What Could Go Wrong?

  • Be Prepared

    It's the law of unintended consequences: things happening that you don't expect from a seemingly unrelated area. This article talks about a data center having leaks from carpet cleaning above. The concrete floor had aged and the carpet cleaners dumped water on the carpet to soak it through and it leaked. I'm not sure how people have data centers below office floors, but I know I've had a number of them at different companies where I've worked.

    It goes to show you just how wide and varied the issues that your disaster recovery plans might need to deal with. All types of strange things can happen to your servers and it helps to have an idea of what to do when there is some type of issue. Can you imagine if there weren't sheets of plastic nearby? (see the article)

    Not every disaster results in your setting up shop at another location and while many are serious, they can be resolved relatively quickly with good administrators that can think outside the box.

    The situation is a good example of why you need to have good communication and information available to people working in the production areas. They should be able to contact someone that can give them access or at least accompany them to closed off areas, like offices, electrical closets, etc. They should also be able to contact someone with the authority to authorize expenditures and changes in policy because of some disaster event.

    These types of things will always happen, but they shouldn't compromise your security or the integrity of your systems. Make sure that your disaster plans have accounted for different types of problems. Not specifics like fire, flood, but categories, like an event in that's limited in scope, that affects a whole floor or building, that occurs off hours, that could affect your block or even city, etc.

    The one thing that probably applies here that I learned a long time ago is the Boy Scout Motto: Be Prepared.

    PS - For those of you in the US, a moment of silence for those lost on 9/11.

  • ---Steve Jones

    ---PS - For those of you in the US, a moment of silence for those lost on 9/11.

    For those of us ON THE WHOLE PLANET, a moment of silence for those lost on 11.9

    It was an attack on the whole of the "free world" not just America!

    Regards,

    WilliamD

  • None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrongs look like right in their eyes.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    9-11 was an inside job! or do you believe that steel structures (the towers) could come down in free fall speed without explosives? or do you think that hijacked airplanes can fly around US airspace without beeing intercepted within 10 minutes, which is the usual procedure (happen more than 100 times a year). Who talks about a free world?

    Please take a look at this. http://www.st911.org

    Best regards,

    Johan

  • After a silence of respect, a story about floors...

    A few years back a big insurance company in France decided to build a new data center.  For DR purposes they duplexed everything in the two suites.  A server rack on the ground floor had an identical server rack in the same position on the top floor.  A SAN on the ground floor had an identcal SAN on the top floor.  Keeping the layout mirrored in this way helped reduce management costs.

    Except they forgot to check floor loadings.

    One day the top floor became the ground floor.  Server rack crashed into server rack, SAN crashed into SAN.  It took a long time to clear up the mess, and the impact on the business was so great the company was sold.

    It is not only water that can fall through the cieling...

    Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.

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  • Johan,

    all I meant was that not only Americans were affected by what happened. Plenty of non-Americans lived in NY and worked in the WTC who died on that day too.

    P.S.

    Conspiracy theories appear whenever something of such big import occurs, whether its a terrorist attack or a historical occurance like the moon landing. We will never know if it was an inside job, disinformation makes damn sure of that.

    Regards,

    WilliamD

  • well, the official story is a conspiracy theory, that 19 guys with box-cutters led by a man in a cave in afghanistan conspired to outfox tha most sophisticated defensesystem in history and perpetrated these atrocities.

    so, which one of the conspiracy theories are true? We can judge that after the evidence we have. An overwhelmingly amount of evidence tells us that 9-11 was in inside job, please look for yourself for 10 minutes.

    http://www.st911.org

    Best regards, Johan

  • We caught and prevented one of these types of disasters -- there was a sprinkler system in the ceiling of our data center.  All it would have taken to destroy it all was one well-placed lit match...

     

    Needless to say, once noticed, it was removed.

  • So basically:

    1. There are known knowns
    2. There are known unknowns
    3. There are unknown unknowns


    James Stover, McDBA

  • I work with an organization in Arlington, VA who is on the 2nd floor of one of the high-rises in Crystal City. A well-known "prime" steakhouse is located on the 11th floor of the same building. A graywater pipe got clogged, broke, and flooded the 2nd floor office space with over a foot of graywater (think greasy sludge). They had to move out for months while everything 3-feet up from the floor was replaced. Yuk!

  • Conspiracy theories appear whenever something of such big import occurs, whether its a terrorist attack or a historical occurance like the moon landing. We will never know if it was an inside job, disinformation makes damn sure of that.

    Skepticism is good, however too many 'skeptics' do not apply the same degree of skepticism to their (contradictory) pet theories that they apply to others (just like people don't apply the same level of skepticism to their religion that they do to others)

    ...

    -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --

  • This has however nothing to do with Skepticism, we just know that laws of physics does not allow the twintowers to come down in free fall speed without explosives, just look at Newtons law, this was known already 300 years ago.

    Airplanes can not physically fly as close to the ground as has been told, because of the ground effect, which would make i crash to the ground, and there is not even a scratch on the pentagon lawn.

    Look at what evidence supports the official conspiracy theory.

    9-11 was an inside job!

  • During my days as a systems engineer, I went on a service call to repair a server damaged by liquid.  Their data center was in an office building, just below the breakroom.  The breakroom had one of those fancy coffee makers that was hard wired to the plumbing system (so you didn't have to pour water into it - just load the coffee and push a button).  Something failed in the coffee maker, and spilled coffee back onto the water pipe - which ran down into the floor.  Eventually the coffee made its way through the floor onto this server, which held about a quart of coffee quite well.

    Tim Mitchell, Microsoft Data Platform MVP
    Data Warehouse and ETL Consultant
    TimMitchell.net | @Tim_Mitchell | Tyleris.com
    ETL Best Practices

  • I second GermanDBA. Whether or not there are conspiracies afoot, I think we can all agree on a moment of silence for those who lost their lives on 9/11, and for those who continue to suffer and die every day as a result of war and terror.

    webrunner

    -------------------
    A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
    Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html

  • Why am I not surprised to see Johan posting about 9/11 conspiracy theories in this thread.

    Independence Day (deja vu)

  • I am surprised contrary to David, that he hasnt commented the facts, rather lots of comments about me.

    Please explain why the official conspiracy theory is so believable?

     

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