HP video blows up data center, goldfish tank in publicity stunt

In an attempt to dramatize its failover technologies, HP recently posted a five-minute video in which it blew up a "data center" - about five racks of equipment - in a simulated gas leak explosion.

HP exploded its servers, SAN and network products - and a small fish tank on a desk in front of the racks containing three goldfish.

If you've ever wanted to blow up your data center you can view what would happen here. To spare yourself the marketing blab and cut to the chase jump ahead to the 3:00 minute mark in the video to see the explosion.

In the end, all of the systems fail over, of course. As for the three goldfish, they appear to fly through the air and land safely in a new tank. HP doesn't say, but presumably no goldfish were harmed in the making of this movie. The gag is that the engineers blew up the fish along with the other equipment. In order to save them, of course.

What do you think will get more attention: The fact that HP blew up a few racks of data center equipment, or that it appeared to blow up the goldfish?

If exploding goldfish is funny, what about blowing up puppies? Or human babies? Would it be funny then? While simpler life forms (amoeba, insects) are expendable for the sake of the joke, it seems that more complex ones (puppies, children) are not. What's interesting is how we make those relative value judgments and where we draw the line between funny and tasteless. For many people, I suspect that the lowly goldfish sits somewhere near the dividing line.