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Having wasted way more hours of my life than I would like on rack-and-stack...I don't think it's possible to fully automate this in a scalable manner without a

Having wasted way more hours of my life than I would like on rack-and-stack...I don't think it's possible to fully automate this in a scalable manner without a radical re-work of rack design. Which isn't going to happen any time soon, given that the current standards have so much momentum behind them. As things are: even in well-managed data centers, the racks themselves are always somewhat finnicky, with varying levels of precision in assembly from rack to rack that require odd workarounds for equipment installation more often than one would expect. And that's not to mention how incredibly variable the rack enclosures themselves can be, which has big implications for cable routing. And nevermind the fact that there's basically no standard for port placement on rackmount systems. Rack-and-stack labor is dirt cheap, or easily foisted off on your sysadmins for small deployments. I don't see a robot for this being competitive from a cost standpoint unless that robot is extremely general purpose and able to fulfill other roles.

bluedino 5y ago
>> I don't think it's possible to fully automate this in a scalable manner without a radical re-work of rack design. I think the same thing when people talking about sending a 'plumbing robot' to your house.
donalhunt 5y ago
This. Contingent workforces are cheap (minimum wage essentially). It's also cheaper to use connecters that mate on insertion than to use connectors that humans are accustomed to.
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
Indeed. Even the largest DCs are putting so few racks up per day (still many, many racks) that throughput is rarely the problem. Actually getting the parts on time has been more of an issue in my experience, or finding out that your entire rack is forfeit because it fell over at the docking bay. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen rack-and-stack go too slow for the consumers to actually use the hardware. Usually the hardware is sitting waiting to be provisioned for eons. The real labor is pulling bad drives/boards and rejiggering the network after the racks are in. So many outages are caused by magic hands making an error and pulling the wrong cord.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Basically, a giant blade server is what a server rack optimized for automated server install and replacement would look like. Something like a cross between a vertical warehouse robot and a tape jukebox is what would service it. Of course, at that point it you’re adding a bunch of cost and may be better off just designing the servers to last for like 10 years with enough redundancy (and hot/warm/cold spares) to not need any physical swapping, then replace the whole thing with a forklift at end of life.
- wmf 5y ago
  Submer seems to be working on exactly that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIB_BIEttFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIB_BIEttFo (the robot is at the end)
- eb0la 5y ago
  A friend worked in Live (now called Bing) some years ago between 2004-2007 I guess... He told me they had a robot like the ones from storagetek but for unplugging faulty blade servers and plug back new ones. Makes sense for large scale installations.

bluedino 5y ago

>> I don't think it's possible to fully automate this in a scalable manner without a radical re-work of rack design. I think the same thing when people talking about sending a 'plumbing robot' to your house.

donalhunt 5y ago

This. Contingent workforces are cheap (minimum wage essentially). It's also cheaper to use connecters that mate on insertion than to use connectors that humans are accustomed to.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

Indeed. Even the largest DCs are putting so few racks up per day (still many, many racks) that throughput is rarely the problem. Actually getting the parts on time has been more of an issue in my experience, or finding out that your entire rack is forfeit because it fell over at the docking bay. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen rack-and-stack go too slow for the consumers to actually use the hardware. Usually the hardware is sitting waiting to be provisioned for eons. The real labor is pulling bad drives/boards and rejiggering the network after the racks are in. So many outages are caused by magic hands making an error and pulling the wrong cord.

Robotbeat 5y ago

Basically, a giant blade server is what a server rack optimized for automated server install and replacement would look like. Something like a cross between a vertical warehouse robot and a tape jukebox is what would service it. Of course, at that point it you’re adding a bunch of cost and may be better off just designing the servers to last for like 10 years with enough redundancy (and hot/warm/cold spares) to not need any physical swapping, then replace the whole thing with a forklift at end of life.

wmf 5y ago
Submer seems to be working on exactly that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIB_BIEttFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIB_BIEttFo (the robot is at the end)
eb0la 5y ago
A friend worked in Live (now called Bing) some years ago between 2004-2007 I guess... He told me they had a robot like the ones from storagetek but for unplugging faulty blade servers and plug back new ones. Makes sense for large scale installations.