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Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

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Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#51

Pretty funny to see this video at the top of HN! My kids still think I'm an idiot for not having somehow parlayed the enduring popularity of this video into being a YouTuber -- despite my protestations that I was merely the videographer here. If anyone is curious about the video's origins, I had a fun conversation about it with Ben Sigelman a few years ago.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IYzD_NR0W4

Will oxide racks have a mode where you can make them slow down when you shout at them?

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#52

I wouldn't want to spend too much time in there without ear protection! Is it common for data centers to be this loud?

It varies. Once I've been at a customer's data center with raised floors some ten years ago. It felt like an hurricane when you removed one of the tiles. Loud and cold (ear protection and wind breaker mandatory). Hard to communicate there, harder still to think. Not a nice place to be. Keep it in mind when choosing your career.

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#53

There's an interesting little paper 'Acoustic Denial of Service Attacks on HDDs' where they use a function generator to find resonant frequencies which cause issues with spinning disks

There's also a paper Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks that Eavesdrop with a Synthesized Microphone. An APT attacker can potentially reflash the firmware on an HDD and using it as a microphone for eavesdropping.

https://andrewkwong.org/docs/Kwong-HDDphone-IEEE-SP-2019.pdf

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#54
FWIW I did a "making of" video soon after, in 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMPozJFC8g0 . Only bit I missed discussing there was that I did try to download freeware frequency generators wondering if there was some "rust note" of HDD harmonics, but those I downloaded didn't work and out of frustration I decided to start yelling instead.

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#55
post #28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the other comment made me google noise vs. pressure.... Looks like Siemens did an investigation and tested various parameters (pressure, noise, vibration) independently. They point towards noise, not pressure. Really interesting as I am _sure_ I was told it is pressure. But that might be 100% wrong! https://virz.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2015-White-Paper-...

Noise really is just pressure, with a high frequency time component.

This is particularly noticeable with over-ear noise cancelling headphones.

The feeling of anti-sound is quite distinctive.

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#57

Pretty funny to see this video at the top of HN! My kids still think I'm an idiot for not having somehow parlayed the enduring popularity of this video into being a YouTuber -- despite my protestations that I was merely the videographer here. If anyone is curious about the video's origins, I had a fun conversation about it with Ben Sigelman a few years ago.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IYzD_NR0W4

that was really funny

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#58

Pretty funny to see this video at the top of HN! My kids still think I'm an idiot for not having somehow parlayed the enduring popularity of this video into being a YouTuber -- despite my protestations that I was merely the videographer here. If anyone is curious about the video's origins, I had a fun conversation about it with Ben Sigelman a few years ago.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IYzD_NR0W4

that was really funny

Make sure to read the first few YouTube comments for the full humor

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#59

Pretty funny to see this video at the top of HN! My kids still think I'm an idiot for not having somehow parlayed the enduring popularity of this video into being a YouTuber -- despite my protestations that I was merely the videographer here. If anyone is curious about the video's origins, I had a fun conversation about it with Ben Sigelman a few years ago.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IYzD_NR0W4

28:45 in the video. https://youtu.be/_IYzD_NR0W4?t=1725

Re: Shouting in the Datacenter (2008) [video]

#60
post #18

I have a colleague who was on the on-call rotation for some of our systems hosted in a datacenter our company owned. During this rotation he got unlucky in that the datacenter detected fire and decided to disperse gas that displaces oxygen (I think it was Halon gas?). Those systems are no joke - you have a short warning before you are supposed to put on a mask or get out of the server room otherwise you will just suf…

I was once told by a datacenter operator that this is due to the pressure change when they pump the gas in and that we should plan on replacing all HDDs should the fire alarm go off. ...and I think it was Argon...

My partner worked in a Research School of Chemistry.

On the top floor of the building a tip-over failure replacing an argon bottle broke the valve off the end and emptied the compressed lot of Argon in short order.

Argon being colourless, ordourless, heavier than air = whole building "anti-suffocation" evacuation. But no fire problem!

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