Harry Potter Magic in the Data Center

by the editors of eWEEK; illustrated by Brian Moore

The pain inflicted by the unforgivable torture curse is about the same as the pain experienced by any data center manager who has to fix a major server crash during the end-of-the-quarter book closing or in the middle of the holiday sales rush. –John

Wizards and witches cast this charm when a guardian is needed. The person casting the spell must think of the most incredibly happy event he or she can remember. In the case of IT managers, they may conjure a server that never went down (or perhaps downin

They wear ragged, foul clothes; they always feel abused and neglected; they frequently mutter curses at their bosses; and chaos usually erupts wherever they appear. That’s not much different from the average data center crew. –Lisa Vaas

This puts victims into a dreamlike state in which they obey every command of the dark wizard who cast the spell, just like a bot herder that has assembled a vast botnet of enslaved PCs. –John Pallatto

This map allowed Harry Potter to see who was moving about the halls of Hogwarts Castle. Editor Cameron Sturdevant uses his Trillian instant message client to see who is out and about on the Internet. Like Harry spying Wormtail wandering the halls, Cameron

Harry Potter was born with the ability to understand the language of snakes. But in the IT world it would be anyone who can understand a sentence loaded with industry acronyms. –Debra Donston

Wizards drink it to assume the physical form of another person. But it must also be what the spammers are drinking before they concoct letters from our banks, from Microsoft support and from eBay, seeking to steal passwords and account information to assu

Why bother with TCP/IP when all you need to do is set up a portkey to transport people, things or information through space and time? –Paula Musich

This spell causes an object to shrink. What most Muggles dont realize, however, is charm is whats really behind IBMs 45-nanometer manufacturing process. –Pat Burke

What IT manager wouldn’t love to be able to recompile a corrupted disk drive with a single command? –Debra Donston

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