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Moving Equipment During a Monsoon

For the IT staff of Core77, data center equipment moving day coincided with a historic Nor'easter.

Here in the New York/New Jersey area we periodically endure a weather event known as a Nor'easter, essentially a pocket hurricane that sweeps up the coast packing wind and rain. Last Sunday was one of those days. The winds weren't bad, but the rain was unprecedented. Colorful terms like "frogstrangler" or "gullywasher" just don't do it justice. New York City had the second-highest one-day rainfall on record, with more than 8 inches. I was out driving during the storm, and the rain was easily worse than Hurricane Floyd (the previous benchmark for mad-crazy rain in NJ).

So what could be worse than driving in that kind of rain? How about moving web servers for a busy web site? Sunday was data center equipment moving day for the staff of Web77, the "industrial design supersite." There's a brief writeup on their blog (link via EcoIron):

Scheduled months ago, the move happened to land in the middle of the worst rain storm in years. Some might label it incautious, even reckless: rushing the still-beating heart of your enterprise across oncoming traffic and overflowing gutters - in the middle of a monsoon - on a cheap cart - with little but a plastic sheet and broken umbrella lending cover.

Folly or not, the IT staff appears to have accomplished its task without major incident. "No short circuits," they report. Anyone else have colorful data center equipment moving anecdotes?

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