Customer paid for six months service from wiped server • The Register

Who, me? Why hey, Monday! You beastly harbinger of one other week of labor and related woes, which The Register every week welcomes with an instalment of “Who, Me?”, our reader-contributed tales of techies who make errors and principally mollify their masters.

This week, meet a reader who requested to be Regomized as “Sam” and as soon as labored at an organization that, because of a collection of acquisitions, had a various portfolio of infrastructure and apps it was migrating right into a consolidated datacenter.

One of many apps dealt with what Sam described as “billing for inspections.”

“Plans had been drawn emigrate the system into current billing platforms,” Sam recounted. However as typically occurs when firms consolidate, employees with necessary data fall had been let go with out care.

That imply the billing app’s sole developer was surplus to necessities however had already been employed as a contractor to help with ” some emergency short-term repairs” whereas the bigger growth staff labored on the migration.

Two years later the app was nonetheless operating on its unique server, and Sam received phrase it was time for that field to maneuver to a different function.

“After just a few emails confirming with the remainder of IT that this server was not in manufacturing – as a result of we absolutely did that migration – I eliminated it, wiped it, un-racked it, bodily moved buildings, and repurposed it for an inside system,” Sam instructed Who, Me?

After which he thought nothing of it for six months, till he obtained a message about not having the ability to hook up with the long-since-repurposed server.

“A scramble ensued,” Sam stated, as he and colleagues checked the app had certainly been migrated.

It had not, and no person knew why.

Nasty questions adopted.

Why wasn’t it migrated?

Do we’ve backups?

What do you imply while you say “There aren’t any backups”?

Why did it take six months for somebody to report this app was down?

The perfect query of all was: “How lengthy have we been billing shoppers for this?”

The only real developer who understood the app was once more requested to assist, and in line with Sam “instructed the corporate to buzz off and that he wouldn’t assist us for any amount of cash.”

At which level the migration mission shot to the highest of the event staff’s to-do checklist and was given all of the assets wanted to get the job accomplished quick.

“It was built-in into the present system in only a few months, agile timelines be damned,” Sam stated.

Sam instructed us he was not blamed for this mess. “I had accomplished all my checks first,” he stated.

However he’s nonetheless just a little down on himself for not fairly doing all he may to make sure the server was not indispensable.

“I suppose it goes to point out, irrespective of what number of occasions you verify, at all times depend on that powered-down ‘what does it break’ evaluation earlier than pulling one thing out, irrespective of how many individuals say you are within the clear,” he instructed Who, Me?

If in case you have the same story of a useful resource being eliminated with out anybody noticing, click here to send Who, Me? And email and it could be your story kicking of one other week of Reg enjoyable. ®