Failed ProjectsYou start off with the best of intentions, but through raging incompetence, ineptitude or the plain fact that you're working in IT, things go terribly wrong and there's hell to pay. Tell us about the epic failures that have brought big ideas to their knees. Or just blame someone else.
(
Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 3 Dec 2009, 14:19)
« Go Back
Relocation BluesMany moons ago I was involved with the relocation of a well known banks data centre, this bank was so cheap (cost concious they said)that it would involve the removal of some 70 odd servers to a new location,
We planned for weeks as to how we would acheive this while our bosses tried to persuade the bank that it would be far more cost effective to set up a new data centre from scratch, and copy existing data from the old centre to the new one.
They insisted that the servers were only 5 years old and still had a lot of life left in them, after all they said they were paying the bills and we had better do as we were told.
Come the big day we have a team of techies standing by Friday 21:00 data centre shuts down after all backups complete, servers are powered down techies move in all this has to be out and at the new location by 09:00 Sunday.
We work through Friday night till lunchtime Saturday catch a few hours sleep, back on the job 18:00 Saturday check nothing is left behind we have a truck full of servers racking and about 300km of cabling we all stagger home while truck goes to new location.
05:00 Sunday morning leave home to drive to new location arrive at about 07:30, every one has assembled by this time my boss marches up to the building and proudly announces that we've come to set up new data centre, security guy say no you haven't they haven't taken possesion of the building yet in fact it was doubtful whether they would.
Turns out that some twat in the banks legal dept still had the lease agreement sitting on his desk unsigned, result we all went home never heard another thing
(, Fri 4 Dec 2009, 14:14, 1 reply)
hmmm..Interesting if true; but not one single technician tried to visit the new site beforehand to assess the location where, you know, they're going to be installing a crapload of hardware? I'd have thought that came under the umbrella of "We planned for weeks as to how we would acheive this".
(, Mon 7 Dec 2009, 0:39, closed)
« Go Back