SMSR: emergencies

Occasionally we have to turn off machines at short notice. There are a few reasons why we might need to do this. One is power failure (when the machines will only have a few minutes in which to shut down cleanly before the UPS batteries are exhausted) and another is cooling failure (when they will be making the room dangerously hot). In addition, the basement occasionally has problems with plumbing.

If there's time, we'll try to contact you first. If the problem affects all machines in the self-managed server room, then we will notify the managers of all machines via an announcement to the Self-managed server rooms mailing list.

We suggest that you:

• label your machines with contact details;
• configure your machines to shut down when their front-panel power buttons are pressed.

To better cope with mains power supply problems which take place out of normal working hours, we also suggest that you configure your machines to monitor the server room UPS, so that they will shutdown automatically whenever the UPS is signalling an 'on battery, low battery' condition.

• ⇒ Power.
  
• ⇒ Monitoring the server room UPS.
  
• ⇒ Cooling.

More info

Find out more about the self-managed server rooms:

• ⇒ Self-managed server rooms.