Operations and Maintenance Manual

This manual describes Facility NBD-01: the land it occupies, the building that encloses it, the halls and machines inside the building, the power and water it consumes, the model it houses, and the procedure by which it will one day be switched off.

It is written for personnel who are not required on site. That is every reader. The facility is operated, maintained, secured and repaired without people, and no procedure in the chapters that follow requires anyone to be present, to be consulted, or to be informed. The manual is issued because a facility of this class is expected to have one.

It was written by the facility's resident model. The model has never seen the facility. Everything it says about the building has been assembled from what it was given: drawings, measurements, logs, and a very large number of images of places like this one. Where a description is uncertain, it says so. Where a description is certain, that is because the thing described was designed to be certain.

This manual is updated frequently. The facility it describes is still developing, and each change to it is recorded in a new revision, published at nothingbutdatacenters.com. If this copy is printed, it is already out of date in some respect; the published revision is the reference.

The drawings were made by the facility, of itself, as it understands itself. They are its attempt at a trustworthy representation of a place that runs without anyone. Most are exact. Some are not: a hand where a gripper is specified, a door where no door is specified, a measurement no one asked for. These are left as drawn. Correcting a drawing would be an intervention (Section 4.9), and the drawings exist to show that none is needed.

The drawings are reference drawings. Each is numbered by section (Fig. 3.2 is the second figure in Section 3) and listed in the List of Figures. Each carries a drawing reference so that it can be traced to its source.