It Takes a Licking and Keeps on MIPS-ing?

It all started one dark and stormy night. The man had just bought the mother of all Dell servers, a Dell PowerEdge 720 — the latest generation of powerful machines that promised his business the speed and agility to take its computing well into the future. It was a large and successful business, so it had a lot of data — very important data. And unaware of the danger that lurked just beyond the coastline of the metropolis he inhabited, the man transferred a lot of that data onto that new server.

And then a monster storm of unprecedented size and fury ravaged the city and wreaked havoc all around. And now where there was once a dry server room twinkling with blue and green data lights and humming to the beat of a million, nay billion, instructions per second (MIPS, nay GIPS)— there now stood an indoor pool of rusty, contaminated salt water.

And where there was once a shiny new Dell PowerEdge 720, there now stood a battered new Dell PowerEdge 720 steeped in the filth like so many cars and appliances that floated listlessly through the street that day.

Knowing that he had nothing else to lose, the man hosed off that Dell PowerEdge 720, and employed a last-ditch remedy most often reserved for small electronics that meet the watery demise of so many ponds and pools and washing machines.

The man filled the server with rice, hoping against hope that each grain would do its part to wick away some moisture from the soaked server circuitry. And then he waited.
And then after a time, the man plugged in that Dell PowerEdge 720. And before his eyes, that Dell PowerEdge 720 began to boot. That Dell PowerEdge 720 had refused to succumb to computer hardware’s arch-enemy — water. It had shaken off the rules that dominated lesser servers, and it had prevailed. The man and his business recovered their data. And all went on to compute another day.

This dramatization is based on the real-life, true story of a real man, a real business, a real hurricane, real rice, and a very real Dell PowerEdge 720 server. To learn more and see photos of the actual parties concerned, check out this blog.

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Beverly Palm

Digital Marketing Content Writer/Editor at Dell

Beverly Palm is a technology writer and consultant for Dell, where she writes copy for Dell.com on topics as diverse as 12th generation servers, blades (the computing kind), servers and networking. In her spare time, Bev reads the classics (German and Russian), the New York Times Science section and nonfiction, and practices Bikram Yoga.