There's one thing which no one has really mentioned, but it's "bitten" me a few times personally. * Torx screwdriver set. You'll never know when you run into an "aged" server which has scsi disk's and it requires a torx screwdriver to take out the screws without threading it. Also, a similar thread had come up recently on AusNOG which may help someone: http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2011-November/011619.html Also, last year on NANOG - similar (huge) thread: http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-February/046106.html Regards, Matthew Taylor. On 12/03/13 3:01 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
You need to consider cases where there is an actual power failure. yeah, a real one with dark centre, UPS and mains down, room is silemt except for a few alarms here and there, and you are scrambling to find/fix problem.
what will you need ? (obvious things like flashlights, multimetre, screwdrivers, pliers, wire cutters).
I would also do a visual inventory of the hardware and all the screws you can find to ensure you have screwdrivers or allen keys for them, adjustable wrenches etc.
You may also consider cases where the airconditioning unit is leaking water. Do you have some kit to wrap a leaking pipe to at least temporarily stop the leak ?
So you have a shop vac to suck up water on floor or underfloor ?
Often, maintenance manuals for equipment will have a list of tools needed.
Then you need to consider emergency suplies. 10 gauge wiring to create a glorified extension cord to power some critical equipment. Obviouslty, as somone else mentioned spare ethernet cabling to also provide long patch cord to some switch that is still working.
This also depends if this is a commercial data centre or a corporate one. In a corporate one, you need to identify your business critical equipment and run various failure scenarios to see what you need to keep the business critical systems up. While this goes beyond a set of tools, creating that list should implicitly also cause you to create a list of tools you would need in an emergency to get your business critical boxes back up.