Look but don’t touch — The art of not unplugging

Look but don’t touch.
Touch, but don’t taste.
Taste, don’t swallow.

         –Al Pacino, The Devil’s Advocate

While this is one of my favorite quotes of all time, it fits perfectly into my next so-called rant and funny story. Windowsitpro.com had a great story about a university web site going down because someone took the X-box out of the room. (I do hope you’ll check it out for a quick laugh.) Now, while I don’t condone installing your favorite flavor of Linux onto an X-box and then using it as a server in your server room, I do love the idea of making sure you know what you’re touching, when you’re touching it.

See, there are very few times that something is placed in the server room without reason. The HVAC unit is there to keep your temperature down, the fire suppression system is there to keep fire from destroying your environment and servers are there to serve you data. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t sure what a server is or what it does — know this, it’s important. That should be the same for any other equipment you may come across.

I will be the first to admit that sometimes I put things in the server room to simply keep people away from them. My lunch (because the fridge is so far away) and my spiffy new equipment that I’m testing are two things that come to mind and just as above, they should not be removed by you or anyone else without the consent of the guy or gal that’s in charge. This guy made an honest mistake and I’m sure he will never make it again. Heed his mistake and don’t touch, even if it is shiny.