The perils of neglecting backup
A very large thunderstorm is headed for this company's datacentre -- an unusual event that management isn't quite ready for, reports pilot fish working there.
"When several similar companies merged in the late '90s, the one with the newest datacentre was chosen to be the production datacentre," fish explains. "However, it was originally built for a much smaller company than the merged entity, so it had to be immediately expanded.
"In the intervening years, the quantity of servers and network and disk hardware in the datacentre increased rapidly, but the UPS and emergency generator didn't keep up with the growth."
So with a big storm on its way, one high-level manager overrides the advice of the technical support team and decides to switch the datacentre over to emergency power, rather than risk the possibility that normal power could be disrupted.
The emergency generator is started up and the switchover is made on a Friday evening without a hitch.
But it turns out the generator has never been tested since it was installed — and the diesel fuel it runs on had been sitting in the tank for a long time, so sludge has accumulated in the bottom of the tank.
When the sludge reaches the fuel line, the engine sputters to a stop. Shortly after that, the underpowered UPS runs out of juice — and the entire datacentre shuts down catastrophically.
"The important servers and network were back up and running within 24 hours," sighs fish. "But some of the large databases took days to recover due to data corruption.
"And by the way, conventional power supplies weren't affected".
Smart network switch
Pilot fish tells user that IT is taking the network switch down, which will affect the user's PC and printing connections for about half an hour.
Three minutes later, fish sees the user pop her head out of her cubicle.
User: "Are you bringing anything else down?"
Fish: No, why?
User: "Because my coffee pot just went out."
Tricking a trickster
A company was being plagued by calls purporting to be from its printing services vendor, but which were clearly bogus calls possibly intended to be a prelude to pro-forma invoicing or some other scam. One user figured out a way of dealing with such calls:
*Caller* - Hi, this is 'insert name here', we just wanted to validate we are sending you the correct toner, can you verify the printer you have?
*Me* - which copier are you calling about?
*Caller* - Oh, the closest one to you.
*Me* - Do you mean the Kyocera 885?
*Caller* - yes, that's the one.
*Me* - We don't have a Kyocera 885. What company are you calling from?
*Caller* - 'click'.