*** 2/19 website outtage (4:55 pm-8:15 pm) ***

[Steve St.Laurent]

The website was down from 4:55 pm until 8:15 pm eastern time today. Once I was aware of it I contacted the facility. What I found was that the servers overloaded the 750va UPS (480 watts) that the TDR purchased. This could possibly be a bad UPS or it's possible that we actually overloaded it. For now I've had them take the slave server off of the UPS and it's running on line power now. If the UPS overloads again then we will know that we have a bad UPS and will get it replaced. Otherwise, we will order a 2nd UPS and put it in place to run the slave server. Sorry for any inconvenience.



-Steve St. Laurent

Webmaster

 

[Chipstien]

Steve, you have any idea how depressed I have been while going through TDR withdrawal. How has the new facility been doing in the eyes of Steve St. Laurent. Is this a isolated incident?



Good work Steve.

 

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Ahh that would explain it.

But Man is the site s l o w

However I am dying from step 12



Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5. 1. 2600]







C:\Documents and Settings\Tool Man. >Tracert 216. 235. 147. 117



Tracing route to 216. 235. 147. 117 over a maximum of 30 hops



1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms

2 8 ms 9 ms 8 ms 10. 126. 48. 1

3 10 ms 9 ms 7 ms dstswr2-vlan2. rh. brptct. cv.net [67. 83. 224. 162]

4 9 ms 10 ms 10 ms r2-ge10-1. mhe. whplny. cv.net [67. 83. 224. 133]

5 31 ms 10 ms 11 ms r1-srp1-0. cr. whplny. cv.net [67. 83. 238. 49]

6 11 ms 12 ms 12 ms r2. srp5-0. wan. whplny. cv.net [67. 83. 238. 2]

7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms r2-srp3-0. wan. hcvlny. cv.net [167. 206. 12. 162]

8 16 ms 14 ms 16 ms r1-srp5-0. in. nycmny83. cv.net [167. 206. 12. 117]

9 21 ms 21 ms 22 ms r1-pos1-0. in. asbnva16. cv.net [167. 206. 8. 150]

10 34 ms 20 ms 22 ms Ash-Equinix-GigE. aleron.net [206. 223. 115. 45]

11 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms mfn. as. sdatlga. aleron.net [205. 198. 2. 130]

12 Router-5-MFN-Atl. capitalinternet.com [216. 235. 146. 246] reports: Destinatio

n net unreachable.



Trace complete.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The facility is doing great. This was our equipment and a mistake by me. I've been dealing with servers for 14 years and have never checked out the wattage requirements of the server on a UPS. Of course I've never dealt with servers of the caliber that the TDR site is run on either. After further research tonight it turns out that our servers require 470 watts EACH! The UPS that I had the TDR purchase is only rated to 480 watts total ! OOPS

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Slight problem there Tim - your trying to ping the old address which is now empty rack space . The IP address is 139. 81. 139. 106 now. BTW, not having any performance problems here so it's probably something between you and the server.

 

[BFC]

Steve,



you sure it wasn't Sled Puller screwing with it?

 

[Dkevdog]

Originally posted by Steve St. Laurent

BTW, not having any performance problems here so it's probably something between you and the server.

Ditto that Steve- The sight has never been faster or more reliable for me either. Good Job. We just finished installing two APC 2000watt rack mount units to back up our digital file servers at work. Glad I didn't have to foot that bill !



Kev

 

[dseabaugh]

Time to bomb the power supply! When I was shopping for UPS for our computers I finally stopped and read how much capacity they had and how much was required. The people that go to Staples and Walmart and buy them would be lucky to find out they have enough capacity to hit the start and and shut down button before failure. For one computer I ended up bought One UPS each for the monitor and one for the computer and still had to order them to get big enough.

 

[RoryTek]

Hey Steve we have a APC Matrix UPS running our school district servers all 15 of them at a 35% load. Might be overkill but we need the long up time.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

We only need ~30 seconds of run time on the UPS. The facility we are in has 14 Cummins powered generators with 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel on site! They have a 30 second startup time to full load from a power failure. So the UPS is simply a stop gap to get us through that small window. The site itself is only running off of the one server with the 2nd server simply backing it up and sitting there on standby in case the main server goes down. I've had them take the 2nd server off of the UPS. The only time we'd truly need the 2nd server on the UPS would be if 1. the main server was down, 2. the power grid that the facility is on was down (the fed building and a hospital are on that grid - triple redundant sources, etc). We've never yet had to run off of the slave server (other than during the move) so it's a VERY unlikely scenario.

 

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Originally posted by Steve St. Laurent

Slight problem there Tim - your trying to ping the old address which is now empty rack space

Heh Eheh euoooh I uhh knew that.



Still running (if at all) Slow at times.



However ... ... Tracert what do I know I am just a Home Networker who hasn't a clue



C:\Documents and Settings\Tool Man. >tracert 139. 81. 139. 106



Tracing route to 139. 81. 139. 106 over a maximum of 30 hops



1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms



2 10 ms 7 ms 8 ms 10. 126. 48. 1



3 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms dstswr2-vlan2. rh. brptct. cv.net [67. 83. 224. 162]



4 10 ms 11 ms 9 ms r2-ge10-1. mhe. whplny. cv.net [67. 83. 224. 133]



5 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms r2-srp1-0. cr. whplny. cv.net [67. 83. 238. 50]



6 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms r1. srp5-0. wan. whplny. cv.net [67. 83. 238. 1]



7 12 ms 14 ms 13 ms r2-srp3-0. wan. hcvlny. cv.net [167. 206. 12. 162]



8 15 ms 15 ms 16 ms r1-srp5-0. in. nycmny83. cv.net [167. 206. 12. 117]



9 21 ms 21 ms 22 ms r1-pos1-0. in. asbnva16. cv.net [167. 206. 8. 150]



10 18 ms 20 ms 19 ms Ash-Equinix-GigE. aleron.net [206. 223. 115. 45]



11 34 ms 34 ms 34 ms glblcmps. as. sdatlga. aleron.net [205. 198. 2. 146]



12 32 ms 33 ms 31 ms ge-1-atl1-cust1. globalcompass.com [66. 154. 95. 221

]



13 33 ms 32 ms 33 ms 139. 81. 139. 106



Trace complete.



C:\Documents and Settings\Tool Man. >



Ebay is the other slow site as well. Everything else is fast tho.

Speaking of UPS Systems Greenfield Online had pulled their chocks and shipped out of the town I work in. And from what people tell me there is still A few Terabyte Servers and MASSIVE Ups Cart Systems up for sale to cover the move.

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

I'm sorta surprised you had problems with the UPS while on "normal" power - all the UPS setups I have used seemed to bypass the UPS when normal power was in use, and the actual power rating of the UPS only became an issue when main power failed, and the UPS had to take up the load...



I was systems administrator at the newspaper I retired from, and I used APC UPS setups on our servers and other critical PC's - always was careful to make sure the power rating of the APC was sufficient for the particular system it was protecting - but generally just got the biggest ones easily and economically available - usually 500-550 watt models for our systems.



I found the internal motorcycle batteries they used to be a pain, and after replacing a couple of failed UPS's due to bad batteries (cheaper to buy new UPS than replace batteries!), I finally started removing the failed internal batteries, installed a heavy cord, and ran off external automotive batteries - man, we could run on backup power for DAYS with that setup...



I saved a couple of those failed UPS's, and am now running them on my 2 systems here at home, still with external car batteries...

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The reason they went into overload is because the APC UPS that we are using performs a self test every 2 weeks. I'm pretty sure that you'd find that you were buying 500-550 VA units not 500-550 watt units Gary but I could be wrong. UPS's are always rated by VA's and you have to dig through spec sheets to get the wattage rating. To put this into perspective each one of our servers are drawing the same amount of current as 5-6 typical desktops. I didn't realize that the AMD processors draw a lot more current than most. We also have considerations because of being in a data center that usually wouldn't be considered. Everything had to be in our rack space and the UPS that the TDR purchase is a 1U unit so it takes up a minimum of space - it weighs 75 lbs btw so it's no small piece. As I said above we don't have to worry about run time since the generators will be online within 30 seconds of a power outtage and it would have to be a pretty long outtage for them to burn through 12,000 gallons of diesel. The 750VA UPS we are using will run for 7. 5 minutes at 480 watts which is 13 times more than we need.

 

[illflem]

Gary, when I replaced the six batteries in my APC UPS a few years ago I recall the shock at the price but just recently when the batteries went out I decided to check around. Found replacements at where else but batteries.com for $8 each. Equally shocked.

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

My problem was, I by myself, was responsible for virtually everything that moved (and quite a few that DIDN'T!) in that place, and time was money - and I simply didn't have time to mess around looking for batteries, swapping in new ones, taking down servers for replacement, etc. , etc... Steve probaby knows what I mean...



Now that I'm retired, I can do lots more of the more tedious stuff - like getting in debates here on TDR, being a pain, and such... :-laf :-laf :-laf #@$%! #@$%!

 

[athompson]

I guess I'm just spoiled

My computer room runs off of a 20kva UPS with a diesel generator backup that kicks in within 10 seconds. The last time I had a UPS related problem was when a drunk driver took out the transformer supplying our power. The generator started, but the switch stuck on line power. An hour and a half later, the UPS batteries ran out of juice.



That was New Years 2000. We were prepared for everything but the drunk driver. The generator even passed the test earlier that week.

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

Now that my "days in the trenches" are over, I can laugh at the above - I dunno HOW many times, after preparing for the worse-case scenario - with all sorts of expensive backups, we were put dead in the water because of some simple 25 cent item at 1 a. m. when all the hardware stores were closed...



I got REAL good at improvising...