In case you missed this info like I did, don't fall asleep where the server racks are

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forestsntrees@reddit

I've always thought data center people were a different sort... this adds to the puzzle.

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forestsntrees@reddit

I've always thought data center people were a different sort... this adds to the puzzle.

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ActionQuinn@reddit

I have tinnitus that the military says is from shooting guns with ear protection that was defective. I guarantee it's spending time on the server floor for 6 years

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pppjurac@reddit

FROM ACROSS THE BIG POND A HELLO FROM ARTY FELLOW.

D O Y O U H E A R M E ?

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shortfinal@reddit

Yes. It's pretty incredible how much being in a datacenter can damage your hearing. I wish I knew this 15 years ago.

Anytime you're between racks you should be wearing real earpro, and limit your exposure even with earpro to something like 4hrs.

Get a dBa meter too. The DC should come under some regulations and/or have osha signage.

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trail-g62Bim@reddit

I put in earplugs when I go to the DC and people look at me like I'm a weirdo. If anything, I should be using even better protection.

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Frothyleet@reddit

Cheap foam earplugs, when used properly, are about as good as it gets without doubling up with muffs.

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jumpinjezz@reddit

It's the "when used properly" part most people fail when using foamies.

Also people think plain old noise cancelling headphones are a substitute for proper ear pro. It's not.

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ronmanfl@reddit

Man, the number of people I see in loud environments who don’t have an f’n clue about how to wear earhole pluggers is insane.

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HighSpeed556@reddit

Sorry why do you say noise canceling headphones are not good? My Apple AirPods drown out most of the noise.

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shortfinal@reddit

ANC works by producing more sound to cancel soundwaves but the reproduction isn't perfect and doesn't cover intense high frequencies you can't hear.

Aircraft ANC headsets (piston aircraft anyway) are still big muffs to cover those.

So yeah, that 95dBa squeal from servers at 38kHz that you can't hear is absolutely contributing to the ringing you hear later in life.

Mine is like.. the intense high pitched ring you might get from hitting a wine glass with a tuning fork

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Maro1947@reddit

ANC only modulates the noise so you don't hear it. The damage still occurs

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Both reduce noise to an extent. Active Noise cancelling works better at low frequencies. East protection works better at higher frequencies. Higher causes damage faster. My hearings aids have ANC built in, but the audiologist told me to wear proper earmuffs over the top when I need eat prep

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jlp_utah@reddit

I used to keep a set of earplugs in my backpack for occasional trips to the data center. Then the cloud happened. Now I am working at a company large enough to have a real onprem environment again. I will need to invest in some new earplugs for when I go to the data center.

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ConstitutionalDingo@reddit

I’m also that guy. I have one particular area where the admin workstation and the rack are together in one small room. After the first time working in there for a few hours only to come out with my ears ringing, I bought some quality foam disposables in bulk.

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Chipotle_Turds@reddit

One of the best advice I got from my team lead when I was an intern at a datacenter was to buy foam earplugs or earmuffs. Protect my ears at all cost.

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infinitepi8@reddit

ears and eyes, you only get one set of each

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djzrbz@reddit

What?

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Disturbed_Bard@reddit

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groogs@reddit

See, the heating loss has already started

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zme243@reddit

Yes, that’s the point of the CRACs

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groogs@reddit

You must have misheard me too, I definitely said hearing loss

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

You're not my boss

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jaysea619@reddit

What?

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Griz-Lee@reddit

Bose NC 700. It‘s nearly dead silent and you can be on a conference, with Indian support staff and still Tell the the difference between a T and a D when they spell a password…

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NoReallyLetsBeFriend@reddit

Just my 1 server at work in a 6x6 closet puts outs roughly 85-95dB from the doorway 6ft away. Right behind the rack is closer to 100dB. Definitely loud!. Just bought some 2'x4'x2" foam panels for the room to help when I'm in there. We have 4 servers total, but while doing cleaning and maintenance last weekend I thought it'd be neat to check out. I definitely have to bring my indoor range ear plugs for the next extended time I'm in there

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geek_404@reddit

I feel this is why I have tinnitus now. Just a constant high pitched crickets sound.

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Jwn5k@reddit

Thank you for the cautionary suggestions bnuy

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jedimaster4007@reddit

Our very small DC is constantly just below 85db. Technically it's under the OSHA maximum for 8 hour exposure, but still, hearing damage is not to be taken lightly.

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Fireman476@reddit

Years ago, I interviewed at a company that had most of their IT department sitting inside their server room. I could not believe it (and this was a very large Aerospace company). The help desk people were sitting there in sweaters. The noise was as you would expect, very loud. I asked the manager about that and he just said that it was no big deal and they had been doing that for a while. My gut told me that since their server room was so large that some executive told them to make better use of their space. I, thankfully, did not get that job, and about a year later they laid off most of their IT staff.

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Coldsmoke888@reddit

Hah… I know of a site like that. We’ve cleared the server room multiple times and dude keeps sliding a desk and chair in there to “image clients in peace”.

That and it’s a room with no glass on the door so god only knows what he’s doing in there. Napping probably. ;)

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meagainpansy@reddit

Brother, are you saying you don't have a crying room?

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Coldsmoke888@reddit

Hey that’s exactly what I’m doing; keeping it clear of operational stuff so people can go in there and cry in peace. ;)

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meagainpansy@reddit

We got a nice shiny new IT building a few years ago. There's a room for just chilling and taking a break. I forget what it's actually called (something like meditation room), but it is a room that was purpose built for crying IMO.

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KickedAbyss@reddit

A server room without cameras is wild in this day and age...

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Loan-Pickle@reddit

For the first 6 years of my career my desk was in the data center. I recently had a hearing test and I have some hearing loss. Between that and a decade of driving around in a convertible I’m surprised it is not worse.

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spittlbm@reddit

Check out Nuance Audio

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YOURMOM37@reddit

Hey! I’m currently starting my career in the data center field.

What branch of IT are you currently working in now?

I have been in this field for around 2 years and I’m starting to look into other possible branches

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RamblingReflections@reddit

I am the sole IT person for a Senior High School. My office is still the server room. I have a jacket (sweater, jumper, coat - whatever flavour your country uses) that lives in my office and only leaves to go get washed.

I had to turn the decibel warning off on my phone because it got annoying. I’ve been there about 9 years and I’ve gone through more than my fair share of noise cancelling headphones (out of my own pocket). I’ve asked multiple times for a dedicated office space anywhere other than the server room. Denied. So I’ve made sure I’ve had hearing tests every year to track any hearing loss and have a CYA email trail to show I’ve asked every year for a seperate office on OHS grounds.

I’d love to make the administrative team work in there for a week. Hell, even a day. I bet they wouldn’t find it acceptable for themselves.

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Maro1947@reddit

Just remember noise cancelling headphones don't prevent the noise that causes damage...

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KickedAbyss@reddit

I suspect if they were earbuds they might - those have passive and active cancelation - basically ear protection (assuming you don't blast music through them too)

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Maro1947@reddit

They don't qualify as full protection - every company I've worked for only allow buds with ear protectors over the top of them

FAANGs specifically won't allow them in their rooms - we'd go so far to get full ear defenders with bluetooth

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splatm15@reddit

That is quite a high likelihood of going to cloud right?

And low noise switches.

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RamblingReflections@reddit

Getting there. The wireless LAN controllers have been moved far far away. That’s made a huge difference. I didn’t realise how tuned into the sound of everything in my office/the server room I was until it changed after that particular move. I kept looking around wondering what was wrong for a good week afterwards because it didn’t sound right.

I once picked up that there was something wrong with one of the air conditioning units before any alerts or (to me) obvious temperature changes happened because the fan noise wasn’t “normal”, it was slightly louder.

Guess my hearing is still ok at this point. Bring on migration to the cloud before it goes!

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patmorgan235@reddit

I bet the noise levels exceed some OSHA standard

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InevitableOk5017@reddit

Because they all lost their hearing?

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neighborofbrak@reddit

What?

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Impossible_IT@reddit

I thought it was an OSHA violation due to the extreme noise that induces hearing loss. Maybe I’m wrong.

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RamblingReflections@reddit

Yep. In my country anyway. Do they care? Nope.

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dal_segno@reddit

My old company was like that - you wouldn’t think it was very loud until someone tried to talk to you and then the “WHAT???”-ing would start.

Or if you called the inside line from another room and got someone yelling into the phone.

8 hours a day, M-F, for five years. I have tinnitus now.

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Classic-Stand9906@reddit

It was a wild time before ITIL standards started to become widespread.

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PoolMotosBowling@reddit

Ours is soooo loud I can't be in there without earplugs.

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KickedAbyss@reddit

Ah. I've used isotune pros, they're OK but not great sound.

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PacificBlueEyez@reddit

Yes, in the early '80s I worked in a data processing department for a company in Northern CA. Our desks were in the same room as the mainframes, which had a loud constant loud hum, the room was freezing, and there was an extremely loud squealing dot matrix printer going off periodically throughout the day as well. It was horrible. I wore a thick coat at my desk, then I finally got earplugs, and they gave me sideways looks. Eventually I was able to transfer out of that department, and my new office was in a building at the beach, overlooking the ocean, and I shared it with one other person. We could play music, go to the beach during our lunchtime, and the work was more interesting. It was an excellent trade-off. LOL

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sewiv@reddit

I wear plugs and/or muffs if I have to spend any time in a data center.

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camwynya@reddit

Urgh. Glad the only nonstandard use I made of my old office's server room was exercise- we used to have a server room way larger than needed for our equipment racks, especially once we moved from our old server boxes to a VM cluster. Patch panel and firewall hardware at one end of the room, server rack at the other end. I had room to put down an exercise mat and store/use a respectable number of adjustable dumbbells. It wasn't as loud at that end as it was near the cluster, thankfully.

We moved to new office space last year and the server room is no longer an option, alas.

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ErB17@reddit

Yeah working at AWS, you really notice how loud it is when you regularly go inside and work on racks. PPE is a must when working in any loud environment, don't underestimate it. Tinnitus is real, and it's fucking annoying.

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i_dont_wanna_sign_in@reddit

I had a contact gig for a while that had a pretty decent sized on premises server room. Two rows of 14 racks with 4' on the outside and 6' on the inside. Very well laid out. Lots of room to work. I was one of four people authorized to be in there, and the other three hated it, and generally kept away. The company had already downsized from nearly a thousand employees to about 100. All of which were thrown into a very large "open floorplan" room in a massive building that has 3 other wings shut down.

Anyways, I hung out on the floor as little as possible and spent most of my time in the server room. I had very nice over-the-ear headphones that kept a lot of sound out and as long as tasks got done and things ran smoothly nobody bothered me. Damn, I miss those naps...

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heelstoo@reddit

I spent Y2K asleep on a server room floor. Not comfortable, but not the worst place I’ve slept.

The worst place I’ve slept is unrelated. It was in a couch-chair thing in the hospital waiting for someone to take care of a loved one.

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Much-Tea-3049@reddit

I have more noticeable tinnitus for doing this. Wish it would go away but I’m realistic that the damage is permanent……

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Playful_Tie_5323@reddit

I once managed to fall asleep leaning against a cabinet back in the day - combination of newborn child and the noise of the fans - I was having to copy files off a failing server - had a nice snooze while the files copied!

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segagamer@reddit (OP)

The rooms are so peaceful!

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yourplainvanillaguy@reddit

Happy cake day!

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whetu@reddit

nice temperature

Depending on the server room you're in, the aircon might be dehumidifying. Given a long enough exposure, you can wind up dehydrated, and that doesn't help with headaches either.

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RamblingReflections@reddit

Funny you say this. My office is in the server room. I’ve been there about 9 years. Recently I’ve had an extremely red, irritated eye, say, for about 4 months. Finally saw an optometrist about it and she said I have a bad case of dry eye and blocked ducts in one eye. After asking a few questions we hit on the conditions in my “office”. She’s adamant that spending so much time in a cold, dry, air conditioned room on top of living in an extremely dry inland location, on the edge of the desert, is the cause of this eye issue.

So yeah, anecdotally I can totally back up what you’re saying. I walk around looking like a half stoner basement dweller most of the day.

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AtlanticPortal@reddit

White noise is not high frequency. It’s literally every frequency has the same amplitude differently from normal sounds that have the amplitude of high frequencies go down. The graph frequency/amplitude (the spectrogram) is a line in both cases but in the former is horizontal and in the latter has a downward direction.

And yes, your brain is programmed to filter out such noises. Actually another that works better to fall asleep is brown noise. And incidentally nature sounds like rain, fire cracking, and the sea are all brownish.

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SaintEyegor@reddit

I always wear ear protection in the data center. It’s loud AF otherwise

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soiledhalo@reddit

I use notice canceling headphones when I'm at the datacenter. Is that sufficient? I've seen some guys there with those yellow earplugs as well. Just want what's best to protect my hearing.

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geekworking@reddit

If you want loud get an air cooled GPU cluster. We are getting up to about 115 dB out these. You can hear them outside of the data hall and half way down the hall.

Warning signs and mandatory rated hearing protection needed to stay below OSHA limit of 85db. If you need to get your head close you want to double up plugs + muffs. Noise canceling headphones won't cut it. We keep spare hearing protection for visitors.

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LenR75@reddit

I’m tall and balding. We have cooling units on the top of the racks. I keep a hat in the office or I get a headache from the cold air on my head. Never thought about ear plugs, but I also have tinnitus, so that’s a good idea too.

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Hoosier_Farmer_@reddit

my cubicle mate at one place was an HP 9000 server (with optional hdd cabinet). worst.coworker.ever. When we finally decommissioned it, the silence was deafening.

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elkab0ng@reddit

Operating those 50mm fans outside of a data center, that’s a beating offense

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ctyz1999@reddit

But the heat kept your office warm and toasty!

J200 and J210's in my past life. After those, they started living in the data center where they belong.

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Illcmys3lf0ut@reddit

Wish I knew this for my years contracting. A lot of work was done in their DCs. I thought Covid made my existing tinnitus worse (motorcycle rider and had an idiot shoot a gun next to my head.) I'm sure it was the DC work. Gotta live the dual eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee now.

😒

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Evan_Stuckey@reddit

100G/400G top of rack switches just at that horrible height, new servers, I mean even just the difference from HPE gen10 to gen11 is crazy how much louder. IBM pseries 😊

Anyway ear protection for sure ! Just knock off a few db makes a difference to how comfortable it is and of course helps protect your hearing.

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garcher00@reddit

I worked third shift in a data center. I would sleep all time with no issues other that being cold.

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Darkhexical@reddit

Some data centers also remove all oxygen so be careful

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Turmfalke_@reddit

I think that is usually reserved for extinguishing fires.

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isonotlikethat@reddit

Yeah, but it's still not the best idea to fall asleep in a room that can on a moment's notice turn the entire breathing atmosphere into Nitrogen.

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Frothyleet@reddit

I've never known of a system that didn't scream an alarm for a couple minutes before deploying extinguishing agents

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isonotlikethat@reddit

Tell that to my aviation grade noise cancelling headset

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gmitch64@reddit

That being said, a friend sent me a video of her wife sound asleep in their hotel room with the fire alarm going off... There was a lot of steam from the shower which apparently set it off.

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Carter-SysAdmin@reddit

I had an office in a basement one time that had a jam packed OS X server rack behind me full of Xserves and XServe RAIDs and old retrospect LTO type backup tape servers and the whole nine, for like 5+ years.

It went from being very noticeable, to not noticeable at all, to madness-inducing over the span of the time I was there.

After a while I made it a point to only ever spend half a day in that office before finding somewhere else to work.

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nanite10@reddit

Sounds awfully close to a certain college I know of …

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CO420Tech@reddit

I wear noise cancelling headphones for all data center work and require anyone on my staff to use ear protection too.

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kerubi@reddit

Heck 15 years ago when I was in datacanter’s daily we always wore over-ear industrial hearing protectors. Insane.

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bofh@reddit

I now wish we had that 30 years ago when I was pulling 12-hour shifts in a datacenter. Still you can hardly see the hearing aids when I have them in now…

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fartiestpoopfart@reddit

another reason to not fall asleep where the server racks are:

my idiot coworker got caught sleeping in the server room of our small regional office when he knew we were being visited by an important national IT director. director was out with me and my boss at a client site and we ended up getting stuck there for almost 2 hours troubleshooting an unrelated issue with client IT and it was a huge pain in the ass. when we finally got back to the office the director wanted to take everyone out to eat and no one could find john. we go in the server room and he's sitting perfectly upright in a cheap folding chair, head back, fast asleep mouth wide open and leaking drool.

he got fired. last i heard he was working maintenance at some shitty apartment complex.

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WelcomingRapier@reddit

I keep earplugs (for the DC) and over the ear (if the generator is running). White noise in the NOC is normally fine, but if I'm going to be working in the DC for more than 10 or 15 minutes, I'll put in earplugs.

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WWWVWVWVVWVVVVVVWWVX@reddit

Even 10 or 15 minutes at a time over time will do damage. My grandfather went deaf when he was young from working on farm equipment. It was drilled into me from an early age to protect my hearing. I will not go into a room with rack mounted servers without hearing protection, period.

I bartended at a large music venue and would have customers constantly make fun of me for wearing earplugs while I was working. People get really fucking weird about PPE.

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WelcomingRapier@reddit

You're not wrong. Since my earplugs are accessible on my keychain, I also use them at concerts, or loud restaurants, and sporting events. I definitely get some eye rolls at the table when just hitting up a place for some wings or pizza with my friends and they see me putting in earplugs.

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Problably__Wrong@reddit

Wow had no idea. 25 years in thankfully not in Data centers just in my humble little server rooms.

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ResponsibilityLast38@reddit

I once, years ago, thought I was clever by salvaging 4 rackmount servers that we decommissioned at a former job. I was going to set them up in my home office rack and (electric bills be damned) have a MONSTER home lab.

I took them home, mounted some hotswap drives, racked them up and.... oh no... noooo why are these SO LOUD?

The big open server room didnt seem so noisy, what with its gentle hum of servers and AC and its acoustic tile ceiling and data center floors and sound panels on the walls. Much much different experience in my 20x20 home office with popcorn ceiling, laminate flooring and big double paned window. It was like standing next to an airplane. Untolerable.

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dirthurts@reddit

You can absolutely damage your hearing from server racks. Careful!

Ear plugs or hearing protection with exposure over a couple minutes, personally, I recommend.

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battleBrew@reddit

gif

What!?

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Unclothed_Occupant@reddit

Yup. Gotta use ear plugs and a bed shaker alarm like the 'Sonic Alert' one or a similar.

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Genbu7@reddit

I worked in a colocation data center for years. My cage was the largest at that location with 600+ servers. I wear a noise cancelling over the ear headphones with air pods inside also in noise cancelling mode. It's a good feeling when I stepped out of the building after a 12 hr shift and still can hear things.

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