[ansible]

Wow, that's impressive losing that big a piece of hardware.

Though it was likely easier to find than that Novell Netware server that was sealed behind some drywall, with only a stray network cable leaving any clue as to where it was.

[owenmarshall]

Depends on how big the building is that houses it – manufacturing IT can deal with impressive floor spaces.

I once only half jokingly suggested finding a missing data closet in a two million square foot distribution center by pinging a known IP from three or four aggregator switches across the building and triangulating the location on a floor plan. Sadly the people crawling around the ceiling found it before I could put my idea into practice.

[pbhjpbhj]

2Msqft is c.430m x 430m for a square floorplan. Ping resolution is 1us (microsecond). Speed of electrical signal in cooper is about 0.8c. Gives a max resolution of ~240m by my reckoning. If there are variances in the switch+network delay it seems like you're going to struggle to even say which side of the building it is.

Good job they found it!

[owenmarshall]

Hah! Good math. Based on the switch placement and the building being more of a rectangle I figured "north side or south side" would be as close as I could get. And when we really dug in it was a classic last mile problem: the first several core switches were well known, we just needed to figure out where the last aggregate switch went.

Turns out a door was closed and a new one built to a hallway to another hallway and not properly labeled on the updated drawings. Had one of the boxes running a conveyor belt not have died, we'd never have looked.