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Halloween Horrors: Real-Life Scary Stories from the Data Center & Beyond

solarwinds_worldwide_llc
Less than one minute read time

The beginning of October means it’s time to start stocking up on candy, carving pumpkins, and picking out the perfect Halloween costume. But it’s also a time to scare yourself silly with cheesy Halloween movies and, of course, stories of times when chaos reigned in your data center.

The end user’s ghost haunts us all with innocent mistakes this Hallow’s Eve. From security oversights, to trying to troubleshoot their own issues, to accidentally breaking equipment through an unfortunate potion of liquids and electricity, IT pros have seen it all. With the spookiest day of the year approaching, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the scary stories you’ve experienced (or may have yet to experience!) – and we want to hear them!

Help us celebrate Halloween this year by submitting your real-life scary stories or nightmarish fears about end users by Wednesday, October 17 and in exchange, we’ll give you 250 THWACK points.

  • There was a power outage on the whole block when we were doing maintenance on the data servers and the UPS that we order 3 days ago malfunction ...on a tuesday at 1 am ....coworker had to go to his place and get a backup file from 1 month ago while we were working on bringing the server back fully functional.

    It does not get easier when operations start at 6 am and you have managers breathing on your neck looking at the clock and then at you every minute. And all of them were sleep depraved so humor was not cool at all.

  • Our concern after how s/he got in became more alone the lines of - what happens if someone is getting electrocuted and we hit the power off button only to find that the person is still being electrocuted when we try to help them because not all the power has been cut. We end up getting fried too !!!!!!!!

  • In 2010, I worked at a new DR/HA Datacenter in Washington state. That fall, there was a newb electrician working on the power rail for the rack units in the data center.

    At noon, the electrician accidentally hit the emergency power off switch as he left for lunch. The company (redacted) was extremely frugal when it came to capital expenditures, especially enterprise software. In fact, frugality was written into the company mission statement. And so, the only monitoring software in use was the free version of What's Up Gold (A.K.A, WUG).

    Needless to say, the power outage was not immediately detected. And so, while I was out to lunch the battery backup for the UPS was completely drained. When I returned from lunch, the scene was complete bedlam. The phones were ringing off the hook, with red-faced management and contractors running about like lunatics. The result, 100+ servers experienced a complete power loss (many with data corruption) and 1 electrician was fired that day.

  • Your choice of words and actions was worthy of a good help desk person and a member of the military.  Thank you for not belittling the 1st Lt., and for providing training to prevent future problems, and for removing a damaged piece of gear.

    Nicely done.

  • During my time in the USAF, there was a short window (six months) of time where the contract for our Help Desk was terminated.  During this time they started up what they called the "Virtual Help Desk".  What this meant was each team had to give up one member of their team for a week to work as the Help Desk.  One of the calls has stuck with me.  Here's a quick run-down of what happened:

    Me: Thanks for calling the Help Desk.  This is Airman Martzall, how can I help you today.

    Caller: This is 1st Lt. Notarealname.  Well, my PC is eating my CDs.

    Me: Did you say eating your CDs?

    Caller: Yes.  Every time that I put a CD into the PC, it just vanishes.

    Me: Are you hearing any odd noises before it vanishes?

    Caller: No, it's just gone.

    Me: Where do you sit?  I'll head down there to take a look.

    Caller: ***Provides the location***

    A bit of context before the fun starts.  The year is 2003.  The 1st Lt. was a recent college graduate, meaning should have used a computer to write many, many term papers.  My assumption at the time was that maybe she was used to PCs and she had one of the Sun or Silicon Graphics machines.  When I arrive to the desk, I see that it is a PC.  It was a Dunn workstation (it's shaped like a pizza box with Pentium 2 and a CD-ROM drive).  These were being replaced with new Pentium 4 Dell Optiplex machines.  This one is really loud and sounds like it may have some serious issues.

    Me: Would you show me what you are doing when the CD vanishes?

    The Lt. takes a CD and proceeds to force it through the gap under the CD-ROM drive. 

    Caller: See, it just vanishes.

    I then go through how the Lt. should be using the CD-ROM drive, to which I receive the "Oh" response.  I then open up the case to retrieve the CDs.  When I do, three of the eight CDs inside the case have melted over the heatsink for the processor which was directly under the CD-ROM drive.  I hand the Lt. back the other five CDs.

    Me: I am going to take this PC back with me.  The PC rollout team will bring you a new one as soon as they can.

    Caller: Why are you taking it back with you?

    Me: The three CDs I was unable to retrieve are melted over the processor and the PC poses a fire hazard.

    Caller: I didn't mean to break it.

    Me: No worries.  This PC needed to replaced anyway.

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