co-location and access to your server

Sat Jan 15 21:46:10 UTC 2011

On Jan 12, 2011, at 3:49 PM, david raistrick wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Jan 2011, Jeroen van Aart wrote:
> 
>> What is considered normal with regards to access to your co-located server(s)? Especially when you're just co-locating one or a few servers.
> 
> For less than 1 rack, or specialty racks with lockable sections (1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 racks with their own doors), I'd consider any physical access to simply be a plus.  I wouldn't expect any at all.   You're not paying for enough space to justify the costs involved in 24x7 independant access, and the risks to other customers gear.
> 
> 
> When you get a full rack+, or cage+, I'd expect unfettered 24x7 access since your gear should be seperated and secured from other folks gear.

You would think so, wouldn't you?

Many years ago I had a cage in 811 10th, with the usual pile 'o goodies in it... I have simple script (aka "tail -f | grep -v" ;-)) that I leave running in the background that tails syslog and only shows me "interesting" messages.
One day I notice messages scrolling by, so I go see what is grumping about.

Apparently the CF / PCMCIA card in one of the Cisco 7507s has just unmounted.
No! Wait, it's back. Nope, gone again. Back. Gone! Back! Yay! It's back... Whoop, I lied, gone.... still gone... still gone...

Bah, I figure that the card has just died and the appearing / disappearing trick was just the death rattle, so I take a wander over, and notice that it didn't just unmount, it's completely missing...
I manage to get one of the security folk to pull the camera footage for around that time and I see some chappie wanding up and down the aisles, looking in though the mesh at everyone's toys. After the third or forth circuit past our cage he suddenly perks up and hustles off camera. He comes back 2 minutes later with a broom and proceeds to poke the handle through the mesh and bang on the back of the router. Eventually he manages to thwack the eject button hard enough and the flash drops onto the floor -- he wiggles it over, slides it under the edge of the cage, grins like a monkey and scampers back to his cage...

I guess when you *really* needs some flash, you *really* needs some flash...

W

(I have also learnt the hard way not to use the edge of the cage as cable management...)

> Some specialty providers would be exceptions, of course (ie, I used to colo gear inside tv stations, satellite downlink stations, etc).
> 
> 
> Telecom colo (switch and network gear in a dedicated but shared space for providers providing service) would be an exception, of course.
> 
> 
> --
> david raistrick        http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
> drais at icantclick.org             http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
> 
> 