Clockfort's Tech Blog

OpComm got some new sexy items in this week – we now have a pair of 1000LX/LH SFPs (one a cisco official, and one a clone) which we’ll be able to use to patch a line from South network to North network. Now, all I need to get in are some meter-long single mode fiber patch cables, and those two Cisco Catalyst 2960G-24TC switches we ordered, and we’re in business. :-)

On a related note, I’m swaaaaamped with work, both thanks to RIT and due to my incremental upgrades to get everything ready for the big move to gigabit, plus an unexpected power outage that temporarily sent the server room back into the stone age.

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.