[Beowulf] removing tiles around heavy racks?

[Mark Hahn]

> The floor rating may be relevant.  Typical 'concor' floors made by Tate 
> Access Flooring have point load ratings of 1250, 1500, or 2000 pounds.

sure, but I'm not interested in whether something will go through a tile.
actually, these ratings always puzzle me a bit - given that a rack will
always have wheels on four separate tiles, is a 1250 rating assuming the 
rack is ~4000 lbs?  oh, maybe if you have a rack on diagonal and/or very 
badly balanced?

> Since this is a safety issue, I suggest you contact the floor manufacturer 
> and ask their engineers directly.  I wouldn't trust any response that you 
> get from this newsgroup as definitive.

good advice.  unfortunately, vendors tend to give numbers so safety-padded
that they're unrealistic.  for instance, designing machinerooms based on 
the peak theoretical load of a computer's PS - say 500W for a dual-opteron
which I can measure consuming <250W under load...

regards, mark hahn.