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Cake day: January 16th, 2024

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  • JasonDJ@lemmy.ziptoMemes@lemmy.mldont do it
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    14 hours ago

    But also, data centers are great for introverts who like to work in solitude. They’re dark, cool, have tons of white noise, and you can be pretty isolated.

    Oh yeah, only problem is that “dark, cool, tons of white noise” makes me tired as hell.

    Or maybe that’s because I know that me being in a data center means I’ve got a loooooong day ahead.

    Most the time the data center is lights out. Nobody really needs to go in except for adds/moves/changes to hardware itself.

    I very rarely need hands on. I built a pretty robust remote management environment with no dependencies on the prod system. If I’m on-site, there’s a problem.



  • JasonDJ@lemmy.ziptoMemes@lemmy.mldont do it
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    17 hours ago

    Most of their staff probably is security. The stuff in racks and cages is customer owned.

    If I had to guess, from what I’ve seen in a data center, there’s only a handful of “smarthands” on site. Maybe a NOC staffed by a handful of people. A wire tech /LV electrician or two to handle cross-connects. A regular sparky or two for runs to new cages (these are build to spec, i.e. for each cage you’re putting in, you probably want at least 2x 220v 30A runs. If you got dense power-hungry compute or a JBOD…that’s even more.

    Oh yeah, a few HVAC people…depending on how cooling is done. Some places just have a raised floor that gets blast full of cold air, with vents on the cold aisles, and returns on the hot aisles. Some places use in-rows that need refrigerant pipes through. I imagine the latter would need more HVAC staff for maintenance/builds than the former.

    1-2 for shipping/receiving, 1-2 janitorial.

    I dont know for sure but I’d wager the tradesmen and IT folk are on-staff, not contracted. They always have something to do.

    But I still wouldn’t be surprised if you told me that a datacenters biggest department (by payroll dollars) was security.

    The beauty of datacenters (one of, at least) is the customer being able to put that all on one bill. They charge per square foot for cages, but they also charge by amp available. So a 50A 220v will cost significantly more than a 30A, even if you only draw 12A. And then they charge per-use fees on things like cross-connects (inter-cage or cage to meetme room) or smarthands.

    Everything else is rolled in. You don’t have to worry about maintaining all your own elec, or cooling. Water leaks? Overheating? Someone else’s problem. Redundant A/B power with generators, UPS, and ATS, giving five-9s per side? Got it covered.





  • JasonDJ@lemmy.ziptoMemes@lemmy.mldont do it
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    2 days ago

    Barely staffed, yeah.

    But locked up pretty friggin tight.

    The racks themselves may be locked…sometimes proxcard, sometimes dynamo combination.

    They are inside of a locked cage. Usually a combination of two or more…prox, biometric, pin.

    That itself may even be inside of a locked room with the same access controls.

    To get there, you will need to get past the security guard at the lobby. Depending on who the customers are and what state your in, those guards may be armed.

    There most certainly will be a man-trap which will involve speaking to the guards and prove yourself as being a customer. Vendors must be escorted unless the customer got them registered as if they are employed by the customer.

    Outside the building, could be guardshacks, likely with motorized gates. Sometimes also barbed wire.

    They are also sometimes practically invisible unless you know they are there. There was one I used to work in in NOLA that looked like an abandoned strip mall. There was one in central MA like that as well. A friend of mine owns a data center in Providence that looks like any other abandoned mill building.

    Macy’s Boston/Downtown Crossing?? Damn near all the Internet in New England flows through the floors above.


  • They aren’t for safety…they are totally for revenue.

    With regards to school zones, specifically, if they cared about safety, they would be putting in mechanisms to slow traffic naturally. Raised crosswalks. Rotaries. Narrower lanes. Crossing guards.

    They don’t put any of those in.

    A couple towns over from me, they just put a brand new highschool right on the intersection of two major state highways, about 1/4 mile from the interstate. If they cared about the kids, they’ve put the school in a less busy area to begin with.

    But instead, they demo’d an old pedestrian bridge that was keeping kids off the road for crossing, and set up a speed cam and issuing tickets in the spring before the school even opened.

    And of course the school zone creates a bottleneck for people exiting the highway in rush hour, with ripple effects well down the freeway.

    Fucking assholes.

    But at least Theil gets paid. Most of the money doesn’t even go back to the city. What a ducking ripoff.



  • There was this shady used car dealer near me, not long ago…had an A-Frame sign out in front. It read “Your Approved!”

    I always thought that was funny, and I feel like they may have been called out on it, because after a couple of months they replaced it with a new sign, which read “Everyones Approved!”

    Mind you, these were printed signs. They paid money for this.