Trips to the server room can mean extended periods away from the comforts of home, or at least your desk. Especially if it is an off-site hosting facility.
What should you take with you, apart from a warm sweater for places with good air-conditioning?
Things that I always carry on my person, so would be present:
Things that I keep in my laptop bag so I don't have to think about it:
Things I keep in my toolbag - not guaranteed to have with me always, but I usually know if I'll need it:
I think I have more, but that's the basics. Everything on that list addresses a specific need I've had in my career. The laptop bag is heavy but well worth the bulk in saved trouble. The tool bag I'm rather proud of, it's not big (it's one of those "big mouth" bags that opens like a doctor's black bag), maybe 18 inches long and 12 wide. I spent a great deal of time customizing the contents to maximize the value for the volume. For instance, I threw away the bulky plastic container the socket kit came in; I built a much smaller organizer for it. Same with the screw heads - I built a cloth with elastic on it that the heads slide into. It's also modular - all the screw drivers are in a large pencil case, so I can find them easily and, if I know I will only need them, I can just grab them out of my car and carry them into the DC instead of the whole tool bag.
Generally make the server room your fortress of solitude, where you can retreat when the brown stuff hits the rotating thing. Nothing like coming out smiling after one hour of hacking, and the broken server is back up, with all data.
I'd add
A magnifying glass** so you can read the ridiculously teeny-tiny writing you get on some equipment, and a mini-maglite so you can use it.
** yes, I am seriously old
Aside from tools I would highly recomend a small first aid kit, and some nonmessy snack foods that keep in storage well. Being able to put a bandage on a paper cut or other small nick on the spot is nice insted on having to hunt down someone from security just for a small bandage. The snacks are good for when it has been two hours too long and you are still more or less stuck in the computer room.
First, let's assume you have the essentials, including a cell phone and something that tells time (the cell phone will do).
Let's remember, if you have to go to the server room, it means something doesn't work. Otherwise, you could fix it from your desk. So, you should at least have:
After that, it depends on how thick you want your bag to be and your budget. You could do well with:
Lost of good suggestions so far.
How about ear plugs/ear protection. With all the fans running in your typical server room, the noise level is probably above what is considered "safe levels" by your typical ETLA government agency (hence the ear protection).
I bet you could even make a case for eye protection as well.
A second person/working alone policy. Lots of stuff can happen when you least expect it. You get pinned by a piece of equipment. You get electrocuted. Heck, something as simple as you get locked in. If you have trusted backup who knows when you are starting/stopping work and when you are supposed to check in, they can come to the rescue. Otherwise, you could be waiting a long time, or dead.
A big, big roll of sheet plastic and duct tape.
For when the ceiling leaks (water), or someone decides they have to drill holes in the walls (dust tent), or when you have to rig up some emergency cooling.
Larger, easier to handle screwdrivers, torx wrenches, wire cutters.
The small packs are nice in an emergency, and they go with you, but trying to use those little guys for hours on end can begin to hurt your hands.
Telephones as mentioned above, but with a long enough cord to take the handset to any cabinet. And yes, corded phones -- there's likely to be enough signal on whatever frequency you choose for there to be a problem with cordless.
While I'm on the subject, even if the site uses VoIP phones, you need a non-VoIP, non-PBX, direct line to handle the instances where the VoIP or PBX equipment is down.
Other stuff: Printed reference material - phone numbers, networks, remote host dependencies, etc. Stuff that you might need to bring up the server where the online copies reside.
I do not wish to repeat some of the good answers here, so I'll put in more stuff I did not see get mentioned:
Physiological
Equipment
EDIT: - Canned air! Servers collect dust quickly, and it can clog heatsinks and fans. It's also really gross. If you have to go into a server, blow the dust out of there.
Zip ties, preferably in various colors, and some kind of snip (I use wire cutters) to cut them free.
Velco ties for short-term binding.
Keep the server room all pretty and neat.
Multiple spools of Cat 5 cable, along with several boxes of RJ45 ends, because you know you want to use that cable-crimper you've been lugging in your go-bag.
Rolling carts. For the single-digit server room you describe, one may be enough, although I'd guess you'd want 2 or more.
Use them as a portable tool bin, an easy-to-move worktable, etc. Some setups might have a couple as wandering worktables, and another couple as dedicated terminal carts.
I'd say these are something I've needed and I've started keeping in the Server Room kit:
I've seen some people mention zip ties, and while they are nice looking, I don't like them so much anymore anymore. I've come to prefer twist ties. They're easy to remove (don't require a tool to do so) and they are also easy to modify (if you need to add additional cables to the bundle). I picked up a spool of it from the gardening section of menards that comes with a cutter... that's similar to this...
Digital camera, so that when you have to unplug or move things, you can put them back the way they were.
I like to have the following to hand.
I know I've forgotten some things...
I'm looking for stuff I leave there, not what's in my go-bag.
The only thing that should be stored in the server room is servers. Everything else should be stored nearby, but removed from the server room when not needed.
To add a bit to my above statement. Colo's and Server rooms are two different animals. With colos you generally have your cage space and that is it - would be nice if they provided lockers for client use but they generally don't.
Before we shutdown our colo we had a crash cart with the following:
After years of replacing cordless screwdrivers because the NiCad battery wore out, the Flashcell cordless screwdriver is very welcomed.
Quality tools. Cheap tools like screwdrivers that the tips shear off when you're trying to remove that overtightened screw can ruin your day, especially if you're at the colo in a downtown urban centre at 3am, and there is nowhere within a hour drive (or commute) to get a replacement. They don't have to be top of the line machinist tools, but decent quality, not a bigbox / department store set bought on sale for $4.99. Wiha, Wera, Snap-On, and Klein Tools are recommended brands.
And the right tools, that actually fit. Needing to open a case where the screws have been "stripped" due to screwdriver slippage, or using the wrong screwdriver is an act of unnecessary frustration.
Critically important - water (maybe gatorade). It's a very dehydrating environment. Temperature varies greatly. Layered clothing, you may stand in a hot or cold area of high or low airflow. Keep your water in a proper container, both for real safety and to create the impression that you are behaving carefully (either to set a good example, or in case you are caught, depending on your position).
If you expect to spend extended periods in a server room, get earphones that act as earplugs. One headache from 18 hours in a server room makes them worth the money. Otherwise, earplugs if you're expecting an extended stay. Most data centers are under the OSHA requirement for ear protection, but demand earplugs anyway - take a sound reading in the worst spot and remind that the OSHA regs were meant for 8 hours, and you could spend far longer.
Hardware and tools that you expect to need, of course - this goes for any job. This includes cellphones and other communication devices as needed. I've seen more than one server room in which cellphones didn't work.
A second person. A server room is a work site that can experience accidents like any other. I don't often hear of fatal accidents in server rooms. But I have witnessed several incidents that could have been fatal if there were no one else around. I've seen (or been within earshot of) plenty of incidents where no one was injured and a machine was destroyed, just due to luck.
A camera. I disagree that a cell phone camera is good enough - useless in my experience. A camera is important for data center work, but you need to take a picture of a machine that's clear enough to read serial numbers, hostname stickers, model numbers, etc in one shot. A cellphone camera usually can't take a picture of a serial number sticker - to get it in focus, you need to move so far back you don't have enough resolution to read it. Take a picture of cables before doing work, of unexpected or surprising fault lights. Take a picture of cables after doing work, so you can check the picture before walking back to the data center.
We have and use "community" fold-up tables and chairs in our colo areas. Provides the work surface, a place to sit and takes up little room when stowed.
Also a light jacket for when it's 90 degrees outside, you're wearing shorts and a t-shirt and you end up spending most of the night in a 65 degree server room.
A USB keyboard for those times you have to hit a function key for the machine to continue booting.
Tums and a bottle of Knob Creek as some setups hurt.
A PC with a floppy disk drive and a DVD burner, and a stock of floppy disks and writable CDs/DVDs.
A time will come when you will need to flash that firmware...
TOOLS!
Keep them locked away in the server room so they don't go walk about...
A desk, so you can go in there and work when the "outside" world gets to be too much. Also a fold-up bed/cot, for those times when things get so bad you're too tired to drive home afterwards. Oh yeah, and a beer fridge won't go astray either.
Personally, I've found one of the most valuable items to be a rechargeable torch (flashlight), mounted just inside the door. Non-rechargeable types have a habit of always being flat just when you need them most.
A small pry bar (I use a Stanley Wonder Bar II) has come in handy a number of times -- trying to get a tight server out of the rack; replacing swollen batteries out of a UPS. But it gets its most use when I have to shift everything in the rack up a couple of mm because the server I'm inserting is just a hair taller than whatever it was I just took out. (Lossen a higher machine, lift it 'til it's tight against the one above it, tighten screws, repeat down the line).
If you weren't in a colocation centre, I'd also suggest a crash cart with a serial terminal, and a lift cart (for those times when your management won't give you a maintenance window, and you really, really need to move that server; it also comes in handy when you don't have enough people to safely unrack that ancient 8U UPS, but can extend it far enough to get a lift under it).
Depending on how long your task will extend to (prepare for the unexpected!), I'd also add a cellphone, snacks, and (if you smoke) smokes. :-)
Anywhere I go in the building I take an iPhone and a headset.
In my grab bag I've got
I obviously bring a laptop as well (actually mightn't be that obvious). At present it's a Dell X-1, small, light, good battery life with the extended battery.
I have to note, it's all well and good having this stuff in your kit bag, but make sure it works before it's an emergency at 3 a.m. on a public holiday weekend when nowhere is open.
A jumper or coat.
I have spent several hours in very cold, air-conditioned server rooms.
I work for a colocation centre company and in our cages we have:
