Originally Posted by
bbrown1664
For safety reasons, EVERY data room in EVERY data centre will have big red push stops around the walls to kill the power in an emergency. This kills everything instantly and does not shut anything down graciously. As a result, bringing things back up after an EMERGENCY STOP button has been activated can take a lot longer than if you had shut things down cleanly.
I personally have hit the big red button accidentally in the past due to it being un-guarded and being placed right at waist height next to a rack I had to move. IT happens in IT. Not much you can do as the engineer in the room when it all goes quiet except for apologise and help start bringing things back up again.
Whereas I have spent the last 2 years disconnecting these "big red switches" whenever I find one in any of my DC's (usually in the smaller installations). There are gas suppression systems to take care of any fire situation and automatic disconnection of electrical supplies to cater for any electrical fault (down to individual circuit level).
There is simply no need for a master cut off switch to kill the whole hall. It's not as if there are big mechanical nasties whirling around and looking to cause injury to the unwary (think workshop or factory) which certainly need some form of emergency manual intervention capability.
Without repeating other posts, I agree about an uncontrolled restart causing damage though, seen that one personally.