Comment by jiggawatts

6 hours ago

This reminds me of a visit to an Equinix data centre where the sales person was droning on and on about how incredibly reliable their power supplies were, how uninterruptible everything was, etc, etc…

Essentially, he was trying to assure us that no-no-no, we don’t need multiple zones like the public clouds, they can instead guarantee 100% uninterrupted power under all circumstances.

A bit bored and annoyed, I pointed to the giant red button conspicuously placed in the middle of a pillar and asked what it is for.

“Oh, that’s in case there’s a fire!”

“What does it do?”

“It cuts… the power… uhh… for the safety of the fire department.”

“So… if there’s a wisp of smoke in a corner somewhere, the fireys turn up, the first thing they do is… cut the power?”

“… yes.”

“Not 100% then, is it?”

6 comments

jiggawatts

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protocolture  4 hours ago

Equinix in Sydney plonked 2 datacenters right on top of each other, and still insists that they are useful as redundant sites.

There was a locally very funny situation for a while when a tech influencer was insisting both equinix sites could be shut down by a single building collapse. He was wrong, but he wasn't so wrong that people shouldn't make better infrastructure decisions.

  • hi_hi  21 minutes ago

    I'm intrigued...how was he wrong?

    • protocolture  1 minute ago

      The building in question wasnt really tall enough. And would have to be precision demolished to collapse in the way he was afraid of.

      It would still cause chaos and possible power issues.

      Needs to be taken in context with some Sydney buildings having maintenance defects a few years after they open. Largely due to inferior materials imported from china. The building in question developed some cracks in supporting beams and was briefly evacuated. There was never a chance it was going to topple on its own in a way that impacted more than 1/2 datacenters, so he pivoted to possible terrorism, but even thats largely nonsensical.

      I just went hunting for the case and couldnt find it. The gentleman in question had published the claim to his business that was it happens trying to build contacts with defense and intelligence agencies for third party threat assessment. As far as I can tell the business no longer exists and he has deleted their footprint.

      But he also posted the claim on public mailing lists so I can probably trawl it up if necessary.