Clockfort's Tech Blog

OpComm got some new goodies in the mail today! 9 dual-gigabit PCI-X HP (Intel-chipset) server NICs for $5/each on ebay? Win.

It’s all part of OpComm’s current maniacal plans to upgrade the network (including uplinks to the internet) to gigabit speeds… and beyond!

Dealt with a lot of computer issues today – woke up at 5:30am or so with Angelo Dinardi and Chris Deslandes to pop over to CSH’s server room, and safely power down/disconnect our equipment before RIT took down their electrical grid to tie in a new transformer.
Our move of physically disconnecting our machines from the wall was a good one – We lost an AC unit when power came back on, likely due to a power spike. A few services didn’t start up, and many user rack machines refused had issues, but all in all, I would say the experience was not all so bad.

Angelo and I took the chance to do some tidying up of cabling and reracking some of the servers in a better layout, that worked out pretty well.

Angelo was the one who got to push the big red button to cut power to the three-phase power to the server racks… this time. He looked back on his experiences of power outages of OpComm’s past… someday, he thought, he would be the older RTP who had the privilege of hitting the infamous Red Button… and so he was. Someday, Internet, it will be my turn to push the Red Button. Someday.
(Probably next year :-P Don’t tell Chris!)

Also, hey, got to talk to a lot of alumni today.
… when their user rack machines didn’t turn back on. Ah well.