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Shoutout to the guy who stacked servers on a particleboard shelf at a dentist office in Tucson
I was doing a network cleanup for a dental practice off Speedway last Tuesday, and I walked into their back office to find a rack of three servers sitting on a flimsy particleboard shelf from IKEA. The thing was bowing in the middle like a hammock, and one of the drives was actually running hot because the airflow was totally blocked underneath. I asked the office manager how long it had been like that, and she said "about 18 months, ever since the last IT guy set it up." I had to spend an extra hour moving everything to a proper metal shelf and installing a small fan to keep the temps down. I mean, who thinks particleboard is gonna hold up under that kind of weight and heat? Has anyone else run into a setup that made you wonder if the person who installed it had ever seen a computer before?
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the_leo1mo ago
My buddy found a similar setup at a vet clinic in Phoenix last year, but it was worse. They had a tower server sitting on top of a mini fridge that was actually running, so the vibration from the compressor was slowly shaking out the hard drives. He said one of the drives had already failed and they didn't even notice because it was just email and appointment records. The whole thing was held in place with a bungee cord wrapped around the fridge handle. Your IKEA shelf at least had the decency to not actively destroy the equipment while failing at its job.
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gavin4691mo ago
Man @the_leo, that vet clinic story is brutal, I feel for your buddy having to see that mess.
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