an hour one day to try and stop me having to crawl under the classroom, but thats it. (He would have helped more but he did have 2 floors to re-varnish and strip etc and they had to be done for a private booking, so that was very important).

 

The biggest time waste was thanks to the grounds maintance firm, who had strimmed through the rope ends that were run in the ducting, they were all the way through the ducting (maybe only about 15ft of ducting) but went all the way to the other side of the mobile classroom, I tied my cat 5 on the end of the rope, and pulled from the other end, kept pulling, thinking this is easy, then ooh, I've got and end, hold on this has been strimmed off GRRR! and then the duct work was full of soil, gravel etc, so I had to use a disused waterpipe, it was just big enough for 4 CAT 5s, so I was very lucky! Who would use a 1" water main for a home ec and art building!!! Some people! That was a fun summer doing that, it looked very very nice in the end, and worked amazingly well, I also discovered the floor was rotting already (only been installed 3 years!) so that made the head happy. But no white shirts needed - jeans and polo shirts and jumpers for the gravel bed crawling.

 

I do love cabling for a change, its ok sitting at a desk doing IT softwarey stuff, photograph editing etc but its so nice to have a change, that why I am trying to get more into the Server end of things now rather than workstations as I "know it all" as it were on the workstation stuff for what we use in the classrooms etc without me going and getting a Maths degree or doing lots of courses to work other bits and bobs out. I am not bad on Server (I was a NM before) but it was 1 server did it all, and no specialist things like SQL, Exchange etc