Grooming install logistics

Had a call with our grooming vendor today to discuss shipping and install logistics. Given the number of international and domestic connections in Chicago, that site is somewhat of an exception. It's getting a full-rack grooming box instead of the more standard half-rack solution. The chassis ships in the rack from the vendor. They tell us it's pretty heavy. Sure enough, the docs say 950lbs fully loaded. We're not going to fully-load it, but let's be honest: anything over 50lbs is enough to wear a pasty-faced engineer out in 1.7 seconds. Us cornfed folk at Indiana University aren't complete weaklings, but we're not sneezing at 950lbs. That's a lot of corn! So, we may get the vendor or Level3 to do the install. Decisions. Decisions.

Oh, and we discovered today that we're short one DC power feed on the grooming box. Normally we have a fuse panel or power controller shimmed between house power and our equipment, but Chicago is an exception. House wires directly into the PDU, which means we need one more redundant circuit. Still working out the details on how much power each of those need. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from when we ordered 140A of -48VDC for the Junipers on Abilene and ended up using 20-30A, real-world. We shall see.