Data Center Contest: Ooh, ooh that smell …can’t you smell that smell?

We’re gathering stories and photos for a cool contest sponsored by American Power Conversion (APC). First place in our Data Center Contest wins a Nintendo Wii game system. And we’re giving away twenty (20) copies of System Specifications and Project Manual for Data Centers (a $250 value!) to members just for entering the contest with a valid entry. Enjoy the contest entry below — and feel free to comment.

Community Manager

Cynthia submitted this entry:

This probably isn’t the Craziest Story you’ve had, but for us, it’s pretty funny. We have a policy that won’t allow us to take photos inside the facilities, so I have to share the story instead.

One of our IT employees smelled an “electrical burning” smell. After sniffing around, we found the iSeries console had been fried. On the table where it sat was quite a bit of water and more was dripping from the ceiling. We had just had a particularly hard downpour and come to find out, the roof had sprung a leak.

Maintenance acted immediately bringing us a 55-gallon trash can and a huge roll of plastic! They temporarily fixed the roof by putting some plastic down and holding it with a few bricks!

We pushed the iSeries and it’s attached devices a few inches away from the dripping, draped plastic over it’s front and sides, and dug our last dumb terminal out of storage to replace the console unit. It took almost 2 weeks to get the roof repaired. Thankfully, we were blessed with mostly dry weather.

It never ceases to amaze me that our maintenance department doesn’t seem concerned about the state of our computer room which houses hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

I wish I had a picture of the iSeries & tape drive draped in plastic, with the huge blue trash can, ceiling tiles and floor tiles removed, and a ladder in the middle of it all. It was a mess!