What do you have in your datacenters' toolbox?

[mtaylor at mt.au.com (Matt Taylor)]

There's one thing which no one has really mentioned, but it's "bitten" 
me a few times personally.

* Torx screwdriver set.

You'll never know when you run into an "aged" server which has scsi 
disk's and it requires a torx screwdriver to take out the screws without 
threading it.

Also, a similar thread had come up recently on AusNOG which may help 
someone:

http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2011-November/011619.html

Also, last year on NANOG - similar (huge) thread:

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-February/046106.html


Regards,
Matthew Taylor.

On 12/03/13 3:01 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
> You need to consider cases where there is an actual power failure. yeah,
> a real one with dark centre,  UPS and mains down, room is silemt except
> for a few alarms here and there, and you are scrambling to find/fix problem.
>
> what will you need ?
> (obvious things like flashlights, multimetre, screwdrivers, pliers, wire
> cutters).
>
> I would also do a visual inventory of the hardware and all the screws
> you can find to ensure you have screwdrivers or allen keys for them,
> adjustable wrenches etc.
>
> You may also consider cases where the airconditioning unit is leaking
> water. Do you have some kit to wrap a leaking pipe to at least
> temporarily stop the leak ?
>
> So you have a shop vac to suck up water on floor or underfloor ?
>
> Often, maintenance manuals for equipment will have a list of tools needed.
>
> Then you need to consider emergency suplies. 10 gauge wiring to create a
> glorified extension cord to power some critical equipment. Obviouslty,
> as somone else mentioned spare ethernet cabling to also provide long
> patch cord to some switch that is still working.
>
> This also depends if this is a commercial data centre or a corporate
> one. In a corporate one, you need to identify your business critical
> equipment and run various failure scenarios to see what you need to keep
> the business critical systems up. While this goes beyond a set of tools,
> creating that list should implicitly also cause you to create a list of
> tools you would need in an emergency to get your business critical boxes
> back up.
>
>
>