'Let's just shove a bigger fan in there and see what happens'

Techies tiptoed around server to keep it working as company sank

IT people are asked to cram a lot into a working week, which is why The Register tries to ease readers into Monday with a new instalment of “Who, Me?” – our reader-contributed column that shares your stories of office mistakes and escapes.

This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as "Robert," who told us he worked for an outfit that scours newspapers and websites to find stories mentioning their clients.

"We found key words in articles that customers were paying us to monitor for. We would then cut out the articles and send them to the customer," Robert explained.

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Sadly, business wasn't great. By the time Robert left it was almost bankrupt, and he gathers a fire sale ensued.

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That strained financial situation meant the company was very keen on keeping legacy hardware alive.

"We had this one 2U pizza box server, and one of the three internal fans wore out," Robert explained. The server was so old no replacement was available.

"So, we took the lid off and put a bigger fan on top of the component that needed the airflow," Robert confessed. The server couldn't tell the difference and kept working.

Six months later, another internal fan broke.

"The logical thing to do was to put another ill-fitted fan in/on the server to ensure that the airflow was good," Robert said. Again, the server didn’t have a problem with that.

The server, which was an integral part of the company’s daily operations, was now operating with one original fan, no lid, and two non-standard fans precariously balanced over its exposed components.

This rig mostly worked.

"We had to be careful when working near the server, because too much shaking would cause the fans to fall over," Robert confessed.

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When the third internal fan died, management finally decided to buy a new box.

Have you rigged risky hardware and gotten away with it? If so, share your story by clicking here to send email to Who, Me? We're pretty sure The Register's hardware will hold together long enough for us to tell your tale on some future Monday. ®