In Sydney, Australia, In the first couple of weeks of June we have had some extremely wet weather. Late one afternoon (4.30pm-ish) the heavy rain caused a power outage on the outskirts of the city, where a client happens to have their business. I received a UPS alert of the power failure, and before i had time to think “shit, the idiot is about to call about this” the phone rang. It was the idiot calling from their mobile. The conversation went sort of like this;
IDIOT: Hi! the power here has just gone out, is there anything we should do?
ME: Yes, we should shut the server down cleanly before it loses power. I have logged on and i’m about to do it now.
IDIOT (and FML #1): But we just bought that new UPS, shouldn’t it should keep the server up and running while the power is out? Why do you need to shut it down?
ME: Because the UPS is essentially a big rechargable battery and it will only supply power to the server during a power outage for 10 minutes at most. As we dont know how long the outage is for and im gussing everyone will go home, the best thing to do is to shut down the server and in the morning turn it back on.
IDIOT (and FML #2): Oh ok… and how do we turn the server back on in the morning?
ME (trying and failing to not sound like an asshole): Well like your PC and every PC, there is this this device on the front of the server called a power button, pressing it will turn the server on.
The old power button. Gets them every time! -Scott
