The Exclusive Room

Last week after more than three years, I entered a server room. The last project did not involve me entering a server room but helping users use an application. Before going to Amsterdam, my work involved being in a server room. In fact all the years in the present company before Amsterdam involved being in a server room.

As India became an IT powerhouse, more and more people switched to the IT industry and with it came thousands of high power desktops and Servers and laptops. With more powerful application, the servers became more powerful and much more sophisticated. What was once a room at the end of a corridor had to be careful designed cooling house with methodically designed floor, the maintained temperature and the security.

From a messy server room to a well-lit temperature controlled Server room, I have seen it all. From struggling to trace a network cable from the server to the hub to a well-labeled network rack, I have seen the changes.

Somehow or the other, a server room is a power place. A place where data of the company is stored and controlled. An exclusive place where only the few privileged were allowed. It is the place of power in every company. Forget the programmer who writes hundreds of lines of codes, he/she still has to depend on the server to run his/her code. Ask the IT professional how he/she feels when the email server goes down. How helpless they feel when they cannot sent the latest forwards and gossip around. Forget the all powerful CEO’s and CTO’s and CFO’s and MD’s, once the server goes down, they are all helpless. They cannot even fire the administrators, atleast not before they bring the server up.

Just by the way, have you wondered why the servers ‘go down’ and do not ‘malfunction’ or ’stops working’? They always go down or hang although physically they do stay firmly on the table or rack they are placed on.

The server room environment is quite different from the rest of the company’s environment. The AC is much colder inside and the sound of the fans inside the server coupled with the AC’s sound makes it quite noisy and yet so quite. The room is designed in such a way that cold air burst from below the false flooring and above from the AC ducts. The cold steel racks feel more colder when you touch them.

Looking through the glass walls of the server room at the mere mortals outside, you feel a sense of power of being in control of their data, their information, their life even though its just an illusion because you have to follow lots of security measures and you know that the sense of power is just a mirage.

After working in any server room for some time, one becomes quite aquatinted with not only the servers but each and every cable that runs in the server room. We knew each and every network cable which went to each router. Even though knowing this information is a part of the job, the information does become overwhelming when you see countless network and power cables inside the room. A wrong pull or a wrong switch and you could end up losing a lot and end up answerable to many people. I guess that is the high of being responsible for so much information. We knew what problem was caused by which cable and which server.

Server room for us was the high-tension zone as well as the escape room and sometimes the panic room. When things went wrong with the server, tension ran high in the room with phones ringing continuously. It sometime became the escape room when obnoxious user would pester us but would have to stop at the door. And it became the panic room/discussion room/crisis room when the pressure became too much to bear, when a crisis needed to be discussed without booking a conference room, when the boss needs to be cursed. What other secure place than a server room? Protected and isolated.

Any administrator will tell you that the worst part of a server room would be the low temperature. During my second shift, after traveling in the hot sun, the server room felt like heaven and the same server room feels like a cold place like Antarctic when you had to work after being completely drenched in the Mumbai rain. It takes time to get used to the cold temperature in a server room and most people get used to it over a period of time. Some have a spare sweater or jacket kept in the office to work in a server room.

Sometimes during long tasks in the graveyard shift, I would fall asleep in front of the servers and was quite comfortable. Years later I was quite comfortable in the Amsterdam’s cold weather while my colleagues shivered. I did not wear a sweater until the temperature fell below 8 Degrees. Years of working in the server room had made my skin quite thick. I guess this is what they call evolution. 

After three years when I entered a server room, it was all the more familiar. The low temperature, the smell of the aircon air and the sound of a countless fans running to keep the server cool and safe. It never felt that I had been away from all this. It was like coming back home and with it came lots of memories of the server room. Memories of the time I had spent with my colleagues and friends tackling one crisis after another. Those hours on the phone while I worked in the server room. Those being in the server room that you come out at the end of the task to realize that the day had turned into night. Looking at people working in their cubicles while a task runs on the server. Remembering the look on people’s face when they see you working inside a server room. I guess its more a feeling of awe or maybe just a feeling of “Don’t care”. I could never tell.

Walking into that server room, I remembered why I loved my job. The feeling of controlling everything and still be in the background as if everything happens by magic in there and maybe it does!