title Visiting Dave Dood at the Sanger Centre - 23rd April 2004 intro Former Trigenix (3G LAB) sysadmin, Dave, moved on to work at the Sanger Centre. The boys eventually got round to organising a visit to see him and all his cool "big iron" toys. The Sanger Centre is one of Nosher's "wish list" places to work - there's some totally cool science (it's the place that has undertaken much of the human genome sequencing project), massive IT infrastructure (nearly half a peta-byte of storage) and a great university-like campus. So cool, some of this stuff could be considered geek pr0n :-) Some photos are the generous contribution of Nick's digicam. dcp_9364 Craig tries out a 1U Apple dcp_9365 Dave shows us around machine-room "A" img_0174 dcp_9367 Dave stands in front of an Extreme Networks' switch... dcp_9368 ...and then Nick scopes it out. dcp_9369 img_0181 dcp_9372 Outside the Sanger Centre - the guys do the "tourist" thing img_0179 dcp_9374 Next, we take a stroll to machine-room "B" dcp_9376 Looking back at the Sanger building dcp_9379 Looking at more kit dcp_9382 dcp_9383 dcp_9384 Not the usual plug'n'sockets dcp_9387 A colleague of Dave's in the middle of switching around a load of blade servers... dcp_9388 ...and shows us one of the blade servers: Intel Xeon, 1GB memory and a couple of 40(?) Gig drives dcp_9390 The whole lot exposed: around 200 high-spec computers in a case. It's worth it just for the LED count! dcp_9391 dcp_9392 img_0194 A whole stack of old pizza-box 1U servers img_0196 A bunch of UPSs img_0198 img_0199 Another pre-blade server cluster, with multiple 1U pizza-box servers dcp_9398 Craig stands in front of a monster power unit: it runs at about 250 kilowatts dcp_9399 Nosher's used to seeing switches with a fibre backbone interconnect, but this is an actual fibre switch... dcp_9400 ...and an even bigger one dcp_9402 dcp_9404 dcp_9405 The grounds. How cool is this... dcp_9408 passing the conference centre on the way to the pub dcp_9409 Hinxton Hall - in the grounds of the Sanger Centre dcp_9410 dcp_9413 dcp_9414 Nearing the Hinxton Red Lion dcp_9415 Craig orders a Bitburger beer. Coz it's, er, got the word "bit" in it (geek moment :-) dcp_9416 In the beer garden dcp_9417 Nick and Dave dood dcp_9418 Food arrives dcp_9419 Nosher's newly-done red hair img_0210 img_0211 Craig and Nosher dcp_9423 Walking back again dcp_9424 At the entrance gate dcp_9425 The Sanger staff restaurant dcp_9427 The stand-by generators/mini power station. This isn't much smaller than the 3.6 Megawatt Fibropower "chicken shit" power station near Nosher's house in Eye dcp_9429 A tree on the grounds was apparently struck by lightning and was turned into this funky sculpture which has a helical screw running along it with symbols of evolution and the DNA/RNA letters around it dcp_9433 The red hair again, on the following Saturday dcp_9435 Nosher outside his pad