I had not seen any real world power consumption figures for the new Dell R200 1U servers, so as I have a paid sat behind me I thought I’d stick a power meter on and see what they draw.
Power factor 0.90, Voltage 247V.
(Spec: Quad core Xeon X3220 @ 2.4GHz, 4x1GB RAM, 2x146GB SAS)
Well, today was the end of it, almost. All the IT equipment went today, though oddly the chaps didn’t have room for the 42u Dell cabinet, so a quick call soon found it a new home up the hill at the CS department via the back of a Volvo estate! Rah! The last of the desks/chairs goes tomorrow then its lock up and drop the keys through the letter box and become unemployed. Until Monday at least. I had not realised how stressed I was getting about sorting everything out, but hopefully after Saturday’s riding I can zonk for a bit and get some proper sleep.
In other news my Mavericks have a new home thanks to EBay, which is cool. Still no sign of the new Bullit though. I must catch up with peeps soon, I have not seen many for to long!
Well, .us0 (Open World’s main hosting colo) is no more. Verizon have, at my request, turned off the power bars.
Tomorrow I get to gut .uk1, the main UK colocation which holds internal and extranet servers.
I prefer building systems…
So today is the first day of the end. I turned off the web servers yesterday (scripted) and today I have to start copying anything the Administrators wanted onto an external disk and then erasing all of Open World’s servers. By Friday everything should be blanked and removed by the chaps that have bought all the kit. It seems weird demolishing everything I and other have spent years building, but it needs to be done.
My employer has formally gone into administration today. I am being retained and paid. 8 people are being made redundant from the UK now [update its over 13 now], all non-UK staff are out (there lies its own odd legal issue). Not a nice day, I am the one working with the administrators (who themselves are nice chaps, but its still upsetting).
Today s my last day in Sri Lanka, for this trip. 2 weeks is quite a long time to spend over here, I usually do 1 week, but I think it has been worth it. I think I have got quite a lot done, though I could have done more if other management had actually organised themselves and not wasted my time here when I could have wasted it in Bath. But hey ho. I’m off to Singapore tonight, 00:40 flight, 06:35 arrival, nice! I’ll be sleeping much of Saturday then.
Spend the weekend ‘up country’. Went to the elephant orphanage, which even though I had been before, was still a wonderful experience. Overnight’d in Kandy and drove back via the Victoria Damn (scary pics of Maggie Thatcher on the walls!) on Sunday. Pics HERE.
Tarra for now 
Why is it always that when you do have some free time it is raining? Oh well, driving in the dark in the rain was interesting, the roads don’t drain, the light glares and you cant see any road markings – sucky. I fly back today, 8.30pm flight so don’t need to be at JFK till 6pm. Its 10am now, I shall pop up to the colo, label all the cables and draw the rack for future reference (no cameras allowed). If time allows I will pop up to the nice park about 20mins north of here and go for a walk round the reservoir. As I recall its a nice stroll and the leave ar all still looking nice. Need to find an office Depot on the way back as my Dad wants a hand-cranked pencil sharpener – Staples only do electric plug-in ones (lazy yanks). Right, time to pack an head off. See you all back in the UK.
So yes, its Tuesday. Things are going well. New machines are in, old ones are nearly fixed (awaiting a fan and a disk) and I can see me being done in time, which is good. I am still not happy with the power cables int the rack, they are all 12foot long and I need about 18inches. For now they are all tied to the side of the cab to keep them out of the way.
In other tech news, I plugged a mouse into the laptop. Something I have never tried before. Oh why oh why had I not! Its so much better. Thank you Dell for sending free mice with servers.
Update on life more generally later, off iPod shopping now
Arrived at JFK last night, on time pretty much, though delayed by the huge queues at passport control. Driving north (JFK, Whitestone bridge, Hutchinson River Parkway for those that care) though was horrid. Its the Marathon in New York today and it appears that as soon as people want to get round NYC on foot the whole place grinds to a halt. America hey! Ah well. Last nights colo power work went well and service was not affected, go me 
This morning in the colo though I have witnessed what can only be described as the single most stupid act ever seen in a data center. Some chap (with two colleagues!) was trying to get console on a Cisco “load balancer” ‘cos it was tits up, his laptop didn’t have a serial port so, his colleagues made the astounding observation that if they took off the RJ45->9pin serial adapter the cable fitted in the laptop’s network card port… so they tried it. Obviously to the rest of the world, this didn’t work. Hopefully they didn’t notice me laughing.
Right, back to work!
I looked at my calendar today… yikes. Off to New York this Saturday to do some server work, fly back arriving Friday early morning. New guy starts at OW on the Monday, but my Linux Admin is away then for two weeks. Off to Rotterdam on Friday 18th for a work thing. Then December 5th I am penciled in to head to Sri Lanka for 2 weeks. Hopefully I’ll have shifted this chest infection before the weekend.