Test

Will you survive a night in the data center?

A simple check turned into a nightmare.

1 / 9

1. The silence is shattered by the piercing beep of the UPS. On the small display of the device next to the rack, an alarming message flashes: `Load Exceeded: 666%`.

Approach the rack and try to log in through the console (root will save you)

Pull out your phone and ping 8.8.8.8 — at least you’ll know if the internet is still alive

Scan the room for an exit, but the corridor stretches into darkness

Decide to ignore it all and keep watching the monitoring graphs — “maybe it’ll fix itself

2 / 9

2. The hum fades, and you move on. From deep within the hall comes a screech - as if claws are scratching metal, or someone is dragging a server across the floor. The echo bounces off the walls, making it seem like the sound is coming from all directions at once.

Cover your ears and quicken your pace: “I’ve already heard a squeaky RAID, thanks”

Record the sound on a voice recorder — maybe it’s a rare bug in the cooling system

Hide between the racks and try to spot the source

Head straight toward the sound: “better to check it now than wait for it to come to me”

3 / 9

3. The screech dies down, but the deafening hum turns into a whisper: “sudo… sudo…”. One of the fans suddenly stops.

Take a step back and mutter to yourself: “99.999 uptime… 99.999 uptime…”

Check the power cables

Open the control panel (suspiciously similar to Serverspace) and run diagnostics

Shout: “Who here has sudo rights?!

4 / 9

4. A rack on the left comes alive. The screen flickers: `Rebooting… Rebooting… Reb00ting… R3b0071ng…` Each line looks more like a spell than a log entry.

Kick the rack with your foot (an old-school but proven method)

Close the ticket marking it “Won’t Fix” and move on

Decide it’s a portal and watch what happens next

Connect via iLO/DRAC and try to break the cycle

5 / 9

5. Slowly moving along the endless rows, you reach a fork: three corridors stretch out in ominous directions. One is flooded with white light. The second is hidden in darkness. The third pulses with red emergency light.

Bright corridor: “production — better not touch that”

Stop, listen to the fans, and pick at random

Dark corridor: “perfect place for testing

Red corridor: “staging has always been weird”

6 / 9

6. From around the corner, the ghost of an admin appears. A badge dangles from a lanyard, the face hidden under a hood. A hoarse voice whispers: “I never closed the ticket… help me”

Brush it off: “That’s L1, not my problem”

Help close the ticket: write “Resolved”

Ask for the Wi-Fi password

Give some advice: “Time to move to the cloud. Want a referral code?”

7 / 9

7. The ghost fades into the darkness of the rows, and you step into the cold aisle. At the center, a rack glows, its lights blinking in unison like the heartbeat of a machine. The screen asks: `“Activate protection or exit the system?”`

You activate the protection, but only on the test environment — a warning alarm echoes through the corridor

Cut the power: “No server — no problem”

Connect to a VPN and wait for a miracle

You press both options at once — the racks start blinking chaotically, as if arguing with each other

8 / 9

8. Beyond the cooling zone, a small utility room opens up. In the corner, covered in dust, an old printer whirs to life — a relic of the past. It growls and spits out a yellow sheet of paper: `“SLA: Uptime ≤ 66.6%”`

Laugh: “Competitors have it worse”

Put the sheet back into the printer and press Ctrl+P — now it prints hundreds of copies

Sign the SLA to appease the forces of the data center

Scan the document and upload it to the ticketing system: “let L2 handle it”

9 / 9

9. The sheet crumbles in your hands. The emergency exit is right nearby, but suddenly the hall comes alive. The roar of the servers rises like a rocket launch. The air heats up rapidly, lamps flicker in a mad strobe. On the Zabbix control panel a line flashes: `High CPU temperature!` The racks tremble, and it feels like any second the entire data center will collapse on your head.

Grab a fire extinguisher and look for the emergency shutdown button

Sit on the floor, open your laptop, and commit the latest bug fixes

Dash toward the emergency exit door

Grab a fire extinguisher and look for the emergency shutdown button

1. The silence is shattered by the piercing beep of the UPS. On the small display of the device next to the rack, an alarming message flashes: Load Exceeded: 666%.