Tech Tidbit – My Wife Is Mad At Me

October 15th, 2024

I have a confession to make.

My wife is mad at me.

She insists that I have been negligent about cleaning out the hallway closet. It is small, stuffed, and a mess. She is correct. However, cleaning closets is annoying and tedious, and I always have more important things to do. Plus, I don't want to do it.

As the end of the school year approaches, you have closet issues just like me.

It would be best if you put on your summer schedule to visit all your closets. There is much you need to do:

Check for power strips. Pay special attention to power strips plugged into UPSes. That is a huge red flag. The surge suppression in a power strip confuses smart UPSes. Some very weird things can happen with equipment plugged in this way.

Only minor items, such as monitors and small power transformers, are plugged into the wall if power strips are plugged into them.

Check what is plugged directly into the walls. Your real equipment should only be plugged directly into a UPS.

Never use daisy-chain power strips or extension cords. The Fire Marshal will come for you during your yearly inspections.

Check how your redundant power supply devices are plugged in. To achieve our desired power redundancy, each power supply should be plugged into a different UPS.

Check for red lights on UPSes. The red lights are bad.

Remember to calibrate your UPSes on a nice, boring day without any storms expected.
Remove all "zombie" servers and switches in your racks. Zombie servers suddenly turned on after you think they have been retired are a major attack surface because no one is paying attention to them.

If you cannot remove old equipment, please, please, please remove the power cords so that no one can be confused about what should be on, and nothing can turn on automatically if the power is recycled.

If you plan upgrades this summer, figuring out how to remove that dead equipment is even more pressing. Listening to the infrastructure folks, they are having more and more conversations about the space crisis in many racks.

Make sure you have adequate power. If you haven't watched Jeff's excellent presentation about PoE power requirements, you should. Watch it here. Your closets *will* collapse if you don't have adequate power.

It is a lot of work.

This weekend, I will be cleaning out my closet.

If you need help figuring out yours, please give us a call.

-Scott Quimby, CISSP