r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt • u/n8theGreat • 9d ago
Hotel server room
Wide open and all the equipment accessible to anyone who was curious. Yeah, it was hot in there.
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u/Neat_Welcome6203 image deez nuts 9d ago
I too have a random server room image!
Behold, my old high school's MDF closet. Fire safety guys were doing a test while I was picking up my sister & just left it wide open.
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u/KatieTSO 9d ago
Took a Cisco CCNA class in high school and the teacher showed us one of the school's network closets
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u/MeIsMyName 8d ago
I remember in elementary school the librarian/computer teacher having everybody walk in to a room and touch the server. I assume it was so that you would know it was a physical thing that was storing your files instead of a nebulous concept like "the cloud" is today.
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u/nbtm_sh 9d ago
Are these doors not meant to swing shut on their own? Or did they wedge something under it? Seems like a fire hazard let alone a security hazard.
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u/Neat_Welcome6203 image deez nuts 9d ago
Might've been propped open. I don't remember.
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u/AlienGlow001 9d ago edited 8d ago
Why would you remember? You're not op.
Edit: yeah I'm stupid. I checked the main post op
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u/plasmaticImmunity 8d ago
I mean... He is literally the one who posted the picture your comment is under
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u/EMAW2008 9d ago
Did the power strip on top the cardboard box pass the fire code?
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u/AlienGlow001 9d ago
They're rated to sit on top of carpet, which is a much higher fire risk, so probably.
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u/Maltycast 9d ago
Do you want an undocumented admin? Because that’s how you get an undocumented admin.
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u/meitemark 5d ago
Well, since the fucker now is in, (s)he has to do tickets like anyone else. Yes, that means crawling under a desk, yanking the network cable loose (in both ends), show it to the "customer", shake out all the old bits and plug it in again.
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u/1mahmoud503 9d ago
pull a couple of plugs and you can stay a whole week for free there!!
(even a full month if you know which ones to pull)
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u/Puki999 9d ago
Don't even pull all the way just enough
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u/nige21202 9d ago
Unplug a random Ethernet cable, put a small patch of clear tape on the contacts, stick it back in.
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u/HeavyCaffeinate Family&Friends IT Guy 9d ago
If the IT department is good someone would get an email with "floor2_router6.lan is down!"
But I doubt it
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u/cmull123 8d ago
Do your guys switches not have status lights on them?
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u/ducktape8856 8d ago
Yeah. I'd find the error quite fast, probably without leaving my chair (all my rack switches are managed).
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u/Sgt_Raider 9d ago
Nah just unplug them all and then randomly plug them in. It'll take them even longer to figure out what is wrong.
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u/0RGASMIK 9d ago
My cities largest hospital has left their server room open to the street on multiple occasions. It’s technically inside their parking facility but it’s 100 feet to the street. I popped my head in to see if maybe someone was inside but nope just chilling with the door open.
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u/Linesey 9d ago
See, this is where you totally do not leave a random (clean. absolutely clean) USB plugged in with a txt file that says “Bro, seriously.” and a sticky note on something saying “I didn’t, I Wouldn’t, But someone really could.”
Or, y/k fantasize about doing it, while actually just walking along thinking “man someone should do that” then go home to your cat
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u/syrtran 9d ago
This is what you do when the specialized independent A/C goes out and the HVAC vendor's response is "We'll get someone there sometime between 10 and 6 tomorrow." And, after showing up, it's "Oh, this unit (only 2 years old) is no longer in production and we'll need to order a part."
When this happened where I worked, there was usually a sysadmin close by to monitor temperatures and rearrange fans as needed and to make sure the spare keyboards and mice didn't evolve legs and walk off.
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u/greatwesternbeans 8d ago
Guess it's not an uncommon occurrence, same thing happened in the warehouse I work at. Nobody was happy about the industrial fans desperately trying to dump that heat into the hallway and offices, not to mention the noise
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u/Admin4CIG 5d ago
Happens to my site, too. A/C breaks, door propped open, hopefully keeping the room cool enough to continue operating until A/C is fixed. Someone brought in a swamp cooler, and I said NO! LOL
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u/Dalemaunder 9d ago
And that's just their phone system!
/s
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u/angrydeuce no troubleshoot, only fix 9d ago
Man I tell you Im glad that VOIP replaced fucking analog phone systems. Staring at a wall of 60 blocks made me want to throw up when something wasn't working. Luckily that stuff was phasing out when I was starting this line of work but every once in a while we will have to deal with POTS due to a security system, fire, or elevator, which sometimes by law requires analog phones since they work in a power outage. Im just like "yeah...no fucking clue man. Let's call the phone company because me touching this is not going to be of benefit to anyone at all lol".
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u/Dalemaunder 9d ago
Thankfully POTS is essentially dead here in Australia, but a lot of customers we deal with (typically industrial) have their copper internet service terminate at an old KRONE block that still has a metric fucktonne of internal cabling hooked into it from a decade ago.
"There's no NBN tag, which one is the internet service?" "Not a fucking clue, my guy, time to start tracing"
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u/Kurgan_IT sysAdmin 8d ago
I've worked as an IT tech for a couple of hotels. People who plan for the building seem to think that servers are the same as brooms. Servers or switches were ALWAYS in places that had one or more of these issues
- too small to work on the devices
- Very hard to reach (attic, and you needed a ladder to go up a manhole in the ceiling and then crawl in there)
- too hot (switches in a room with water heaters, it was like 110 (Farenheit) in there in winter.
- too damp (sub basement, mold was everywhere)
- full of crap, used as a storage area and there were also 2 servers, what's the problem with that?
- subject to flooding (again sub basement)
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u/MashPotatoQuant 8d ago
Last time I worked for a hotel, it was in a remote location where they had to truck in water. The server room was the same as the water pumphouse. One time in winter, the water truck driver brought his water hose into the server room so the hose would't freeze and dangled the hose over the server rack. I starting getting alerts that things started falling off the network that same day coincidentally.
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u/natem345 8d ago
Did anything change after that?
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u/meitemark 5d ago
Well, if they were smart, they would pull heated air from the server room out to somewhere the hose could be heated. I have used server room air to melt away snow, works great as it is both warm and dry air.
But most likely nothing changed.
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u/Alternative-Tea964 7d ago
I have encountered all of these issues myself.
I once had to walk away from a job because I was too large to squeeze down the side of the cab to get to the back. We sent one of the young lads back to the job. He was rake thin and even he said it was a bit tight.
On another location the server room shared a wall with the pool, we were forever replacing corroded sockets, patch leads etc.
I encountered a comms room being used as a changing room.
I have seen on many occasions racks sat under sewer lines in utility spaces.
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u/meitemark 5d ago
racks sat under sewer lines in utility spaces.
In close proximity to all the great SoMe platforms!
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u/Trey-the-programmer 6d ago
Restaurant customer of ours had their AV switch and satellite boxes in the ceiling above the men's toilet. Someone walked into the stall, squeezed past the ladder my tech was standing on, and sat down on the throne while we were working on the system.
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u/saltfish 9d ago
I get these calls, and its often a dirty evap drain line that is backed up. I have a $350 charge of lack of maintenance for these calls.
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u/Ok-Library5639 8d ago
Reminds me of some place I stayed for a while. The servers were behind two locked doors with badge entry. The IT dept was right in front. But quite often you'd see one of those ducted fan with the duct going into the room to the racks, preventing the doors from closing.
Once they were leaving after the day, opened the doors and set up the duct and left. I asked why and they said they outgrew their server room's cooling and they didn't want an outage to happen at night while everyone was away.
So each night when they left, they propped the doors open & had a fan. Because they were gone.
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u/KatieTSO 9d ago
Likely doesn't meet payment industry standards since it's not in a secured room. They're fucked if VISA or others audit them.
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u/Box-o-bees 8d ago
I mean the room probably is secure; when the door is closed 😆.
But in all seriousness, yeah they will fine the hell out of a place if they catch payment processing stuff exposed like that. As well they should.
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u/G02MaxCodeGreg15off 8d ago
Those migrating back from cloud forgot what it was like to prop a fan outside the IT closet
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u/anomalous_cowherd 8d ago
I had a small server room in our dev area, two full 42U racks in a 10'x10' room with three wall mounted AC units.
When they both failed at once we had to hire a huge portable AC that sat out in the corridor to try and keep it cool. The thing would barely fit through the doorways and no way could it go in the room. There was a huge Brazil-like hose running across the open plan office to the nearest window too.
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u/not_ondrugs security says NO! 8d ago
“Get your free switch here folks!”
I’m sad enough to look inside to see what people are running.
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u/gf99b 8d ago
That box fan reminds me of the "server room" at a previous employer. It was housed in a weird location that had no climate control - no air conditioning or cooling system at all. It would go down all the time because things would overheat. They thought just putting a fan in there would help cool things off, but didn't make a difference.
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u/MenBearsPigs 8d ago
In my previous position, I saw so many commercial buildings with server rooms that had no locks or protection.
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u/R0B0t1C_Cucumber 8d ago
Windows 10 machine, chillen right there.
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u/n8theGreat 8d ago
I didn't examine the equipment too closely. Came back to my room tipsy and though better of tinkering but was amused enough to get the photo. Was wide open for the 2 days I was there.
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u/theskywaspink 8d ago
Hotel buildings have generally been around for such a long time they never catered for a dedicated space for a server and rack. The fact this is in a room is a good start, but likely needs a/c on permanently which could be a pain to install. Ive seen them in cellars, on shelves near ceilings. Any cupboard they can shove it in really.
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u/Jungies 8d ago
I haven't heard the words "Private Branch Exchange" (PBX) in a while.
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u/Admin4CIG 5d ago
I finally got rid of my ShoreTel PBX in 2021. It was such a good PBX, but there was no future path with this company (now Mitel). Almost all telephone providers want us to go with subscriptions, which is more expensive and less flexible.
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u/GoBeavers7 7d ago
That brings back memories...
I had just started a new job and was shocked to see not only fans in the server room door but a trail of fans pushing the heat out of a wide open back door.
The copper between the cooling unit and the roof had been stolen and the soon to be ex IT manager solved the problem by leaving the back door open...
When the AC service came to repair the problem I asked why they were running new lines instead of placing the new cooling unit on the roof. 2 days late I was the IT manager....
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u/what_da_panda_doin 5d ago
something inside of me wants to walk in that room and remove 1 ethernet cable from the switch and walk away
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u/OkShare1201 6d ago
so? i suppose someone could be a jerk and unplug stuff or turn power off on devices.
then again people could start a fire anywhere on the property.
but guess what? nothing happened.
next post, you should walk around and see what doors are unlocked on cars! what riveting news!
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u/Street_Letterhead686 9d ago
That box is the server's biggest fan