Jim Goings

When it comes to data centers, I like to keep a clean shop. You might say that I’m a tad anal about cabling, labeling, and general organization. It’s a real nightmare to sift through a spaghetti mess of cables when you’re trying to solve a problem.

Anyhow, here’s a glimpse of the back of a newly installed rack with 21 servers in it.

All cables are labeled on each end and neatly bound with Velcro straps. The labels are laser printed and identify what it’s connected to as well as the far end. The power cables are 1ft and 2ft, respectively for each of the two power supplies in each server. No excess means no mess. I know what you’re thinking - I bet that cables a mess inside that cable tray. Nope, neat and tidy - even in the places you can’t see it!

The cabinet is an HP 10000 G2 server cabinet. It has extra wide channels on each side for cable management and is extra deep with split-back doors. We use the HP 17.3 kVA PDU (power distribution unit) mounted in a zero-U configuration. It provides 72 plugs with two 30amp 3-phase 208v circuits per cabinet. It’s a monster, but allows us to use every inch of the server cabinet.

Here’s the front:

Been a while since I last updated, so here goes:

We went camping a couple of weeks ago at Cape Lookout with friends and family. Mom, Thom, Kelly, Megan, Nate, Michelle, Chibby, Joleine, Jen, Kevin, Val, Chase, Kaley, and 4 dogs were all there. Our camp site was right on the beach. A few of us went on a 5 mile hike out to the end of Cape Lookout. It was a great trip. You can see the full set of camping pictures on Flickr.

Right after we got back from camping, we hosted David, a couch surfer from Oslow. David stayed with us for a week. On Saturday we went downtown to show him around a bit and lo and behold the Rose Festival Parade was starting.

The Rose Festival Parade was much cooler than I thought it would be.

Short cop and tall cop were friends.

One of the dudes on my team showed this to me and I just had to share:

My first official vacation this year was good, but interrupted by work almost every single day.  I don’t mind the occasional phone call, but after reviewing my call log I noted that I received 22 calls that week.   All but one were important enough to call me, but it’s still frustrating that it’s so hard to get away.   I also had to deal with several “fires” that cropped up and threatened to deter Jive’s move into our new building. Perhaps this was just the ultimate in bad timing, but what could I do since the time off was planned around Chris’ visit?

Chris, Karen, and baby Owen came up and we had a great time with them despite the interruptions.  We had several dinner parties throughout the week and got to hang out with lots of friends.  We went to Juan Colorado a couple of times as Chris says that despite the fact that they live in San Diego, they can’t find good Mexican food.

We made it to the Saturday market (on Sunday go figure) and enjoyed the great weather.  It only rained for the 10 minutes we spent eating under a canopy… perfect timing on our part.  We heard some dreadful performances by a children’s singer.  I suppose you might like it if you were a kid, but I found it annoying.  We also received some free hugs as you can see from the picture above.  You can see a host of miscellaneous pictures from the week on Flickr.

While the ladies were enjoying a few hours at a salon, we went to the zoo with Megan and Farnz.  We only spent a couple of hours there which is great since we go there so often.  The annual passes we have really come in handy!  You can view the entire set of zoo pictures on Flickr.

On Thursday we took advantage of the perfect weather and went to the beach.  The Killians, Howlands, and Goings families all piled into the van (14 of us in all) and drove to Seaside.  In our haste to put sunscreen on the kids, the adults forgot and we all got nice sunburns.  It was all worth it though.  Afterwards, we took teh scenic way back through Astoria and took the opportunity to drive across that roller coaster shaped bridge.  You just have to drive on it to believe it.  You can see the full set of beach pictures on Flickr.

For Mothers Day, I made my mom a video and posted it on a blog that I setup for her. You can see the blog and video at http://www.luannhopkins.com