What do you have in your datacenters' toolbox?

Tue Mar 12 04:01:17 UTC 2013

You need to consider cases where there is an actual power failure. yeah,
a real one with dark centre,  UPS and mains down, room is silemt except
for a few alarms here and there, and you are scrambling to find/fix problem.

what will you need ?
(obvious things like flashlights, multimetre, screwdrivers, pliers, wire
cutters).

I would also do a visual inventory of the hardware and all the screws
you can find to ensure you have screwdrivers or allen keys for them,
adjustable wrenches etc.

You may also consider cases where the airconditioning unit is leaking
water. Do you have some kit to wrap a leaking pipe to at least
temporarily stop the leak ?

So you have a shop vac to suck up water on floor or underfloor ?

Often, maintenance manuals for equipment will have a list of tools needed.

Then you need to consider emergency suplies. 10 gauge wiring to create a
glorified extension cord to power some critical equipment. Obviouslty,
as somone else mentioned spare ethernet cabling to also provide long
patch cord to some switch that is still working.

This also depends if this is a commercial data centre or a corporate
one. In a corporate one, you need to identify your business critical
equipment and run various failure scenarios to see what you need to keep
the business critical systems up. While this goes beyond a set of tools,
creating that list should implicitly also cause you to create a list of
tools you would need in an emergency to get your business critical boxes
back up.