Greetings My Ten Thousand Closest Friends,
I have a requirement to stock an actual, physical toolbox with power
tools, drill bits, and other useful accoutrements one would use in a
'typical' datacenter. Can any one recommend brands/models of
(preferably cordless) power tools they've used successfully? Reading
Amazon reviews is killing my few brain cells that remain. Any "and you
should think about stocking $X, $Y, and a couple of $Zs in your tool
chest" you could impart on the list (besides the right kind of cage
nuts and enough rj45 jacks)? I have that sinking suspicion my
comprehensive list is not comprehensive enough. I get one true shot at
this as the datacenter is very, very far from any 1st-world
suppliers[1]
Very grateful for any cluebats you are able to spare on this
(marginally off) topic.
Best,
aaron.glenn
[1] Hargeisa, Somaliland; if you must know.
Generically, pack for the worst case. Screw extractor bits are invaluable when you need them. Whatever drill you choose, either make sure you can charge it where you go or bring a transformer. Small screw drivers, kobalt 4" diagonal cutting pliers, and rubber mallets have gotten me out of trouble.
Flashlights (regular, flexi-mount, & head-mounted).
Batteries for flashlights.
Small battery-powered dome-lights.
Batteries for dome-lights.
Floor-tile plunger.
Lighted orange triangular cones to highlight removed floor-tiles.
Articulated grabber.
Both magnetic & non-magnetic manual screwdrivers (clearly marked).
Electrical tape.
Velcro.
Power-strips.
Long orange extension cords.
Long (i.e., 100-foot/32m) MMF, SMF, Cat6 cables for emergency cross-rack patching.
First-aid kit.
If you look back about a year, Aaron, you'll find a thread I started about
stocking a vending machine for a datacenter; you'll probably find everything
in there that you need.
But really: a power screwdriver, a bag of #2 bits, and a 12" extender are
85% of it. 
Cheers,
-- jra
I have a requirement to stock an actual, physical toolbox with power
tools, drill bits, and other useful accoutrements one would use in a
'typical' datacenter.
Aaron
I did some work from 2009 to 2012 in 3rd world datacenters and will
note some highlights.
- Easy to use power plug pinout testers for various outlets.
- Lantronix Spider, serial adapters for console server to
UPS/Switch/etc and a USB battery supply
- Roll around tool chest (you would be surprised where they might keep
the tools) hard to find in some places.
- 3ft PDU to server power cables.
- Detailed instructions in every language possible to not use the rack
screws in the box. Or a thread gauge and instructions on its use.
- Label maker....
- Step ladder
- Extra humidity/temp sensors
- Extra universal rack rails/shelf for legacy or new devices missing parts.
I love my SpiderDuo's. No more KVM carts, ever.
~Seth
Seth, I carry one with my laptop at all times. It also is a great way
to get a USB CDROM/Floppy when needed.
should all of this end up on a wiki/etc perhaps? like cluepon or
equivalent? it seems this question set comes up periodically and
having a google-able/bing-able/webcrawler-able reference available
would be helpful to everyone.
Aaron Glenn(aaron.glenn@gmail.com)@Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 12:18:07PM +0300:
Greetings My Ten Thousand Closest Friends,
I have a requirement to stock an actual, physical toolbox with power
tools, drill bits, and other useful accoutrements one would use in a
'typical' datacenter. Can any one recommend brands/models of
(preferably cordless) power tools they've used successfully? Reading
Amazon reviews is killing my few brain cells that remain. Any "and you
should think about stocking $X, $Y, and a couple of $Zs in your tool
chest" you could impart on the list (besides the right kind of cage
nuts and enough rj45 jacks)? I have that sinking suspicion my
comprehensive list is not comprehensive enough. I get one true shot at
this as the datacenter is very, very far from any 1st-world
suppliers[1]
Some (possibly) interesting answers:
Server room survival kit? - Server Fault and
rack - What tools, parts, accessories do you keep in your Colo? - Server Fault
Haven't seen it mentioned yet, so....
I have found that at my age, if you're trying to read the tiny print on a
circuit label on Cat5 in the back of a server rack, a lighted magnifying glass
is worth its weight in gold. 
Definitely yes. And let me suggest that while buying an off-the-shelf
kit will probably suffice for most uses, there is one a la carte addition
that I strongly recommend: Quikclot. It's (relatively) expensive. It's
worth every penny and ten times more the first time you need to use it.
There are people walking around today alive because Pima County Sherriff's
Deputies ALL had it in their first aid kits when they responded to the
2011 Tucson shootings.
---rsk
I have a multi-tip screwdriver with built-in light, that I find very
useful.
Everyone else's comments plus,
A phone with a camera. You can use it to "look" at singlemode fiber without damaging your eye to know if there is a laser coming your way.
Mike
I keep a couple of RJ45 line joiners, a short crossover cable (for
dealing with older gear that doesn't auto-MDIX, can be extended with a
longer eth cable and one of the line joiners) and when I was dealing
with fibre a lot, appropriate line joiners for the interfaces I used
(SC-SC, LC-LC, ST-ST) or short lengths of patch leads with appropriate
adaptors. In an emergency I want to know that I have the ends I need
and the length I need to get stuff connected, even if I have to schedule
a routine change later on to swap in the 'right' type of cable.
I also found that the Nortel gear I used to work with, had the right
serial cable pinouts that I could use a pair of Cisco OEM console
cables, joined with an RJ45 line joiner, as a serial console cable, so I
always carried at least two of those.
A Media Converter was also useful in my fibre days, in case I didn't
have any spare SFP's or appropriate fibre modules. I also carried an
IEC-to-conventional-mains ("3 pin" but it's country specific obviously)
to allow me to run up said media converter when the only power outlets
were of the IEC sort (where the power brick was inevitably one for
'conventional' mains outlets.
I used to keep CDR's (where USB wasn't always permitted) with useful
software, including packet capture software, tftp server software and
some other basic apps, including plenty of Portable apps. OpenOffice
Portable saved me in terms of an ability to get access to documentation
(in .xls, typically) when working on the console of a server without
Excel installed.
But yeah plenty of good sources and I do feel this should indeed be
wikified somewhere. I assume http://www.as30950.net/index.php/Main_Page
is a useful location? (Just found it, no idea of it's pedigree etc.)
Mark.
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.
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.
d'oh. I tried to find relevant previous threads. I really did.
Obviously not hard enough.
Thanks!
Aaron Glenn wrote:
<> I have a requirement to stock an actual, physical toolbox with power
<> tools, drill bits, and other useful accoutrements one would use in a
<> 'typical' datacenter. Can any one recommend brands/models of
<> (preferably cordless) power tools they've used successfully?
I'm partial to the Bosch 18VDC Li-ion but the brand is less important
than the Li-ion part.
I'd add:
o A box of disposable foam earplugs
o Cordless telephone with over the ear headset and noise
suppression microphone
Probably not for simultaneous use, though <grin> and the latter
assumes a POTS line or VOIP adapter in the data center.
Reto