Servers at Sea!

As a sit here at work on a beautiful Sunday morning laying down ghost images, I thought I'd share this interesting tale:

So I was working with the HP/Compaq rep the other day as I try to pick the new server model I'm going to buy to deploy to our fleet of oil tankers. I stressed that the racks need to be well cushioned for vibration (a big problem on ships), that the servers need to have hot swappable power supplies, DVD drives, Raid-5 controllers, 100/1000 NICS, IBM Token-Ring cards, 20/40 GB DLT drives and rust-proofing. He put down his pen and ask, "Um... rust-proofing?" "Yes", I replied. "If I can get a $100 grill with anti-rust protection, then surely you can provide me an $8,000 server with that option." He didn't believe my tale of rusty servers, until I showed him one of these bad boys:

http://www.billandiris.com/ftpd/Compaq1600.jpg

Yep, rust. And not the kind that just wipes away with a little 409 and paper towel. Nope, this is real rust. Not too many of us IT folks have to deal with rust on our servers, but let me tell you, it sucks. The screws that hold the cages in are rusted tight and a pain to remove. I get servers back from ships where the case is so crushed by abuse that the whole box is bowed out of shape.

What's your worst server / network wiring look like? (and not those pictures on the internet of nightmare server rooms... I wanna see your personal worst.)

-Nuts

That is positively impressive.

I'd almost think you could attach a cathode, like a zinc plate on a submarine, to take care of some of that. Galvanic corrosion is obviously a huge deal in a saltwater environment and since you're dealing with an electrical current already, you've essentially got a giant salt-encrusted thermocouple disguised as a server...

Just a stream-of-conciousness thought.

Couldn't you go with aluminum?