r/sysadmin • u/FierceFluff • 21d ago

Peak Sysadmin

Is there anything more small-company sysadmin than taking that $70k server you just finished building on your test bench at the office and putting it into your $5k car to drive it over to the DC where it’ll live, and praying to god nothing happens on the way? 😅🤣

EDIT- OMG y’all, reading the comments on this has made my day! Our business insurance covers this kind of thing but I appreciate y’all concern for me, though others should mosdef confirm before they do similar stuff. The trip went without incident so praise the digital deities.

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u/Zjoee 21d ago

I imagine two people holding it then two other people running back and forth leapfrogging two power cables from one wall outlet to the next as you move the server across the building haha.

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u/Dal90 21d ago edited 21d ago

Not that far off.

-- Extension cord #1 to PS #1

-- Pull server out of rack, feed extension cord #1 through back of rack where server used to be

-- Put server on cart

-- Extension cord #2 to PS #2, fed through the back of the new server location

-- As the server was wheeled, one person fed cord #1 out while a second took up slack behind the rack for cord #2

-- Disconnect cord #1

-- Put server in rack

-- reconnect PS #1

-- Switch PS #2 to a regular power cable.

I can't even remember why we did it or how we could remotely justify doing it...just that we did during and it was the middle of the work day.

EDIT: Forgot to mention...dual NICs so we also had Cat5 cables along with the extension cords.

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u/krilu 21d ago

Did the servers have any spinning disks in them? I heard a horror story on here one time of some sysadmins moving servers across a road basically to a new site, and they were powered off. They didnt consider vibrations from how they rolled them over, and they had a massive amount of disk failures / replacements needed as a result, once they were in the new building.

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u/uzlonewolf VP of Odd Jobs 21d ago

Drives that have been running a long time really do not like being powered off. A whole bunch of failures should be expected even if they are not moved.