UPS War Stories (was: Re: [Cialug] k12ltsp)

[Stephen Hawkins]

Anthony and the group,

On Thursday 26 May 2005 10:29, Anthony Jeffries wrote:

> This happened to my boss and I at Sears. .......
> No one told us about the software bug that causes the UPS to freak out and
> shut down when you first connect the cable. It shut down our server room
> for several minutes and made ~100 call center reps either very happy or
> very upset ("I'm sorry ma'am, our systems are down and you'll need to call
> back later").

I used to work for Pacific Bell.  Phone companies have HUGE battery banks to 
hold everything up until the generators can come on line.  A contract 
electrician was working on something, and had the large buss wires powering 
the whole floor full of servers exposed.  He stripped the insulation off of a 
very thick piece of cable to make a jumper and accidentally dropped it across 
the UPS buss.  There was a loud bang, a puff of vapor and everything in the 
room went down.  He was actually surprised that he could never find the cable 
he dropped.  It is kind of funny now.  It was chaos for a while until we 
could get everything back up.

Steve
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Stephen Hawkins NG0G
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