Never push the Big Red Button

Thu Sep 16 04:18:49 UTC 2021

We had a new fire suppression guy testing our system for our computer room,
and unbeknownst to him, one of the tests that he did triggered the EPO.
One of my co-workers was in the room, which had about 20 racks of
equipment, and he told me afterwards that for a quick second he thought he
died.
He said that that going from all that noise to eerie quiet was very
disconcerting.

rgt

On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 7:51 PM Billy Croan <BCroan at unrealservers.net>
wrote:

> Indeed. Few sounds in the data center haunt me quite as much as a
> sensation that the decibel level has just decreased significantly.
>
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 4:14 PM Keith Stokes <keiths at salonbiz.com> wrote:
>
>> The bigger thing to notice is the *lack* of noise as every server, switch
>> and storage system spins down.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Keith Stokes
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 15, 2021, at 3:50 PM, Stephen Satchell <list at satchell.net> wrote:
>>
>> In the data centers I've worked in over the decades, those Big Red
>> Buttons would activate a normally-closed contactor in a breaker panel. When
>> pushed, the contactor would open, and turn off all the circults in said
>> breaker panel.  Not affected are lights, convenience outlets, door locks,
>> and other non-data loads.  Resetting the contactor to the working position
>> was done after throwing all the breakers to the off position, and then turn
>> on each breaker, one at a time.
>>
>> The only noise that I have ever heard when the Big Red Button was pushed
>> was the loud BANG as the contactor operated.  You hear a similar bang in
>> movies in scenes where lights in a large area are turned on and off.
>>
>> Nothing like the BANG of a 600-amp 3-phase breaker tripping --
>> experienced that at University of Illinois Center for Advanced
>> Computation.  You immediately look for the person holding a gun.
>>
>>
>>
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