[AusNOG] Experience with Global Switch, Sydney?

[Mark Newton]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 09:56:15AM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:

 > If you don't have spares on-site prior to an outage, you've either probably
 > already blown your SLA by the time someone's on-site, or the service isn't
 > critical enough that the extra time getting through GS' Kafkaesque
 > procedures isn't the end of the world.

Once you've had your site induction and received your proxcard/pass, the
procedures aren't that bad.  You can come and go pretty much as you
please.  You just need to apply a bit of forward planning, that's all.

Their Meet Me Room access procedures are a bit crap, but that's not
something that affects most people.

Close reading of their rules offers some ways to make dealing with
them easier.  For example, they have their strict rules about leaving
rubbish in the corridors, and threaten to bill you for removing it
if you leave it there.  But close evaluation of the rate they charge
shows that it's actually quite reasonable compared to the cost of 
your own time for carrying rubbish off-site (there's nowhere to 
dispose of it on-site, you're supposed to leave with any packaging
material you bring in, which means you have to deal with the loading
dock twice). 

So if you keep a standing purchase order open with them for (say)
5 hours of rubbish removal services, when their security guards get
uppity at you about boxes and crates in the corridor you can just
point at it and say, "That's fine, bill me. Please just clean it
up."  The aura of deflation they emanate is priceless.

Or, at the very least, priced by the hour :)

For interstaters, the other reasonably reliable way of getting rid
of moderate volumes of cardboard when you're working at a site that
has no means of disposing of rubbish is to leave it in your hotel
room when you check out.

  - mark