Casemodding Enterprise Hardware 307
Anonymous Coward writes "Think your tower case with led fans, a cold cathode and a window is cool? See what this guy did to two Sun Enterprise 15Ks -- a casemod on $1.3 million dollars of hardware! Will mainframes start shipping with light and window options now?"
I see he followed the ricers lead (Score:4, Funny)
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
"No no... kilohertz..."
"Whoa..."
(source [tripod.com], since I don't know much about Univacs. 1905 instructions per second...)
Slashdotted? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdotted? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted? (Score:2)
Re:Slashdotted? (Score:3, Informative)
for those of you playing at home: it's not EDIC - you're reading ADIC, the maker of the tape library to the left of the 15k's..
at any rate, i've upped the thread count over and over, it keeps pegging - i think the limit now is my upstream bandwidth since the load on the machine is negligable.. sorry folks!
already slashdotted....but (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, might be cool, but I don't think smart.
I didn't get to see the page, so flame away if this is dudes personal equipment. Otherwise, Mr. CFO/CIO is gonna be PISSED.
Re:already slashdotted....but (Score:3, Informative)
All he did was add lights to the outsides of the cases. If that voids his warranty on his 1.3 million dollar arrays then I for one will never be buying SUN.
Well, my minds made up... (Score:2, Funny)
Sun is lame... (Score:4, Interesting)
My personal taste would go towards a single colour for the whole array, all red or all blue.
Cheers,
max
Re:Sun is lame... (Score:4, Funny)
Uhm.... (Score:3, Funny)
"Ok, sir, I hear you're ordering our 2-million-dollar FibreChannel storage server. Would you like that in red, mint green, or silver, sir?"
Re:Uhm.... (Score:2)
Of course, the big difference here is that people actually see my car. Most companies bury their mainframe where noone will ever find it, like that alone makes it unhackable.
When I run a Fortune 500 company, we're going to have a huge bulletproof glass floor in the lobby, which will show the datacenter below. The mainframe will be a giant art deco brown and white unit with a large glowing red dome, a la HARDAC. If that doesn't impress the shareholders, I don't know what will.
Re:Uhm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
And it'll be great for the frustrated technicians down there when female visitors with skirts check in. (I imagine that their female coworkers will learn rather quickly.)
Re:Sun is lame... (Score:2)
So, perhaps someone at Sun thinks like you do.
Looking cool again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Communication gear is a little better. There is usually a light for each link and data. When there is lots of traffic, the data lights blink furiously.
Marketing generally doesn't have are product requirements for the coolness factor of a given piece of equipment. They may have indicator requirements (red indicators are vary bad in may places). But sometimes some cool code gets through that uses otherwise unused or idle lights. I remember one vendor who programmed their network switch to have a waterfall pattern on the LEDs of their unused ports. A rack of these devices added some color to an otherwise dull machine room or equipment rack.
-tpg
And they should! (Score:5, Insightful)
1) We buy product X from company Y. We put it in our data center. Company Y got their cash, everything is dandy.
2) Once in awhile, we have to show off our data center to our . Half of the time, the people who are in charge of giving us money are not very technical. They may understand some concepts of this big box has XXX giga/mega/zilion bytes of storage, etc, but in most cases they are like me looking at an airplane engine: ohhh, look it here, it has something cool attached to another neat thing! Ohh, and this little thing is moving! Neato!. Please bear in mind, that I am not making fun of those people, this is just how things work. When somebody doesn't work in your field, they often will focus on things less important than you would. If something moves or blinks, it catches the eye of a viewer. Heck, when we have to give tours around our data center, people spend most time around the robotic tape library, or the cluster of boxes, where there is lots of blinking lights, and it simply looks neat. Our 15k does not compare.
3) When those folks, who give us money, see how neat our data center looks, how spiffy things are, they are usually impressed. What follows is: hey, they are doing well. we spent our money well. heck, we may even let them keep their budget, or maybe we'll add more.. Yes folks, the better your data center looks, the better chances of keeping the job
4) Because of the fact that product X looked so nice, we were given the budget to buy more product X's. Company Y profits.
{God, this made sense in my head when i was thinking, dunno if it makes sense now
Anyway, I know that appearance does not make that big of a difference to a sys admin. But as a sys admin, I'd like if the product X that performs well, would also look nice. It helps me, when the PR department asks me to give a tour of our data center. [or at least assist in answering the questions, I think they learned enough buzz words by now, that they can give the tours themselves
Re:Looking cool again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah, and this is yet another reason for the embarrasing IT slobs out there to neatly bundle their fucking rat's nest of cables... Show a little pride in your work, dammit!
Re:Looking cool again... (Score:3, Informative)
Blinkenlights factor (Score:2, Informative)
Now, in the old days when all of a machine's output was through blinkenlights or line printers, it was important to display more diagnostic information on the machines. Now we have consoles and logs, but maybe we don't watch those as often as we should.
I think it would be great if boxmakers could give you an option for a blinkenlights panel that told you a little more about the system's state: processor load, memory load, disk capacity would all be nice. I remember the BeBox's great dual-processor load monitor on twin strips of LEDs along either side of the front of the case. I would probably even pay an extra $100 or so for the extra lights (on a $10K server it's a pretty small incremental addition to the price). If I walked past the machine and saw it was heavily loaded when I didn't expect it to be, I could go check it out and see what was going on.
And if the unused lights just did programmable effects, that would be nice too... it would be a nice, reassuring little "Still here, just waiting for some data to chew on."
Re:Blinkenlights factor (Score:3, Interesting)
If that doesn't impress the customer, sales people have also been known to show customers how the emergency stop button shuts down the data center (actually happened once).
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirror (Score:2)
Now, where did I put that winning lottery ticket?
Cool (Score:2, Funny)
He got an extra light, thanks to /. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:He got an extra light, thanks to /. (Score:2)
Somewhat off topic but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Say you have your CRT right by your window modded case- do you have distorted images on the CRT?
It just seems to me that i would want my system well shielded
Re:Somewhat off topic but.. (Score:2)
Not because of the EMI, but because they cut a hole in the side of their box to see inside, not hide it behind a monitor. :/
Re:Somewhat off topic but.. (Score:5, Informative)
A simple test: Take the lid off of your case, and place it beside the monitor. Nothing strange happens.
Next, place an AC-operated fan, transformer-based soldering iron, or similar magnetic device next to the monitor, and watchen das blinkenrainbow.
That said, flat peices of steel (such as that which comprises your case) do very little to counteract low-frequency magnetism, while aluminum does absolutely nothing. Common steel can have some low-freuquency shielding effect if it's curved just so, but that's usually impractical. (there's other stuff, such as Mu-Metal, which is formulated with the specific goal of blocking EMI, and does work quite well. But it's expensive, and hard to find.)
I have to be careful where I put my Best FerrUPS because the large ferroresonant transformer in it will cause monitors to shake from several feet away.
Problems with computer-generated RFI generally show up with radio and television. I can't listen to an AM radio anywhere near my apartment with the PCs on, and there's a few FM stations that I can only recieve outside or in the back bedroom, away from the machines.
My neighbors must hate me for it, as I'm sure it's not much better anywhere in the building. But the 300-pound, heavy-footed woman upstairs has four kids who wake up at 5:30 AM daily, and the people directly beside me have a bad habit of listening to one-note bass lines with their lousy, one-note subwoofer, directly on the other side of the wall behind my desk.
So, I guess I care a lot less about RFI than I do about proper cooling. Thus, the top of the case is completely absent, allowing all kinds of natural, quiet convection cooling to take place.
Re:Somewhat off topic but.. (Score:2)
Not so hard to find...we get ours from The Magnetic Shield Corporation [magnetic-shield.com].
Re:Somewhat off topic but.. (Score:2)
This isn't a shiney new aluminum Lian-Li, Coolermaster, or stealthly-quiet, duct-filled Dell. There's no Radeon here, no PC2700DDR, no dual-proc Athlon MP. It's an 8-year-old Infotel full-tower AT, with a 350MHz K6-2. With the top off, its trio of 7200RPM IBM Ultrastars, fan-cooled Plextor burner, and CPU all run cooler. The Voodoo3 overclocks better. The DDS-2 streamer acts healthier.
While I understand that you were just trying to be helpful, I'd like to assure you that your concern is unwarranted.
I'd also like to ask if you've got anything constructive to add to the topic at hand, which has everything to do with radiation and casemods, and nothing to do with cooling.
Not a big mod... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a big mod... (Score:5, Funny)
- You go up to your boss and ask: "Can I stick some of these lights in those new servers?". Boss replies by smacking your head with a 2x4.
- You stick the lights in and your boss catches you doing it. "What the #*%^$ are you doing to these!?!?". Again, the 2x4 is utilised
- The boss walks in after you finished and sees a green glow coming from a previously dark cabinet, and calls Sun support in a panic. For making him look the fool, he'll take his 2x4 and make use of it in creative ways that you will not enjoy.
Plenty of scope here for trouble. And if you have a clueless boss, and God forbid something goes wrong with the machines, he and Sun both will blame your blinkenlights...
Sun branded 2x4's (Score:4, Informative)
Just check next time you get an Enterprise or Sun Fire server on a pallet
--NBVB
What, no "Type R" sticker? (Score:5, Funny)
~Philly
Re:What, no "Type R" sticker? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What, no "Type R" sticker? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What, no "Type R" sticker? (Score:2)
What Foxwoods did... (Score:2)
- A.P.
Boring router switchy things (Score:5, Interesting)
The "boring router switchy things" pic appears to show two (2) Cisco Catalyst 6513 chassis with dual-redundant supervisor modules. Yeesh... Depending on the options, there's another $200K in gear right there.
How can this company be doing well enough to afford this gear, yet be dumb enough to let their people "case mod" the E15K's?
Re:Boring router switchy things (Score:2)
Re:Boring router switchy things (Score:2)
Re:Boring router switchy things (Score:2, Funny)
Easy: It's gonna look GREAT on the cover of the annual report.
rj
Re:Boring router switchy things (Score:2)
Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
He just mounted some neon lights inside the case to add some color.
wow (Score:2)
Where is order book (Score:3, Funny)
Now to convince the boss....
Mmm, coke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mmm, coke (Score:5, Funny)
*rimshot*
Re:Mmm, coke (Score:2)
BESM-6... (Score:3, Informative)
write some words using that lamps by writing an auxillary programs. It had thousands of lamps.
You may imagine you are at a starship command deck!
Image is here (old story, b/w photo...
Re:BESM-6... (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anonymous Coward? Why the e-mail address? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anonymous Coward? Why the e-mail address? (Score:2)
Please don't do this to the SNAP servers!
Does anyone actually consider this a mod? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, this [bit-tech.net] is a case mod.
I don't care what all the nay-sayers say (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Sun should take a look at what was done and offer it as an option. Just imagine how much more you could spend if you can justify it as marketing and not productivity increases.
Re:I don't care what all the nay-sayers say (Score:2)
Re:I don't care what all the nay-sayers say (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't care what all the nay-sayers say (Score:3, Insightful)
Cray [uiuc.edu] set the standard in this field. Even if you understood nothing about the power that their hardware contained, no one could fail to be impressed by the sheer presence of the installations. It's a shame that no one has really seen fit to follow up to their example since.
Not really a really challenging casemod (Score:2)
I mean I read nothing about the part where they were going strip down the servers and put them inside a teddy-bear, or something simular involving a large zoo-animal.
This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:3, Interesting)
I do service contract support for Sun gear, and on the high end stuff they (sun) would definitly have the option of walking away from one of these things on a service call. Personally, I know I'd be tempted to do so.
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:2)
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:2, Informative)
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:2)
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:2)
I also said that it WILL violate the service contract, and I say it again.
Adding anything to a case can affect computers in small ways. Heat production, EM interference, and ventilation blocking. These aren't going to product any significat heat, but are they blocking the airflow ports? Is it on the same power supplies as the 15k?
Also, if someone does this to their machine, what else have they done? Brought in some used 3rd party memory? Bought a used CPU off of eBay?
This might not be a problem in and of itself, but it's a good indicator that the computer is NOT one you want to work on, if you can avoid it. Sun feels the same way, and won't let you get away with stuff like this on an Enterprise service contract.
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me the guys that bought this hardware are Sun customers that don't mind shelling out a little cash to buy the necessary hardware.
Putting cold cathode lights on the outside of a case seems to be to be a very poor excuse to get out of a service contract.
Now, if they'd left cables dangling all over the floor, or had coffee stains all down the front of the box, I'd think differently.
However, if this comms room is actually a place where customers are shown round, the non-technical would certainly get a blast from seeing all the cases lit up, and it'd be something they remembered. A bit of a plus over all the 'boring' comms rooms that just hum a little. Something to show the investors on a nice day round.
If they've spent this much on the boxes, I'm damn sure they spent the money to figure out with sun if putting these on invalidated an agreement.
I'm also pretty sure the guy in question worked out what effect this would have on the boxes.
If someone turned up to a site where I'd done pretty much the same thing, and an engineer turned round and refused to touch the machine on that basis, I know that the first thing I'd do is call his boss, and be a little peeved.
And then I'd take it higher.
If the company in question said they'd not support it, then I'd have a very serious think about who would offer a sensible support package.
In my days going round the comms rooms, I've seen far far worse setups, and had them supported.
If you're going to be so picky as to not do something for such a picky reason (hey, the guys who go for cheap memory and processors from Ebay generally don't turn their boxes into showcase pieces like that. They cram what they can quietly into racks and try and make sure nobody sees 'em), then you're on a sure fire way of losing some business. In this day and age, with competition as fierce as it is, I don't think you can afford to do that.
Personally, I'd see this as someone taking PRIDE in their machines, and as such, I'd rather take is as being a good indicator of one that I would want to work on (as the guys are VERY likely to know all the ins and outs of the server, and it's day to day quirks).
I honestly don't know where you get your ideas from, but I think you'd be a firm candidate for a 'jobsworth' award where you'd try and get out of doing anything you absolutely didn't have to, just in case it turned out to be hard work.
If you feel this is just a big, unconsidered flame, then consider. I've done this kind of job in the past, (and moved upwards and onwards), and met many who have done this job also. Some guys are a pleasure to work with, accomodating in most respects (but cut the line at people just being silly arses with things), and some are just cold and trying to weasel out of everything. These days, I go with the companies that offer good service, and decent engineers that actually make a good showing. I drop like hotcakes those that weasel out.
Before you talk about invalidating the warranty, especially in a high profile place like
Bad bad press indeed. And from the Sun techs I've met in the past (quite a few, and from many levels), they'd think this was kind of interesting, and be quite chuffed that people took the pride in their hardware to do this kind of thing.
Just my tuppence worth.
Malk.
Re: This WILL screw up the warranty! (Score:2)
OK, a typical service contract (not just from Sun, from ANYONE!) prohibits adding to or modifying the equipment without Sun's approval. This qualifies.
HOWEVER, probably 30-40% of systems under contract out there are technically in violation. Sun doesn't care. The client doesn't care. The techs don't care. Everyone is happy. Furthermore, let's make the (fairly safe) assumption that this guy has worked with Sun, has a good rapport with the field techs, etc. etc. In that case, he probably phoned up the field techs, said "hey, I'm going to do this. Any problems?" and the field techs said, "Hell no! Can we come and watch you power it up?" No problem--implicit agreement.
But those clauses _are_ in there, and they're there to avoid problems like eBay happening again. (You cannot buy a Sunfire 15k without a service contract now, because of how eBay messed up their server farm.)
All I intended was a cautionary point. I'm not saying that he's likely to get any flak at all from Sun, but on paper--by the legal contract--this will violate his service contract.
That's all.
As an aside, the Sun guys are generally great to deal with.
What, no fishtank? (Score:4, Funny)
Now THAT would be impressive...
Link to sun store (reseller link slashdotted) (Score:2)
Sun Fire 15K Info (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link to the official site: http://www.sun.com/servers/highend/sunfire15k/ [sun.com]
Re:Sun Fire 15K Info (Score:2)
Side note anysystem.com doesn't seem to have anymore ugly duckling specials on the Ultra 1 170e's. Damn shame really. They do have a 200 though. I'm also glad to see someone else referr to it propely as a Sun Fire 15k.
what's next? (Score:3, Funny)
girlfriend reaction (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, she can verbalise astericks.
Tron flashbacks... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the matter with a little flash anyway? It doesn't hurt the machines, it brightens up an otherwise boring looking NOC...jeez, get a little sense of aesthetics, if not humor!
Sun should seriously look at this becoming standard equipment on their machines. How much would this add to the cost of their hideously expensive hardware anyway? A little style goes a long way...ask Steve Jobs.
Re:Case Mod (Score:5, Funny)
> You've been wondering what I've been doing for
> the last two weeks. Go check out the server room
> and prepare to be impressed.
That's beautiful.
You're fired.
The Boss
Re:Case Mod (Score:2)
Children, pay attention! (Score:2)
Timeout on server
Timed out while waiting to connect to www.rm-r.net
The moral of this story is: it's not what's on the outside, but what's inside that matters.
This is great to show the administration (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is great to show the administration (Score:2, Funny)
Public Datacenters (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of company's I have worked at like to place there data center in a semi-public place. My old building had a large glass window that separated their reception area with from a portion of the data center. Mind you that security was not compromised as all monitors where some one could oversee any pertinent information where not viewable from the reception area. This was a concern that was addressed. This little 'building mod' added a bit of esteem to the office. People who came into the office allways spent at least 10-15 mins looking at the servers becouse the room was just impressive. Like some one mentioned earlier, if a person who is not technically inclined sees a impressive data center it might influence them in some way, and it just looks damn cool.
You me and every one else on this board would appreciate them at face value, I know the difference between the quality of NETGEAR and CISCO, but most do not. Lights and cosmetics influence a lot of decisions, don't underestimate looks, they do play a big role.
Whose servers? They must trust this guy a lot... (Score:3, Insightful)
He's also got a page crapload of images on the page, which puts more load than a standard 1-2 image HTML page.
I must ask though, who is his employer? Surely these aren't his own machines (at the quoted x-million each?) unless he's also one rich SOB. The employer must be really trusting in this guy to let him mess with expensive machines like this. I wonder how they'll take the energy bill associated with all those fancy lights
Re:Whose servers? They must trust this guy a lot.. (Score:2, Informative)
The power bill for lights would be beyond nothing compared to the cost of powering the 15k, not to mention the A/C to cool the damn thing.
Hehe... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Take 4 server cases.
2) Weld together.
3) Liberally apply blinking lights, external fans, and colored cabling.
4) Set up a 286 in one of the cases.
5) Write a Basic program to display random 1's and 0's.
The sad thing is, if I invited almost anyone I know over and said "I'm calculating Pi on my supercomputer here", they would all believe it.
Re:Hehe... (Score:2)
Really wow em, add a couple of old tape reels.
Re:Hehe... (Score:2)
Re:Hehe... (Score:2)
My first car was a 2-door Honda Accord. The first thing I did when I got the car was to rip most of the electronics out, and hook up my own circuitry to control everything. I installed an alaram system, added power door locks, and then wired up the lock motors to a microcontroller circuit that would trigger a relay for a few seconds when the car was unlocked twice. The relay would power the window motors, lowering them.
The kicker was I'd tell people that the car was voice activated. I'd walk up with my hand in my pocket, or the remote tucked in my palm and command "doors open". To everyone's amazement, the windows would roll down right on queue. Then they'd try it, and I'd go on to explain that not only were they voice activated, they also recognized the signature of my voice so that only I could unlock the car.
Original Mod (Score:2)
Supposedly the LEDs actually represented something. Dunno -- processors working -- error messages -- and so forth.
It was pretty cool back in the day; I mean it oozed computing power despite the fact that it really wasn't that useful a machine.
dog and..... (Score:2, Insightful)
A blatant ripoff of Rogers and Hammerstein (Score:2)
Warm glowing neon and shiny things glinting
Stacks of brown punch cards tied up with string
These are a few of my favorite things
Dot matrix printers and seven bar segments
Phone bells and switches and papers with pigments
Disk drives that shudder and shimmy and sing
These are a few of my favorite things
Girls in white lab coats with pocket protectors
Logic gates made of lights and reflectors
Heavy equipment suspended with springs
These are a few of my favorite things
When the screen blues, when the cell rings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad.
Sometimes...... (Score:2)
Do these qualify as a case mods?
Awesome (Score:2, Interesting)
Collateral /. damage? (Score:2, Interesting)
some answers (Score:5, Informative)
seems i've been slashdotted.. (thanks)
the problem with my site is the fact that i never increased the apache server count, so you guys pegged it and it's been refusing connections all day.. sorry about that.. if i had any idea it was going to be this popular i may have bumped it up
anyhow, obviously the web site isn't running on those 15ks - if you look closely at the pictures, they're not even plugged in yet..
some answers:
1. we're not a dot-com..
2. we just took delivery of the 15k's and the adic 10k and decided something needed to be done to spruce them up..
3. it was my bosses idea, actually, he paid for it..
4. we're pretty good friends with sun, i doubt they'll have a problem with it..
5. calling this a 'casemod' is a bit of a joke, i know it's not modding anything in the true spirit of the "case modder", just velcroing lights to it.. like i'm going to take a dremel to something that costs this much - even we have limits.. so sorry for the bruised egos, folks..
6. lots of people are taking this far too seriously..
7. for the network guys - the cisco gear is maxed out, the other blades haven't arrived yet.. the one that's mostly populated will have fiber in the unused areas, the second will be a warm standby copy.. my comment of 'boring' is a dig at the network guy, as this whole thing was meant for my co-workers and close friends, not general consuption..
8. we plan on putting a camera in the adic to watch the robot..
9. these machines are incredibly dense, you can see from the picture, so really the only thing we have to work with are the doors.. even if you think it's lame, you have to admit it's pretty cool..
10. we're still debating about the colors..
thanks a lot to those of you who get it and think this is fun, since that's all it's intended to be.. it's not a folly of having too much money or a pinhead boss, it's just a bunch of unix dorks having fun before we plug the thing in..
bri..
Huh? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Though I do agree with you on the last point. They make some very fine mice and keyboards.
Re:Huh? - HUH? (Score:2)
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:2)
Do any of you recall those fantastic red LED covered supercomputers in "Jurassic Park"? I saw a photo of them once in an ad, so I know they're real. Anybody know their name?
Thinking Machines CM-5s. [svisions.com]