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Originally Posted by poohbear_nc
Oh my - you brought back the memories [hopefully NOT the nightmares]
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As part of my current job, I inherited a network set-up done by group effort over the years. There was a huge UPS in the server room that hummed so loudly you could hear it throughout the ground floor. No one knew who installed it, or could identify any of the cables coming out of it. Not a single cable/wire was labelled, and there was no network map.
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At a former facility, the company WAN had been built out by consultants. They came in to my shop at one point to do some works, and asked for a network topology map. I said "I've been trying to get one since I came on board. You guys designed and built out our network. You mean
you don't have one?" "<mumble>guy who did it out of office and not available<mumble>..."
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I decided to accomplish 2 jobs with one action -- get rid of the neolithic UPS and identify the cabling. How? Unplug the wires one by one and listen for the screams. Eventually I did identify the destination/source of all the visible cabling. And moved it off the UPS to a new, silent UPS.
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As mentioned, I never did identify all of them. My datacomm tech had a circuit tester he used to locate other ends. My conclusion was that whatever those cables
had once connected to was no longer there.
My bigger issue on that line was power. The master breaker panel for the floor was in a closet in the facility manager's office. Breakers
had once been labelled, but labels had long since fallen off. The last thing I wanted to do was hit the breaker for the computer room...
We also had two incoming circuits - a 60 amp and a 100 amp. As part of another exercise, I'd gotten a drywall contractor to converts cubicles to fully enclosed offices. The A/C for the floor was inadequate to cool them, so window units were procured. Guess which of the circuits the new A/C plugged into? Come mid-summer, the compressors on the A/C units would all kick in at once and we'd have a power event.
And the building was old enough that the incoming circuits were protected by fuses, not breakers, so I made several trips over time to the local hardware store for replacements, and had a conversation with the building super about getting a key to the basement so I could get access at night when he wasn't available.
The company decided they really needed two 100 amp circuits, and tasked me to find an electrician. The guy I hired said doing it properly, including city permits and official ConEd involvement would be about $12K. The company didn't want to pay that. He said he could just come in and
do it, sans official involvement from city and ConEd a lot cheaper, and had done so elsewhere, but my employers didn't want the risk. So he wound up replacing the fuses with proper breakers, and put an 80amp breaker on the 60 amp circuit to give us more headroom during mid summer when the window A/C units all kicked in at once. It worked...
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THEN [drum roll], we shut down the UPS .... and listened for the screams. I was sure there were hidden wires inside the wall that came out from the back or under the UPS that we couldn't get to unless we pulled it completely off its mount. Oh my, yes, there were screams galore.
So, on Friday night, after business closed, we shut down the UPS and pulled it - it weighed more than a truck. And traced cables/wires into the wall ... I was astonished at the literal rats nest of cabling -- people piggy-backed new cabling on top of the old cabling - of course with NO identification. Just cut ends on the old stuff. We pulled out a veritable history of network wiring protocols and materials out of the walls. And rebuilt the wiring [with a map!].
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My telecom/datacomm tech friend sends me occasional before and after pics of sites he's worked on. Some of them were "Fire/shock hazard R us", and others were "How did that ever work?". Some were both. They were neither after he'd finished. (He was an electrician before moving into telecom/datacomm.)
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Monday morning came the complaints .... they missed the old UPS hum -- it was too quiet now and people started being bothered by hearing stuff that had formerly been masked by the old UPS.
N.B. That was the largest lead acid battery I have ever encountered.
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I've seen ones equivalent.
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Dennis