Saturday, October 28, 2006

Disaster Strikes Simons Data Center!


Those of you that have seen where Jan and I live know that it looks like a mad computer scientists laboratory. We have way too many computers (the good news is that we don't pay the electric bill).


The heart of the data center is without doubt the Beerbox. The beer box is the central hub of activities. It is the main web server, handling the Beerbox and Cajun Delight websites. It is also home to our beloved IRC bot Bartender, It is also host to an IRC server.

Well I got up this morning and discovered to my horror that the Beerbox had bitten the big one. One of the power supplies had died.

Immediate action was called for. Of course the obvious answer was just to replace the power supply. Unfortunately due to the landlords recent visit I had tidied up the place and so I have no idea where my power supplies are right now. Plan B was to rip the power supply out of an IBM that I had laying around.

Of course with the computer being a 'brand name' piece of junk the organ transplant was not possible, IBM uses their own funky power connecter that is NOT a standard ATX configuration (Bunch of bastards)!


After a smoke and a beer, I formulated Plan C. I had a piece of junk HP laying around.

I did a quick organ transplant, I moved the Hard drive and Network card from the Beerbox and put them in the HP piece of crap. The good news was that the Beerbox is Linux based (Redhat for you geeks!). I hit the power button and guess what? Linux could have cared less about the new hardware, it booted straight up and we were back in business.

Try doing that with stinking Windows. Move a hard drive to a new hardware platform and watch Windows belly ache like a whore who has been stiffed on her fee.

The good news is that I should have the Beerbox returned to its original glory tomorrow. Till then it will be just a shadow of its former self.


This repair is going to cost approximately $36. I have the power supply, but I will have to destroy the case to install it. This will require the purchase of two new 15 pack boxes of Lucky Extra.

2 comments:

Pugs said...

Oh my gawd! I knew that 5 day week would end in tragedies, see, more time on your hands for blogging and the system can't take all the extra work your giving it... looks like the only good thing that's come out of all this is Jan knitting you a boat out of plastic canvas.. Ha!Ha!Ha!

Simon Barrett said...

The boat is comming along good, I think we will have pics of the finished product in a few days!