Whether working inside a windowless office that's been converted into a rack room (and garbage receptacle) or a gleaming state-of-the-art data center, when the cooling system needs maintenance, the going gets hot and dirty fast, says Greg Grace, whose official title is "precision cooling team leader" for Emerson Network Power's Liebert Services.
Temperatures can easily surpass 100 degrees, says Grace, and there's no stripping down to your skivvies for relief. Cotton coveralls, hoods, face shields, and thick gloves are standard gear for protection against arc flashes from 480-volt power supplies.
"It can look like a bolt of lightning when it arcs," he says. "The way we dress we look like Marty McFly in our safety gear dealing with plutonium rods. By the end of the day, we end up smelling pretty gnarly."
A look at the dirtiest jobs in the IT industry
Posted on Sunday, April 18 2010 @ 12:15 CEST by Thomas De MaesschalckFollowing in the footsteps of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, InfoWorld takes a look at seven of the more nasty tech jobs. You can read it over here, one of them is the "coolant jockey":
