A visit to the BUC

Ah, the dubious joys of the GOC BUC (back-up centre) at 300 Exhibition St.  Security here is *tight*, just merely having an ID badge clearly displayed and the fact you have a valid swipe card is irrelevant.  You *will* front the security guard and have your badge *really* checked and compared to your dial, and you *will* swipe in individually through the doors afterwards.

I'm here with one of the switching team leads and a transmission dude certifying our bug-out site as current for use if we have to bail from the GOC for any reason - power failure, someone bombs it, the Cyclotron next door goes critical etc, We have to test all of our group's PCs as workable, fix any faults, and fill out a bunch of certification paperwork proving the team can walk into it as a warm site and just log in.

Our BUC is a moderately grotty room in the administrative area at the bottom of the building, as usual with a fair assortment of junked kit piled in the corners - old SPARC workstations, managed 48-port 10Mbps hubs, busted chairs etc.  Frankly the busted chairs are the most valuable item of the lot.  Some of the paperwork looks like it dates back to the 1970s.  It's not quite the control room at Crystal Peak from the end of Terminator 3 but it's getting there.... just a little more brown required in the decor.

Workstations are at a minimum Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz Celerons with 2GB of RAM and twin 17" LCDs.  Not bad digs.  :)

Behold the site in all its crappy 2 megapixel poorly lit glory:

On the more interesting side, you might be interested to know that the upper floors of the exchange are effectively watercooled.  To maintain a particle-free environment the whole building is semi-seriously sealed, with closed loop air conditioning and real water cooling loops to some of the bigger kit.  So how big am I talking?  Here are two of the return lines from the upper floors.  Those are 18" pipes..... and they're by no means the only ones around the place.