Rackmount Ergonomics (NSFW)

I’m back in the world of living for a few hours before I go back to sleep to catch up on a few things but I wanted to share a few words of wisdom with you. They actually come from Rich Walkup:

“Fuck me running” – Rich Walkup, 2002

I don’t know if he came up with the saying or if he just repeated me but you have to admit, picturing that phrase does make for a very funny situation. Until it’s happening to you. Nothing makes an allnighter hit you in the face faster than holding two PowerEdge 1800’s on your shoulders while people around you chant Hercules, Hercules..

Anyhoo, the topic of rackmount ergonomics. I am convinced these solutions are designed with intent to hurt people. I was looking at a brand new PowerEdge 2950 yesterday that had at least 6 places that you could cut yourself on the side edge alone. Front and the back as well. I am not sure which data centers the designers toured before coming up with these solutions but I assure you that we don’t use a hydraulic lift to rack and unrack servers. Is it too much to ask you two things:

Smooth out the server edges at least in the front and in the back.

Provide a handle, separate from the mounting handles, to lift the server off the ground.

Just because the server has $8,000 of engineering ingenuity in it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend 15 cents on its form functional benefits.