Happy Halloween

Either folklore or fact, we all enjoy recounting horror stories. We probably have all heard about the broken coffee cup holder support call or the one about the guy who couldn’t turn on his computer despite a power outage in the neighborhood. In honor of this festive day, allow me to add two tales to your anthology.

Misguided efforts

The first day at my new job at a previous employer, I spent some time reading the IT FAQ entries. The first (and most popular) question:
Q: "My CD ROM is broken".
A: "Contact IT immediately, CD ROMs aren't permitted at this company".

Coming from predominately creative software development companies prior, you might imagine my aghast reaction. I asked the IT director about this. He responded that CDs aren't permitted because they create an avenue for viruses to enter the network and more importantly are a method for persons to copy and take the company's intellectual property. The punch line - every single person had full and unaccounted access to anything on the Internet.

Sir, your data center is a new swim center

One part of the security triad is availability. Due to some local or state regulations, many datacenters are still required to maintain water sprinklers for fire suppression. The work-around is to install a double interlocking dry-pipe sprinkler system. In these systems, the water pipes are dry and fill only in the event of a real fire. The value is that your data center is spared a deluge in case of a mistake. That's not always the case.

A software development company in northern California had no pre-action system in their data center. One day, the plumber was called in to repair a pipe to a bathroom located near the server room. He fired up the torch and began working. Seconds later, smoke and fumes hit the detector. What he had next was about 3 inches of standing water inside a 1,000 square foot data center. Everything soaked, many days of downtime.