General > General Technical Chat
The BIG EEVblog Server Fire
james_s:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 08, 2021, 07:09:41 pm ---1TB microSD still seems like sci-fi territory to me... an amazing milestone. Next: 10TB! :D
--- End quote ---
Makes me think of the old spy movies where somebody is trying to smuggle a microfilm containing information. These days you could fit an entire library on a thumbnail sized micro SD card that is easily hidden inside nearly anything.
SilverSolder:
I know of a sizeable datacenter in east coast US serving the financial industry that went down due to the backup systems many years ago. It is always Murphy that gets you:
(1) External power failed, causing the building to switch to battery backup based on enormous banks of lead-acid batteries (a large room full) in anticipation of starting an array of big diesel generators.
(2) One of those batteries blew up under the sudden load, spraying an employee with acid. The other men ran to his rescue and got him in a shower real fast (he was OK)...
(3) ...but sadly, this cost crucial minutes... and the batteries ran out the second they tried to start the diesel generators... BLINK, the center went pitch black, with no way to start the diesels!
jonpaul:
Hello: Thanks for the info,
Most pro server farms use a non-water fire suppression system eg nitrogen inerting.
Wonder why EEV blog did not select a large host form like AWS, Ionos, GoDaddy etc as a host.
I had never heard of this firm.
Kind Regards,
Jon
3roomlab:
maybe it is time to move to other countries with less power interruptions
james_s:
--- Quote from: Bud on April 08, 2021, 06:34:28 pm ---A backup generator's keword is 'backup', isn't it. Some robustness is supposed to be embedded in it from the get go starting from specs.
--- End quote ---
Complex mechanical devices fail, it's just a fact of life. Turbine engines on aircraft are highly critical life safety items that are engineered to be extremely reliable and impeccably maintained, they still fail catastrophically now and then, sometimes with loss of life. Some robustness IS embedded in backup generators, it isn't like they blow up every day, but occasionally they still fail, especially if maintenance has been less than stellar, which is often the case if a company is not compelled to do it religiously the way aviation is. It's easy to look at the bottom line when the budget is tight and margins are slim and think "do we REALLY need to invest $$$ in rebuilding or replacing the genset or can we defer that to next year?" It happens, and it's much easier to predict and point fingers with the benefit of hindsight. If this place had a history of generators failing I would be more critical, but a single catastrophic failure is much too small of a sample to judge by. It could have been a total fluke where something just blew up due to a manufacturing defect that was never caught, or it could be it wasn't properly maintained, or it could be somebody monkeyed with it at some point, we don't know.
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