Catastophic failure on ITV

In article , :Jerry: wrote:
The UPS failure I mentioned in my previous message was caused by an*
overload
on one of the phases, we soon discovered that some offices in the*
building
considered 'critical business equipment' to include the*
photo-copier, coffee
machine, fridge and a microwave. They had managed to string 4-gang*
extension
right they way round the office to ensure almost every piece of*
electrical
equipment was connected to the wonderful UPS, therefore overloading*
one of
the phases on the carefully specified UPS.


There really is a case for all office equipment to be 'hard wired'*
into their respective power source, or at least any equipment/circuit*
that is UPS 'protected'...*

Or UPS power outlets could have non-standard sockets that you can't buy
in the shops.

Rod.

In article , Java Jive
writes

The demo was quite impressive. A rather nice petite girl set up a
presentation running off a server via the network, and then invited
some of down one by one to pull bits out of the server. We removed a
PSU, a netcard, some RAM, a disk, and I can't remember what else, and
it never even blinked.

When I worked for Ahem*, a friend was at Cebit (... I think. All trade
shows blur together after a while), where Ahem decided to show off its
partnership with Novell. In particular, server failover was to be
demonstrated - how it might switch seamlessly to a clone without missing
an IPX packet (or whatever).

Our tame CNE was adamant it would work beautifully, so the PR girl
decided to present it in the most spectacular fashion possible. Squibs
were fitted to machine "A" and some lovely hired to push a suitable
plunger.

Sure enough it worked like a dream. Service uninterrupted. Unfortunately
however, they forgot to mention any of this to the security guards.

I'll leave the rest to the imagination...

Regards,

Simonm.

*name changed to protect the saucy.
--
simonm|at|muircom|dot|demon|.|c|oh|dot|u|kay
SIMON MUIR, BRISTOL UK
EUROPEANS AGAINST THE EU http://www.eurofaq.freeuk.com/
GT250A'76 R80/RT'86 110CSW TDi'88 www.kc3ltd.co.uk/profile/eurofollie/

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:01:19 +0100, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

Or UPS power outlets could have non-standard sockets that you can't buy
in the shops.

'Walsall' gauge?

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.gt-britain.co.uk/weather

LOL :-)

They are some great stories coming out of this thread ...

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:28:23 GMT, SpamTrapSeeSig
wrote:

Sure enough it worked like a dream. Service uninterrupted. Unfortunately
however, they forgot to mention any of this to the security guards.

I'll leave the rest to the imagination...

On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 15:30:42 UTC, Java Jive wrote:

LOL :-)

They are some great stories coming out of this thread ...

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:28:23 GMT, SpamTrapSeeSig
wrote:

Sure enough it worked like a dream. Service uninterrupted. Unfortunately
however, they forgot to mention any of this to the security guards.

I'll leave the rest to the imagination...

Many many years ago we bought a mainframe IBM from the States - Much
cheaper even including the shipping. However, it was of course
American three phase. We got hold of a motor generator that could
produce same but, for reasons that don't come readily to mind, it was
installed outside the computer room underneath a stairway. It was
installed well before the computer. Computer arrives. Gets installed,
everything hunky. That night Security guard doing his rounds comes
across said motor/generator under the stairs - "Hmm" he says to
himself, "That's not usually on". Click...........................


--
Regards
Dave Saville

NB Remove nospam. for good email address

On 03/06/2008 17:14, Tonyatk wrote:

I worked for company in the early 70 s with a system UPS. Mains driving a
generater, on the same shaft a massive flywheel and clutch.On the other side
of the clutch a deisel engine. When the mains failed the clutch engaged and
the deisel engine took over. Apart from the noise, and the fright, if you
were in the building, the only thing that happend was a dip in the frequency
down to 48 cps.

There was also a fire prevention system which consisted of 4 large CO2
bottles. these discharged into the building in the event of fire.

I was waiting for the " ... until one day ... "

"Andy Burns" wrote in message
news snip

There was also a fire prevention system which consisted of 4 large
CO2 bottles. these discharged into the building in the event of
fire.

I was waiting for the " ... until one day ... "

I remember one case (in the mid 1980s) were such a fire prevention
system was called upon to do it's job, only to find in the inquiry
afterwards that (at some point in history) someone had either closed
the bottles main vales or they had never been opened - as the system
dated from the 1930s [1] and no one could find any record of when or
if the bottle were changed these valves could have been closed for
decades! Oh, and 1930 era tar and paper insulated cables burn quite
well BTW...

[1] this was a large railway signalling installation

On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 11:20:54 +0200, "Clive" wrote:

The UPS failure I mentioned in my previous message was caused by an overload
on one of the phases, we soon discovered that some offices in the building
considered 'critical business equipment' to include the photo-copier, coffee
machine, fridge and a microwave. They had managed to string 4-gang extension
right they way round the office to ensure almost every piece of electrical
equipment was connected to the wonderful UPS, therefore overloading one of
the phases on the carefully specified UPS.

Kettles are deadly too!

--
Z

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:52:01 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:42:06 +0100, Zathras wrote:

It's regularly run, tested and maintained -

Hopefully more than check the oil, start, stopped and left until the next
"test". It should be checked, started, run with a hefty load for several
hours then stopped and checked again.

Rather than just a 'hefty load' I'd prefer it to run the *actual* load
during testing. In a big environment, there's always kit that should
and shouldn't be on the generator supply.

Why would it need to run 'for several hours'..I'd have thought that
one hour would have been more than satisfactory.

if it's like our last one, probably a twin engine unit.

Single alternator or a "twin set"? Two engines, two alternators and
syncronishing switch gear.

No idea. I guess it's twin engine due to the load requirements.

Totally reliable IME.

A lot of people say that, until the system is pressed into serious action.

...except that my experience is over 20 years of systems pressed into
serious action. In that time, three utterly catastrophic UPS failures
and no diesel generator failures. IMHO, the only weakness of a well
maintained diesel generator is the startup time.

--
Z

On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 10:26:55 +0100, "Mortimer" wrote:

there was
a loud bang from the generator, a blinding flash of blue and a huge sheet or
orange flame: it transpired that the power being drawn was vastly in excess
of what the generator was rated to supply and it had overloaded,

Hmmm..I'd have expected some kind of over-current protection on the
generator output. Sounds like a poorly maintained cowboy install?

At the other end of the scale, when I was working in a small office and
there was a power cut, they realised that not only were the computers down
but also the phone system failed because it was VOIP and the router had no
power. I saved the day when i remembered that I had a 12V-240V inveter in
my car (useful for powering my laptop etc on the move) and we hooked it up
to the phone system so we could still take phone calls. A classic "all eggs
in one basket" failure;

Assuming VOIP phones *always work* appears to be an increasingly
common error. I've experienced 100% VOIP failure when an errant device
on a very high bandwidth VLAN decided to produce a broadcast storm.
More entertainingly, our remote network management people hadn't a
clue because they couldn't connect to any network devices to find out
what the problem was!! BTW, I've summarised and there were specific
reasons why the LAN was deliberately not hardened for this kind of DOS
attack. Strangely, it's a little more hardened now!

--
Z