Oops! True IT blooper #13: What manual? |
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By Matthew A. DeBellis
28 Jul 2005 | SearchSAP.com |
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An IT pro gets that lightheaded, sick feeling that comes from making a really big IT mistake. The cure? Take two aspirin, and read the manual.
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The cable blooper goes to show it's important to read the entire manual, not just the index.
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Like many contributors to the "true IT bloopers" series, the perpetrator of this IT crime chooses to remain anonymous. We'll identify him only as Greg, a systems engineer. The scene of Greg's crime is a Montreal consulting shop that hosts two ISPs.
A few months ago, Greg was charged with setting up a large uninterruptible power supply grid in the server room. He solicited estimates from electricians, who wired the grid nicely. Greg then transferred all the servers to the new power grid during the evenings.
"Everything was going perfectly, as planned," Greg said.
After he successfully moved all the servers, Greg began to install a machine that would monitor the UPS and automatically shut down connected clients and prevent PCs from powering off and generating errors on reboot.
He set up the monitoring machine, installed its companion software on a client and connected it to the UPS. He gave the device manual a cursory glance.
"As soon as I connected the cable, I heard a suspicious 'click' from the UPS," Greg said. "I felt that strange dizziness one feels when suspecting something terrible just happened.
With great trepidation, Greg walked back to the server room. "I will always remember the eerie sight of all the screens turned off and the complete silence of the place," he said.
Greg had used a normal serial cable to connect the UPS and PC. That was the blooper. He'd overlooked the cabling section in the instruction manual.
Had he read that section, he'd have known that the UPS grid required a special DB25 cable to connect the UPS grid and monitoring PC. If the UPS was grounded for just five seconds, a pin on the DB25 connector prevented an emergency shutdown.
"The pin exactly matched the ground connection on a normal serial cable," Greg said. By using the serial cable, "I accidentally cut the power to the entire server room."
It took Greg and few hours to restart machines and services and clean up databases. No data was lost, "But it was a close call," Greg said.
The cable blooper goes to show it's important to read the entire manual, not just the index.
Share your bloopers with us. E-mail them to editor@searchsap.com. Read more of our past IT Blooper Series, which originially appeared at SearchWin2000.com, part of the TechTarget network.
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