i am a superior tool-wielding hominid

[rone]

Today i was at my company's colocation cage.  The task set before me and my coworker was to rack two Sun Fire 445 servers.

The Problem
The rails are one and one-third rack units high.  There are two holes on top and bottom, and two pins in the middle.  The idea is that the holes allow the rails to be screwed in, and the pins align directly with the two unused screw holes in between.

In practice, you can see a bend at the end of the rail.  This causes the rail to not allow the pins to align with the holes.  Thus, the rail is effectively useless.

The Solution

I managed to procure a hammer at my favorite restaurant, Hunan Taste, where my coworker and i had lunch.  It was either that or attempt to unbend the cheap metal rail with a pair of vise grips.

The Result

Once again, a judicious and clever application of violence saves the day.

Comments

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

Yep! Sun rails are designed for Sun racks, HP rails are designed for HP racks; the usual deal. Fortunately the Rittal racks we use (when we don't use vendor racks) are pretty tolerant.

I never, ever go to a machine room without a hammer. I have an office in our main facility which I pretty much just use a secure lockup for tools and parts. Hammers: 1 large ball peen, 1 small ball peen, 2 panel beating hammers, a small sledge and a couple of rubber mallets.

Now, those 445s look pretty shiny, but are those disk brackets incompatible with spuds? Because if they are, Sun are being a pain in the arse.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I have several E250s, Sunfire V1s, Origin300s (SGI), and PE2[6|8]50s (Dell) all in the same rack and no hardware modification was required. Any 19" rack with properly spaced rails should accomodate just about anything (the Dells required an adapter kit since this rack has 10-32 drilled and tapped holes up the rails and the standard Dell expects square holes. The adapter kit was $9 from Dell). The Suns and SGIs went in with zero modification.

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've got an E250, a v210, a T105, two 2600 routers, a couple of 2900 series switches, an HP FCAL JBOD, an HP tape library, an A1000, two patch panels and a pair of fibre hubs (and fibre management trays) in an early vintage DEC rack right here, all racked properly. A lot of it was fiddly but not impossible.

Standard (ha!) racks have square holes and one uses captive nuts. That gives you the best chance of actually getting everything to screw in. HP racks have different spacing to everyone else so even if you get everything in you'll have gaps and it won't look pretty (and you'll waste space).

Next move is to dump this DEC rack and replace it with the new StorEdge that I've had sitting around for the last year. It'll be neater and have decent power management.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

The worst rack I've dealt with yet is one of our relay racks that wasn't fucking leveled when it was installed. The rack shelves for the Matrix 5000 are 11U each (one for the rectifier, one for the battery pack) and take 7 screws on each side. The have damn near zero vertical tolerance. That was...less than fun.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Spuds?

[gallifreyan.livejournal.com]

Spuds are the standard Sun drive brackets, as seen in Ultra 1, Ultra 2, Multipacks, and various other places.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Aha, thanks.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

They use 2.5" drives, not the old 3.5" drives. They're really sleek and cute, but, yes, not the same enclosure as the old spuds, for obvious reasons.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

...the keen intellect of the so-called systems administrator

I'll give you a couple of brownie points for improvisation, but real techs order 3rd-party railkits that're specifically designed to go into a generic 19-inch rack, and don't borrow tools from Chinese restaurants, even ones as wonderful as Hunan Taste.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Real techs construct server racks from the bones of their former supervisors. There are lessons in plenty here.

Sourcing

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

You got a good source for supervisor-bone-kits??

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You got a recommended source for 3rd-party railkits?

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

Sun probably has a rackmount kit for customers with 3rd-party racks. If not, talk to a Sun reseller.

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

When faced with a hardware problem, the righteous sysadmin finds a hammer to solve it, regardless of the availability of other tools.

Righteousness

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

> righteous sysadmin finds a hammer

Incorrect.

The TRULY righteous sysadmin NEVER goes ANYWHERE without a hammer.

Wouldn't be prudent.

One never knows when they might encounter (Eeek!! Horrors!!) A Dreaded USER!!! (Bwaaa-ahaaa--aaaahhhhaa!!)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I'm not comfortable with the idea of going everywhere with a hammer. That suggest that i'm available for work all the time.

[arian1.livejournal.com]

I see you have mastered the "Bigger Hammer Theory" which is a mainstay of Harley repair, demolition work and just about anything in the Soviet Military.

Congratulations Comrade Rone.

[marknau.livejournal.com]

I'm often tempted to solve our software problems with a hammer, as well.

About that restaurant. It's HUMAN taste. Get out of there, now!!! IT'S STILL PEOPLE!!!!!

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

Wow. People sure are spicy, then.

Only The Green Ones....

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Soylent Magenta Is more Calming.... As they use a Smaller Hammer On Them...

[coldsleep.livejournal.com]

I applaud your use of the mighty tool known as the hammer. I should procure a hammer for my own server room.

"Good old rock, nothing beats rock."

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Things like this are why pliers are an important part of my kitchen.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, how else ya gonna get those pinbones out?

[heliumbreath.livejournal.com]

And, up in the land winter forgot, apparently I'm going to be racking some Q-boxen in rhymes-with-Hell racks. Oh, and the Q-box at the top of the existing loose stack is in active use by the dev team and they come screaming when it falls over. At least we have a whole cabinet empty that can get rebuilt by the designated victim, I mean sysadmin.

Sigh. I suppose I should have brought my peavy up to the machineroom and used it to sort things out, the day I had it and the chainsaw out in the car.

Not a sysadmin, but used to play one on TV...

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

Applying a claw hammer to a precision-engineered, carefully manufactured equipment rail looks daft.

Why would you apply a wood-working tool to such a exquisitely designed metal-formed part?

Don't you know why The-Great-BOFH-In-The-Sky gave us The Engineer's Hammer, with a 32-ounce head, a flat poll (for smashing things, like bothersome users) and a pointed "V" head (for splitting skulls of bothersome users)??

Golly, man, don't you know there's a proper tool for EVERY purpose??

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

What was especially comedic is that when we got back from lunch, we found a hammer hidden in the box with the cable ties.

They WANT you to think so!

[mononeuron.livejournal.com]

> when we got back from lunch, we found a hammer

The aliens put it there, just to mess with your head.

The hammer was NOT there when you left.

Nobody every saw it there before lunch, right?

And nobody remembered putting it there, right?

Clearly, THEY are at work again!