CROC IT office: a place where system integrators live

Hello! My name is Alina, and I work in an office where there is a lot of unusual iron, a protected data center right on the spot, another data center at the underground level under the parking lot and various interesting engineering systems.

We have been creating and implementing IT systems for large corporate customers for 20 years, and we often test new technologies on ourselves before implementation. Therefore, in the office there are systems that after some time will be implemented in banking, industrial and other areas throughout the country.
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For guests, we have a lot of spectacular pieces, but especially for Habr, I agreed with our engineers about showing those things that even not all employees of the company can see.

Careful traffic! Inside a lot of pictures.

The office building looks like this. We are a 15-minute walk from Ploshchad Ilyicha metro station, and shuttles regularly go to the building, plus there is a huge parking lot for guests and staff. At the entrance to the territory, which is visible here, there is a recognition system of state numbers, which scans the numbers of cars (the system can distinguish a real number from a paper one, for example), compares them with the base and writes everything to the log. If the employee's number is registered in the database, he raises the barrier without RFID tags, remotes or the need to show documents to the guard. However, in the case of a very, very dirty room (as is the case in winter), an employee can still travel along the RFID tag.

On the ground floor there is a guard post (security staff asked them not to take them off), then turnstiles and a wardrobe. Turnstiles can be opened either by a standard NFC-card of an employee or a guest, or simply by scanning the face (far stand) for those who have registered on the base.

Here my colleague Vadim passes through the turnstile with gifts from EMC. The camera captures the face, compares with the template in the database and starts it on. He could be wearing glasses or a hat - the scanner would still recognize him and miss it.

Here is the system itself. Recognition takes a second, if you go with a calm step, then you do not even need to stop.

Details about this system are here in the topic . If it is short - it is impossible to pass through the turnstile with a severed head (because the muscles are limp and the profile of the face changes - well, the guard will stop), and it perfectly distinguishes the twins (they develop mimic muscles in different ways).

I catch Vadim by the hand, and we go to the first server object - CROC Solution Center based on EMC technologies. At first, it looks like this negotiation:

There are standard flipcharts, monitors, a projector, sockets in the table for laptops and other room devices for communication at a regular table. True, there is a server behind the noise insulation wall, where each rack can accommodate ultra-protected media libraries for 1 petabyte each (and with a new memory it is possible to have 2 petabytes).

But for now let us return to the negotiation. The table hides such a handy thing:

Customers with large IT tasks come to Vadim, for example, backup all banking databases (and these are VERY large volumes) or digital “safety” copies of a huge library (book). Vadim talks about solutions, shows graphs, at some point a customer’s technical specialist asks a question ... and Vadim just offers to see how it works in practice.

This door opens:

And behind it, at first, a monitor with a keyboard for direct access is found (although access is still made through our cloud - but it is still customary for many to stand near the rack, and not in the next room)

From there you can see all the features of the system, which often causes real delight. Iron itself stands next to it, here it is:

^{EMC VPLEX and isilon systems that we talked about at a recent webinar}

^{CISCO MDS switches and a disk shelf with 1TB disks.}

^{And these are not just servers, they are part of the EMC RecoverPoint system, albeit of the past generation.}

^{EMC Isilon with Infiniband internal bus for even greater media processing performance.}

^{EMC VNX - the classic "store", only clever.}

One day, a large bank decided not just to look at the iron and touch the console, but also to check how everything will work after the accident. It was about the backup system Avamar .

The customer asked:
- True, if you cut the power supply in a rack in the data center, everything will be fine here?
Vadim immediately replied:
- Yes of course.
The customer sysadmin slowly broke into a smile and suggested:
- Let you and my colleague go down to the data center and physically cut down the rack, and we will sit here and see how everything works out. If without failures - we take the system.

Vadim went down and knocked out the rack. The system worked, and the bank became our customer.

In general, a solution center is very necessary in those cases where the decision is made not for mastering the budget, but for optimal settlement of a specific task. Therefore, there everything can be touched, tried and generally get real living specifics right on the working system.

In the window you can see parking:

Next to it is a diesel generator, here it is:

I want to have breakfast, so I look into the dining room. There is still empty.

Here you can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at any time. Employees can get food without money, on the card: breakfast (free until 10 am), lunch from 12:30. Dinner is also free, but it is late, so not all remain.

On each floor there are coffee machines, you can take as much coffee and tea as you like.

In the corridor of the second floor there is a museum where we store awards, archival photos, memorable gifts, and so on. This is one of the most popular guests on the traffic corridor, so we did the exhibition there.

Here we have New Year's entourage.

The continuation of the museum:

Now it's time to go to the kingdom of Hades - look into the office engineering systems. On the elevator going to another floor.

We have an office remote control engineer and good monitoring. This is how the room looks like, where a couple of specialists monitor everything at once.

Here are the screens where the statuses of all engineering systems at the site are now visible.

Here, for example, a floor with engineering systems:

And then - a dynamic UPS for the data center under the parking lot (computing systems are monitored from other rooms in protected areas).

Even though I am “my own,” I am given safety instructions. Nearby are laid for walks on objects things:

Automatic installation of fire extinguishing

First, look to the switchgear. Pay attention to the cable channels here and hereafter: in some places there are single-core copper wires in my arm thickness.

On the way to the engineering floor through the window near the elevator you can see the outdoor units of air conditioners in one of the server rooms (they are outside the building):

Here is the engineering floor corridor. Pay attention to the trays: we somehow began to put the usual - and they could not withstand the load. Since then, at sites of this level, we put reinforced, because we checked it on ourselves.

Automatic heating and ventilation:

Here is the real kingdom of steampunk, very beautiful, but, really, noisy:

Here comes the hot and cold water from the city.

Room with water extinguishing systems:

Here are more trays, then you can see them better:

Cold center, chillernaya:

Pumping station:

And here we have reserved office replacement chairs:

Moving to the first data center, which is in the office. He, in fact, in a special extension at the level of the third floor:

A bit of humor:

At the transition to the data center floor level rises. This is a raised floor for engineering communications, but at the request of the client, you can add anything to it, for example, once a bank wanted to install seismic sensors.

In the data center itself, we will not go, it is impossible, the security will not let. Support and control station is also impossible, with this strictly. But the boot covers - you can.

But let's see what's next. Here is the elevator, in which the servers come. Nearby is a platform for temperature leveling after the street. Here the iron in the hardboxes stands and waits until the temperature becomes normal. By the way, the elevator itself allows you to load a server of any mass (and there are under a couple of tons) without roll and jolts. Many pieces of iron do not allow the roll to be transported more than 10-15 degrees and jolts - immediately a stress sensor or a roll sensor is triggered inside, and the guarantee of several hundred thousand dollars is removed.

This is how this part of the building looks from the side and from above.

The second data center is located on the ground floor of the parking lot, there is also no shooting there. But on the third data center "Compressor" there is a post with an excursion , and its layout is in the office:

Now look at the gym. IT-office, he just needed, and then sit bent over in front of the computer constantly - not the most healthy lifestyle.

There is also a medical center next to the hall, there, among other things, you can take something from a headache, if you really need to.

Almost on every floor near the elevators (at the beginning of the floor) there are three such things: MFPs for those who want a copy-scan-print (very convenient: the scan can be sent directly from the device to the post office. In the classrooms, of course, there are printers too ), shredder and special tank for garbage, which preaches an eco-friendly approach to life.

Next - stands with all sorts of descriptions of solutions, so that guests have something to read while they are met.

The place where those who came to the interview, waiting for experts. There are magazines ...

... a large touch-table (we run Angry Birds on it):

Plus tea and all that.

Near the elevators hang panels with important information, content management occurs automatically using the Digital Signage system. For example, on the ground floor - this is the schedule of the internal courses:

And also - data from new projects and an informer with weather and traffic jams.

Now we go to the telepresence room. First I need to take the key. We considered that electronic locks in each office is a completely unnecessary luxury, which, moreover, often creates inconvenience, therefore we use special key holders. I bring my card to the console (or dial my password, but I have the card with me):

The key box opens, and the compartments are highlighted, the access to which I have (if there is no access to any key, it will not open at all). In each compartment - a key that can be pulled out (the others are fixed in their slots).

If the key needs to be hung back, the empty slot under it is also highlighted to make it convenient:

Now we go to the telepresence room. Here are the screens when turned off:

These are plasma panels, and they have a rather interesting back space:

We connect colleagues who are sitting in their places to a multipoint video conferencing session and watch what happens in the next section. There are cameras that can track the person themselves and turn behind him, even if he walks around the room.

And this is how a meeting might look like: if your colleagues have the same system, the table seems to be completed to a round one, and you all sit together. Now I am talking to myself, plus a strange color on the screens due to the fact that the plasma cannot be photographed in natural colors.

Look into the negotiation. Specifically, this - for the tops.

And smaller

Each office has climate control:

On the floor - a machine with food (there is even yogurt):

And a kitchen with a coffee machine, a "samovar" and a microwave.

Dishes:

Near the toilet. In the men sell condoms, and in the women - something else.

Paper we have with RSS:

Now - in the conference room. So he looks for the speaker.

If necessary, the screen leaves the table slowly and coolly:

And now - let's go to the roof!

This is a plant. Employees-old-timers remember with tenderness how a tank with alcohol went there on the rails once a week.

In the plane of the roof:

Air conditioners - they are in the "houses" to work in the winter too:

"Houses" with automatic valves - they close and open themselves when necessary. This one opened, the next one is closed.

Mate from chillers - dry cooling towers. Pipes to them go from the basement:

Electroshield cooling tower:

The cooling tower stands on such things, because sometimes it jumps so hard when it starts up:

One can see the roof of the office. The pipes on the right are visible - for the data center air conditioning system, which is located on the ground floor.

On the roof, we once wrote KROK and drew a crocodile, then it remains to wait for the update of maps of geographic information services and ...

It turned out that from space green on black is not very well seen, so in the summer we will also circle white.

We are the highest in the area, so we have the BS of operators on the roof.

If you go to the "attic" you can see a lot of insulation - it is ventilation, and here you can shoot scenes of films about spacecraft:

Now we go to snack again, this time to warm ourselves with tea in a cafe inside the office.

Another room with the run-in of new technologies. Here is the management of your home or office:

On the tablet you can see the scheme of the room. If you touch the lamp, for example, you can turn it on or off, plus control everything else:

The lamps themselves. Go out or turn on the command almost instantly. By the way, about the lamps - we had a different light on different floors (blue, yellow, etc. from normal scales) - in the end we stopped everywhere on yellow, although many people think that blue gives natural colors. Habitual yellow is more comfortable.

Now we go to the floor where the designers are sitting. By the way, everything is on the floor in the sensors - the light is turned on and off simply by the fact of people and the required level of illumination. Convenient and saves energy. Here is their part of the office: