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1The Data Center: Where the Stuff of Nightmares Lurks
2Valley of the Shadow of Death
3The Drowning of the Data Center
My greatest data center fear is water. We have water lines, condensate lines and plumbing drain lines that run directly above our server and network racks. Water in the data center is not good, trust me. Two jobs ago, there were water chilled HVAC units located directly above the data center. They replaced them. However, they never shut off the water to the old HVAC system (thinking they could use it as a backup in the event of an emergency). Well, one day, the seal on the main valve went bad, and hundreds of gallons of water poured down on top of our Nexus switch rack. Talk about an absolute nightmare. On top of the water hitting that, the power was run under the raised floor. Scary times.
4A Universal Terror
5Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Earthquakes! Oh My!
Natural disasters are especially frightening to me as an IT pro, whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes or, particularly, earthquakes. I’m both curious (and not interested) in finding out the technological ramifications an earthquake would have in our data center and the subsequent ripple (no pun intended … OK, pun intended) effect throughout the organization. Not just server racks, but the smaller stuff, too, like all the creative ways an earthquake would kill spinning hard drives. (Though, if racks are just falling over, hard drives would probably be the least of our worries.)
6The Email Is Coming From Inside the Business!
7The Mother of all Evils
8Monitoring 6 Feet Under
9Eaten Alive
10Motherboard of the Apocalypse
11The Unhuman Factor
I fear people and what they’re capable of. The human factor in IT is the most unpredictable and the hardest to account for. Too often, end users know just enough to cause problems. I can build a redundant data center, but if end users cannot or will not set up proper disaster recovery systems … I can give a data center redundant power, but if a truck runs into it … I can build a system that has multiple checks and security lockdowns, but if one careless or overworked or misinformed user with sufficient access clicks on that email link with the brand new virus.
12The “Help” Desk Tech From Hell
One of my greatest fears (brought about by an actual experience) is another absolutely pitiful on-site help desk tech who completely disregards procedures and starts moving cables around on network devices trying to get one device working again, but takes down six more in the process. (Oh, and it indeed was that one device misbehaving, not the network.)