Every IT guy has had a day when they wanted to take a sledgehammer to a server or maybe drop a whole rack from a tall building. Admit it, we’ve all thought about it – but then, you’d have to rebuild everything and in the meantime, deal with the outage and all of the disgruntled users, and … and … and …
Speaking of frustration, have you ever wondered why your boss or coworker always seem to get to do cooler stuff than you do?
Well … those two notions crossed paths for me last week, when I found out that one of the other guys at ESG was going to hang out with Symantec when they threw a running server rack off of a building (really). Here is the video:
So, a couple of serious lessons here:
Lesson 1 — Most of us plan for the easy stuff when it comes to availability or protection scenarios – but its not always the easy stuff that happens. A server rack falling off a building may be crazy, but I’ve heard of friends in Colorado where deer walked in an office, freaked out and kicked a computer. I’ve known of server rooms that were careful not to be directly under a bathroom on the floor above, but didn’t know about the water lines on the floor above that, etc. Stuff happens. Stuff you can not imagine – but that you can protect against.
Lesson 2 – If you are going to ignore the safety tape on the sidewalk, be sure to look up.
And Lesson 3 – (most importantly) The next time that your manager asks “Are you free next weekend?” … don’t be so quick to say no.
Thanks for watching … and Symantec, niiiiice job!
[Originally posted on ESG’s Technical Optimist.com]