Sun Puts Data Center Through 6.7 Earthquake 195
An anonymous reader sent in a video clip showing Sun experimenting with shoving a data center through a simulated 6.7 Earthquake.
Everything stays running, but some power cords came out and some screws worked loose. It's still kind of neat to see a bunch of racks shake like a polaroid.
slashdvertisements (Score:2)
thats what sun is spending money on before its taken over?
Re:slashdvertisements (Score:5, Insightful)
thats what sun is spending money on before its taken over?
Do you expect all development and innovation to stop the moment one mentions the word IBM? I'm glad to see Sun innovating and proving that their technology is reliable.
Re:slashdvertisements (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
reminds me of the handy capable guy from the film "Scary movie"?? I think?? the, "I can toss my own salad." guy.
Sun: "What you think we need IBM to shake things up? We can shake our selves up!!"
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I thought that it was a Big Blue Elephant checking out Sun, by kicking the tires, before it puts up the cash for a used Sun.
Given the results, Sun should be expecting a huge check in the mail, real soon.
Unfortunately, it will probably mean a bunch of pink slips for people in *both* companies.
Re: (Score:2)
This video is at least a year old, I remember seeing it when I attended one of their mobile Blackbox tour presentations last year.
Re: (Score:2)
Sun equipment... tested by a gigantic mechanical shaker... powered by... Windows??
Did anyone else notice that the control system for the Earth Quake simulator is apparently running Windows?
I did just notice, and came mention it. You would think Windows [what-is-what.com] would be the last thing featured in such an obvious slashdvertisement.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the US companies building test equipment like that offer software for Windows only, Instron and MTS both did last I checked.
If you have it custom built whomever you get to do the controls is probably going to use off the shelf PLCs, HMI software almost certainly, and most of both will be Windows only.
Hard drives?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Good question. Problem is, I don't trust any of the current SCSI/SAS manufacturers to have high-physical shock tolerance.
Re:Hard drives?? (Score:5, Informative)
Neither does Sun. This kind of shock-and-vibe testing is actually routine for their products — I've been in the lab where it's done. That lab can't handle anything bigger than a rack, hence the outsourcing of this particular test.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If firmly mounted, the drives are very shock tolerant. What people don't realize is how high the G force generated when hard object like a drive hits a hard object like a table. You can get instantaneous tens, possibly hundreds of Gs. Earthquakes can generate several Gs, but not tens. Problems tend to occur when structures have forces in unexpected directions (walls are bad at shifting sideways, masonry doesn't like decompression) or when you get resonance with the oscillation, which builds up the energy. D
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but I've had several hard drives from MANUFACTURER_A which have been dropped several feet (while off) onto both hard tile and carpeted floors, and get plugged in and work fine for years. Another, while on, took a three foot fling/tumble when my notebook satchel slipped from my arm (I hadn't realized I left the computer on), and it survived.
Then I went to MANUFACTURER_B, and a turned off computer with a minitower case slipped and fell on it's side, and the drive died (a few other similar, relatively lo
Re:Hard drives?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't lose a single drive.
Re: (Score:2)
My story is anecdotal as well, but on the flip side, I had a computer in the back seat of my car a few years back (coming home from a LAN party) and was rear ended. The damage to the car was fairly minimal and limited to the rear; there was no external damage to the computer or the backseat area at all, nor was I injured, but there was a pretty decent jolt involved.
When I got home and plugged the drive in, it was making a clicking noise. It failed completely within a day or two. While I've never been thr
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hard drives?? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Usually the ones that cost about $35k/terrabyte as opposed to the ones that cost $99/terrabyte at newegg.
Well, if it comes to earthquakes, terrabytes surely beat terabytes. After all, it's not a monsterquake! :-)
Re: (Score:2)
One word SSD. I bet these data-center-in-a-container things can run even inside a moving truck if SSDs are used. Takes a lot of fuel though.
Personally, if I lived in quakeland, I would do a lot of backups and live in paranoia.
A possible protection is to strap everything into racks that are suspended by cables attached to an overhead crane. About 18 yrs ago I was at a fab designed to not get jiggled by the continual tremors that always occur everywhere. It was like a big room sitting on jello. Large dampers
Re: (Score:2)
A possible protection is to strap everything into racks that are suspended by cables attached to an overhead crane
I don't know if that'd be a financial success, but you'd certainly win many art contests.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The room probably sat on rubber air springs, which is common for modern buildings in earthquake prone area.
An earlier reply to you mentions rolling data centers used by militaries. The ones I've seen mount containers on smaller air springs...you'll see Airride on a lot of semi trucks on the highway.
Re:Hard drives?? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Even properly mounted high speed drives can be susceptible to shake damage. In installing a new rack in our datacenter a wire monkey used a hammer drill in our concrete floor next to a rack full of running servers. We had a number of 15000rpm drives have bad sectors from that. They were properly mounted servers and drives. Now if they were 7200rpm drives we probably would have been fine, but what data center needed high speed data access wouldn't use 15000rpm drives.
Long story short, I would love to see
Slashdot meets 21st century!? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slashdot meets 21st century!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
noFlash stopped it along with noScript.
so while I can see that it would have been there, it did no annoy me. /. PUTTING it there - that annoyed me.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I too *gasped* at having to actually read/view the content of the article. What is this site coming to? Informed commenting may be next!
Re: (Score:2)
FUCKING HELL is that an embedded video I see in the story!? Holy shit, the geek website is ... in step with the times?
And in the process, they've created a bit of a mess. Here we have a situation where the summary and the "article" are on the same page. So, the summary contains a link... to this page.
Re: (Score:2)
FUCKING HELL is that an embedded video I see in the story!? Holy shit, the geek website is ... in step with the times?
Yeah, I thought the same thing, but then I thought "Nah, the slashdot crowd will complain about it"
Fixy Linky Please? :) (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet, a link in a summary to the summary itself. Just what I've always wanted!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OH no, you know what that means? We all just RTFA. I think that signals the end of the world or something.
Re:Fixy Linky Please? :) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fixy Linky Please? :) (Score:5, Funny)
Circular reference for nerds. Dupe optimization that matters.
Re:Fixy Linky Please? :) (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most nerds would call it recursive, not circular reference.
Besides, I prefer techno-weenie.
Re: (Score:2)
Makes sense. The video's in the summary! So the video clip is in the summary about a video clip, thus, the link points to the summary since the video referenced in the summary is in the summary.
Re: (Score:2)
The video's in the summary!
Except in Safari, no such embedded video appears.
My demographic is not irrelevant, I tell you!
Re: (Score:2)
Worked fine in Safari on OSX for me...
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm. Well, fine, I didn't want to watch it anyway. :/
Re: (Score:2)
Sweet, a link in a summary to the summary itself. Just what I've always wanted!
The link makes sense (sort of) if you click it from the main page, since it takes you to the summary, wherein the video is found (which is "TFA"). Of course, it's redundant if you click it from here.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, their video embedding code sucks if you use Safari. That is to say, no video appears.
As I said in another comment: my demographic is not irrelevant, I tell you!
Re:Fixy Linky Please? :) (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but you see, Grasshopper, to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion!
Re: (Score:2)
I...wait, what?
Anyhow, this is making it exceedingly difficult to post without having RTFA. :(
Old news. (Score:2, Informative)
I knew there was something familiar about this. I stumbled upon it on a slow day at work a couple of years ago. The video is dated 2007 at the end.
Where are the tape libraries? (Score:2)
When they can have this type of earthquake and not have any IO errors from the disks nor do any tapes fall off the walls of the inside of the tape library, then I'll call this a success. As someone that has had to retrieve a tape that was dropped by the robot of an old STK "Powderhorn", this would be a pain.
Re: (Score:2)
you still use tape?!? is that you, great-gran-pa?
Re: (Score:2)
One can use the most current hardware and software and STILL have clients that use legacy systems... some clients for 15 years plus.
that happened to silicon valley in 1989 (Score:3, Interesting)
1994? (Score:2)
Energy release of an earthquake (Score:2)
Energy release by Mw6.7 Earthquake is as following.
6.7 16.2 megatons (TNT) 67.9 PJ (Joule equivalent)
See more here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale [wikipedia.org]
Most things can survive Mw6.7 earthquake just fine. The question is, can it survive Mw7.0 earthquake or bigger. A earthquake that is Mw6.7 is just strong.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
The real test... (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.kcra.com/cnn-news/19016582/detail.html [kcra.com]
Your shaken milage may vary (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is... (Score:2)
... will it blend?
Am I th eonly person... (Score:2)
...who has no idea what "shake like a polaroid" means? Last I knew, a polaroid was a instant camera using chemical-based films, and was not intimately connected with geological stressing.
Can someone please demonstrate what a shaking polaroid looks like so I don't feel like I'm missing out on hacker lingo.
Re: (Score:2)
Common technique to get a poloroid to develop faster was to shake it as if you were fanning something. Exposure to air was part of the chemical process.
Re: (Score:2)
Aside from shaking a Polaroid picture to speed up the development process, it is also a pop culture reference. Shake it like a Polaroid picture! [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Next sim needs crash test dummies (Score:2, Funny)
link back to the post and no link to video? (Score:2)
as I was trying to figure out how to actually see the video and clicking on the link like an idiot just to get back to the same place, I figured out that a large blank space below the text is where the video is supposed to be. Since it seems it is slashdotted I cannot see it. It would be better if you could just give the link in the text so I can save it and look later and/or at least say that the video is below.
The server cage is fine, what about the facility ? (Score:2)
Sure, the servers survived the quake, but what of the datancenter itself ? I would not be surprised if THEIR power mains or network uplinks went to shit after such a rumble.
6.7 only? (Score:2)
How a 7, 8, or even 9? :D
Evil experiment under sun light? (Score:2)
I can't believe it. So a bunch of corporate suckers emulate an earthquake to advance their technology? In the core of Silicon Valley? Where is Spiderman?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As in, shake the instant photo to help it develop.
The funny part is, the shaking never really helped the photo develop. It just did the user something to do while the chemicals did their work.
My mother had a Polaroid instant camera in the UK and we had never heard of shaking the pictures until we came to the US. It seemed as stupid as shaking a bottle of water to make it more watery or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dry??? That's a myth equivalent to those who think snakes are slimy. Neither snakes nor polaroids are wet. Both are dry to the touch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Dry??? That's a myth equivalent to those who think snakes are slimy. Neither snakes nor polaroids are wet. Both are dry to the touch.
Mythbusters can prove that a snake is slimy...with explosives!!!
Re: (Score:2)
We're all slimy on the inside.
Re:"shake like a polaroid" ? (Score:4, Interesting)
In older cameras, there was no protective plastic cover, the chemicals were exposed to the air, and shaking or blowing on the picture would make it dry faster.
In newer cameras, there is a protective plastic cover, the chemicals are not exposed to the air, and shaking will not cause it to dry faster.
Re: (Score:2)
"newer" polaroids? I thought they had become extint long ago, like the Dodo bird
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>>>shake the instant photo to help it develop.
That is Not what you do with a polaroid. Shaking the photo can cause damage. The proper procedure is to lay it someplace dark and wait 2-3 minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Andre 3000 (Score:2)
of outkast, many many many times better than the black eyed peas.
Nope (Score:2)
(Apart from the freaks on here who I'm sure would love the chance to dislike)
Re:"shake like a polaroid" ? (Score:5, Funny)
Come sit on your grandpa's knee and I'll tell you a story.
Long before you were born, back when I was just a lad and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, there was no such thing as "digital photo-graphy". The only way to capture an image of someone or something (or "steal their soul" as we called it back then) was to use a primitive device that would capture light reflected from the target and project it on to a chemical "film", which would end up with a copy of the image embedded into it.
Later, we would take this film to an old-fashioned building known as a "drug-store" (sort of like Amazon, but you had to drive there, and sometimes you even had to interact with other people in order to purchase goods and services). We would drop off our film, it would be sent off to a magic "photo development center", and transformed into a picture printed on special photo-graphic paper.
If for some reason you didn't want to wait, you could instead take a picture with a so-called "Polaroid insta-matic camera", which had self-developing film. You would take the picture, and within seconds it would come out of the camera. However, it would still take several seconds to fully develop. Many people thought shaking the picture made it develop faster, but of course that was just silly superstition. The real way to make it develop faster was to sacrifice a goat, but few people tried that, and so were stuck with slowly developing pictures.
Now, of course, everyone has these "digital photo-graphical machines" which make Polaroids obsolete, and so soon no one will know the simple joy of shaking a Polaroid picture.
Come back tomorrow, and I'll tell you about how we had to use "floppy disk-ettes" to transfer files from one computer to another, and how we were able to dodge saber-toothed tigers using 1/2-inch tape reels.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Instamatic was Kodak's cartridge loading technology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instamatic [wikipedia.org]), not Polaroid.
Each company's products evolved through many generations. Large cartridges, small cartridges, flash cubes, flash bars, wet developer/fixer, dry process. We gave my dad a Polaroid SX-70 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SX-70 [wikipedia.org]) when it first came out. Something very satisfying about the whirr and thunk of the ejection mechanism. The batteries were contained in the film cartridge.
I recall some Japanese t
Re: (Score:2)
Instamatic was Kodak's cartridge loading technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instamatic [wikipedia.org]), not Polaroid.
I was going to just say "instant", but I wanted something more old-timey looking and hyphenated, so went with insta-matic. The relation to any product by Kodak or any other manufacturer is purely coincidental.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But they regretted the whole instant-camera episode even more, when Polaroid's lawyers got through with them...
I recall some Japanese tourists stopping him to take a look at the camera
A busload of Japanese tourists was held up hereabouts by an armed man who robbed all the passengers Jesse James style
Re: (Score:2)
Come back tomorrow, and I'll tell you about [...] how we were able to dodge saber-toothed tigers using 1/2-inch tape reels.
That I'd really love to hear about. Can't we just pretend it's tomorrow already, aww can we grandpa? :D
Re: (Score:2)
My grandaddy says there were these people who could see in a dark room (they could change size too) and they used alchemistical substances and arcane formulas to produce pictures by themselves. The crazy old sod!
Re: (Score:2)
"how we were able to dodge saber-toothed tigers using 1/2-inch tape reels.'
Groucho Marx voice:
"How the saber-toothed tigers got 1/2" tape reels I'll never know!"
Re: (Score:2)
An hour ago I was sorting some junk from home for recycling and came across some 5.25" floppy disks with the original SimCity. I offered one to my coworker as a joke about how old the game was. She had never seen that style of disk before.
Re: (Score:2)
That simile hurts my teeth like a deep shade of amber.
Re:TFS (Score:5, Funny)
Only on slashdot does this refer to server hardware.
(At Hooters, it refers to server software).
Re:TFS (Score:5, Funny)
(At Hooters, it refers to server software).
Server firmware, please. Typically, embodied in silicon(e).
Re: (Score:2)
Everything stays running, but some power cords came out, some screws worked loose
How did the servers [what-is-what.com] keep running without the power cords? Or do they refer to power cords on the UPS's?
For that matter, since when does /. have video in TFS?!? Try the link... it points to itself!
Re: (Score:2)
Everything stayed running... the failures consisted or power cords coming out
So by "running" I think they mean "didn't break"
Re:Old. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Old. (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything stayed running... the failures consisted or power cords coming out
So by "running" I think they mean "didn't break"
Redundant power cables? Although to be fair, in a real data center, KVM pushcarts and jewel cases left in partially filled racks would be a big factor in causing wire damage. Not to mention server mounting arms extending.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no room for a KVM pushcart in the Sun Modular Datacenter.
All sun servers, new ones anyway, have an integrated lights out management card (ILOM) that you would use instead of a KVM switch. It allows you to connect to the server, even if it's powered off.
If you were putting this in a seismic zone I would assume you would install some rack drawers if you would have small objects such as jewel cases so you wouldn't have them just laying around. The design of the unit doesn'nt seem to have any shelves, o
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A KVM is a device that allows you to use one one keyboard, video display and mouse and switch across multiple computers.
A pushcart is a frame on wheels that you can put stuff on and push around.
A KVM pushcart is a KVM switch, monitor, keyboard and mouse on a cart that you can push around to bring to different racks to use the KVM without having to have a KVM setup in each rack with dedicated connections to each server.
Re: (Score:2)
How did the servers [what-is-what.com] keep running without the power cords?
I got 3 words for you - redundant power supplies.
Although I don't think this is the case here. If you RTFA (or is it WTFV?) they do say that "the only failures were associated with power cords coming loose" - so they do consider this aspect to be a failure - but its a very easily fixable one - many servers have ways to fix power cords to the chassis of the server in a way that you cannot yank the power cord out easily.
-Em
Re:Old. (Score:4, Funny)
Anonymous just because I'm to lazy to login...
The way I read it, is that the data center as a whole stayed up and functional. I'm sure it's built with enough redundancy to maintain service through a failure of a few machines/drives/switches/etc...
Not every power cord came loose, the "system" compensated, and the box kept on serving.
Now they need to test what happens when the field tech is replacing a drive right when the earthquake hits. That should be some fun watching! Does he still get the drive replaced?
Let's find out!
Re: (Score:2)
Richter?!? Damn near killed 'er!
Re: (Score:2)
According to this article on the modular datacenter [internetnews.com] it seems like they started doing better after they changed their name. Guess even a big company needs to worry about SEO? :)
The coolest (literally I guess) was where the put 50 of these in an abandoned mine in Japan. The mine had a constant, low temperature which would reduce cooling costs.
They mention 4 other customers in that article which is over a year old. There are probably more.
The nice thing is that you can also get Sun remote monitoring of the box
Re: (Score:2)
I just ran across this link that shows where sun modular datacenters have been deployed [sun.com]. Looks like a couple dozen. Dosn't give much information on them thouhg.