I'm interested in talking with someone who has experience shipping hardware that has been pulled from a working environment. The assumption is that it would not use a normal carriers such as UPS of Fedex, but via private freight.
Assuming that 20 x 1U switches and a handful of 10U chassis's were to be shipped, has anyone found a productive way to package them in something other than the boxes they come in? Has anyone tried to crate / pallet pack them or something more efficient?
If so, please contact me offline if you are willing to share your experience.
My suggestion would be to leave the packing & shipping to professionals....
Take it to you local UPS store or similar, they can pack it and ship it
( 1u switches, no big deal, but the 10u chassis, most likely best if they are palatalized)
Doing it any other way would be greatly dependent on what facilities are available to you..
i.e. can you palatalize it ? Shrink wrap it and have a freight carrier pick it up.. (the are picky about doing that from a location that does not have dock height warehouse / ramp. You might be able to find a "consolidator" freight forwarder who may have the facilities to palatalize and shrink wrap..
You can also take the do it your-self approach, get / find some pallets, buy some strapping, and shrink wrap rolls, while not hard to do..... but make sure you have the resources to do so (pallet jack, space, tools etc).
Regards
Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet & Telecom
7266 SW 48 Street
Miami, FL 33155
Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232
If you are planning to scrap it after retiring it from production, talk to
nsrc @ uoregon, they'll pick it up and ship it to developing countries that
could use it.
If so, please contact me offline if you are willing to share your experience.
If you no longer have the original packing boxes (most manufactures
have a part number for their boxes, you can order and ship them to the DC,
but they are not cheap), and you are relocating for future use, call
professional
movers that specialize in data centers. They know how to do it. Not cheap,
but the equipment makes it to the other end in operational condition
(rather than the router that had a fork lift hole in the side of the box (only
bent the sheet metal, fortunately), or the entire rack that now had a 15
degree tilt, and for which the inserted disk drives no longer really fit into
the metal shell, both "issues" showing up at the other end, and no one
knowing how it happened, or the time our "in house" shipping expert(???)
packed a large router power supply using packing peanuts, and it arrived
with the corners bent (although after a bit of pliers and hammer work, it
could be forced into the router, and it worked). And, if a professional data
center mover screws up (and, occasionally, everyone does), their insurance
covers the repair/replacement (and if you write the contract right, the cost
of loss of service, if that is important to you).
For our most recent smaller move, we ordered the boxes from the manufacturer
(note that the lead times can sometimes be surprisingly long for just the box),
and for the last bigger move we got the professional movers.
(rather than the router that had a fork lift hole in the side of the box
(only
bent the sheet metal, fortunately), or the entire rack that now had a 15
degree tilt, and for which the inserted disk drives no longer really fit
into
the metal shell, both "issues" showing up at the other end
Ah yes, I recall watching them decommission the old Control Data Cyber 990
back at Georgia Tech. The mover slipped trying to get it on the liftgate
and the whole cabinet dropped about a foot to the ground with a nice solid
thud.
And in the "good ol' days" (before the shark, actually) the IBM CE
assigned to your site would have worked day and night getting it
to work (and had fun doing it), replacing every part one by one if
needed while still wearing the white shirts. But I date myself.
I no longer can recall the name of the company (his trucks were United Fan Lines colors but he had split off or something and had a license to use the colors)--all he (and crew) did was big computers.
In the years I dealt with him the highlights were a) the time he and crew loaded a 1783 Drum (Several thousand pounds, I think, and top-heavy) into a truck parked against the curb or a street that has a moderately radical slope. Rolling it off the lift gate they lost it and it slammed against the down-hill wall pretty sternly. The truck tilted a bit into the street light pole which made the pole whip, flinging the glass cover down on the truck. Activity eventually stopped with the truck leaning (and immobilized) against the pole. I don't remember the resolution.
b) the time they Johnson-barred an 1110 CPU into an open hole in the raised floor. Seems like the ripped out a lot of floor before deciding the strategy was not working. Seems like the used several Rol-a-lifts, a lot of canvas strapping and Johnson Bar handles recovering it.
Carlos Alcantar
Race Communications / Race Team Member
1325 Howard Ave. #604, Burlingame, CA. 94010
Phone: +1 415 376 3314 / carlos@race.com / http://www.race.com
Had a bunch (9) Dell C1100 shipped from Cali to Mtl on a 1/4 pallet
thru UPS LTE. Cost barely $900 and 4h of import/export paperwork.
To my surprise it arrived on a wooden pallet, which is fine... but
each servers was just stacked on it, wrap with packing film, and 1
plastic strap and a bit of cardboard on the corners.
I can only praise the driver and the handlers... none where beat up.
TLDR: Shipping on pallet is fine, most carrier (at least the guys i
dealt with) are professional, just do your own packing =D
I remember when we got our SGI Challenge XL delivered. It was around
1200lbs and the trucker refused to do an inside delivery even though
we'd specified that, we were on the second floor (up one flight of
stairs tho a few more to get to the stairs.) Their excuse was that we
didn't have a proper way to do that. That is, there were three steps
before the elevator and whatever else they think of not to do it.
So rather than fuss with them and leaving the $500K system on the
sidewalk outside I called:
Death Wish Movers
They're a company in Boston which specializes in moving big pianos and
similar. The Travel Channel (I think it was) made a reality series
about them briefly.
Four guys showed up and decided they didn't even want to use the
elevator, too small or something.
They just hauled that thing up the stairs with your usual
ONE...TWO...THREE...LIFT! ONE...TWO...THREE...LIFT!...
I forget the cost but it wasn't a lot, maybe $300?
Holy crap. I've actually used Death Wish. Small world.
They were awesome.
Of course, I moved something far less interesting - a piano. But I called them on a Tuesday and said "I need a piano moved by 1 PM tomorrow". They did it, no fuss, no muss, very professional, and reasonably priced.
Back a few jobs ago, I had a similar problem with a trucker refusing to do
inside delivery on a 5kVa UPS unit that clocked in around 450lbs, and my
town didn't have any similar moving company willing to schlep that thing
up two flights of stairs on no notice. However, it turns out that you can
disassemble that particular model of 5kVa UPS into pieces such that the
biggest one weighs a little over 200 lbs. It also apparently turns out I
can carry a 200lb battery up two flights of stairs.
I like to think I'm smarter now than I was then, on at least three
specific counts.