Ever made an IT mistake that stopped time?

gilgi
gilgi Internal Posts: 581 ✭✭✭

We’re talking about that moment — when everything grinds to a halt, palms get sweaty, and you realize business can't go on until it's fixed. Whether it was a single click that took down the whole network or a "quick fix" that broke everything, we've all been there.

Got an epic story that froze the office in place? Share it with us!

The best (or worst?) stories will earn a special badge — because if you can't laugh about it later, did it even happen?

Share below!

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  • GregS
    GregS Member Posts: 10

    A data center had a water cooling system leak. The data center was overheating at 2 a.m. and had to be shut down urgently. We were all able to come to the data center the next day at 3 p.m. to try to restart everything.

    Our servers didn't restart right away; the heat had caused the plastic on the disk bays to shift. Fortunately, when we took the disks out and put them back in, everything worked again for us. I don't know about the thousands of other data center customers.

  • COOLNETAU
    COOLNETAU Member Posts: 88 ✭✭✭

    I trusted Datto backup services. had backups of old sbs2011 machines.

    kaseya purchased datto.

    decided to make a retroactive charge to my account that immediately put me on STOP service.

    (we paid religiously - datto was great.)

    kaseya took over and in order to align our billing in their system, created a pro rated charge that showed up on the statement 6 months before the day the made the change.

    a charge we never saw. this charge basically put our account on stop service.

    fast forward a month and we get notification that clients sbs 2011 had crashed from our RMM - (now we are not idiots, we knew this day was coming and had done due diligence to ensure continuity even if it would take a few days.)

    so we say, no worries, we pay a motza to keep this backed up we will go spin up the current backup. no problem.

    try to access the service.

    panic.

    Call DATTO

    get told Kaseya now owns them

    Put 2 and 2 together

    rebuild the network around mitigations in place.

    client only down for 2 days instead of weeks.

    the screw up? trusting a company like kaseya to do the right thing.

    further to this, if atera ever sells and does not advise me, I will be pissed.



  • COOLNETAU
    COOLNETAU Member Posts: 88 ✭✭✭
    edited April 2025

    Oh, I have also caused a production VM to die because of hyperv snapshot issue. sphincter clenching ensued

    lost 24 hours for the client but backups saved the day. this one we all laugh about today.

  • gilgi
    gilgi Internal Posts: 581 ✭✭✭

    :0

    That's a big chunk of time!!! @COOLNETAU

  • derek
    derek Member Posts: 47 ✭✭✭

    I have a good one, it is about how we found out that another company brought a customers of ours network down.

    This was about 25 years ago, we received a phone call to say that the network had gone down and no one could access the servers. I asked the usual questions to see if they had anyone like electricians or carpenters moving partitions who could have accidently cut the cables (this was a common occurrence at this particular customers site.

    I duly went to site to investigate. They had a several BNC networks connected to a thickernet cable which went all around the offices and through the factory. The first thing I did was to go to one end of the thickernet cable and with my trusty multi meter I measued the resistance. It read 50 Ohm (it should be 25) so I knew there was a break in the cable some where.

    I then followed the router of the cable popping ceiling tiles to see if I could see any breaks in the cable, I was on the 1st floor of the office block (Floor 2 for our American Techs), I went to walk through one of the doors, as I opened it I could not believe my eyes. There was nothing on the other side of the door, the entire building that it had to had gone. I peered through the door and looked to my right and I could see the broken end of the cable just hanging there.

    I went back to the FCA and said I have located the fault come with me, I showed him the dangling cable. No one had told him that the attached building was getting demolished.

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