Things That Go “Bump” in the Data Center

Telling tales of data center horrors this Halloween

October 31 is coming up soon, so it’s time for costume parties, haunted houses, and your favorite scary movies. Halloween stories are frighteningly fun during parties or wrapped up in a blanket at home—we all love a good Dracula or Frankenstein tale!

In the spirit of Halloween, we may tell stories of things going “bump” in the night, but nothing’s as terrifying to tech pros as things that go bump in the data center.

To celebrate Halloween this year, we want to know your scariest, most goosebump-inducing data center fears and anecdotes that not only scare you this season, but year-round. Did you have a mishap with a chiller, HVAC, generator, or branch circuit? Or did something outside the data center affect your ability to conduct business as usual?

Tell us your scary stories and how you fought against these spooky tales by Friday, October 11 and we’ll put 250 THWACK points in your account.

Parents
  • At one of my old jobs, our financial system was on an AS400 (mind you this was about 7 years ago). But running updates on it required me to be there physically in the middle of the night. Around 2AM, outside my office window as I was sitting there watching the update progress... I felt something watching me, I turn and look out my windows and BAM there was a cat staring at me. Scared me to death, as I was the only one in the facility at that time. Other employees, as I was still fairly new here, had told me to be careful at night as the building was haunted so I was already nervous!  Stinking cat must have seen my light on through the window and wanted to see what was going on. I think I scared him as much as he scared me!

Comment
  • At one of my old jobs, our financial system was on an AS400 (mind you this was about 7 years ago). But running updates on it required me to be there physically in the middle of the night. Around 2AM, outside my office window as I was sitting there watching the update progress... I felt something watching me, I turn and look out my windows and BAM there was a cat staring at me. Scared me to death, as I was the only one in the facility at that time. Other employees, as I was still fairly new here, had told me to be careful at night as the building was haunted so I was already nervous!  Stinking cat must have seen my light on through the window and wanted to see what was going on. I think I scared him as much as he scared me!

Children
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