Classic WTF: Server Room Fans and More Fun

In the 90s I visited a datacentre in an a central London location. The providers charged for both power and space (and bandwidth). I had cause to lift one of the floor tiles to reposition a power cable slightly for the rack I was working in. What I saw stayed with me.

Stuffed under the floor of the adjacent rack were perhaps a dozen-or-so small servers, switches, the odd modem or 2, and perhaps a kvm box. The tenant had obviously exceeded his physical space but not his power allocation. He had simply "gone underground". Like a little farm of blinking LED mushrooms in the dark.

I mounted a colo server backwards once. The fan intakes were on the warm side and the output on the cool side. I was so embarrassed. It was like that for years and anyone that looked in our cage would see it. I was mortified.

Goodness. I wish I had a cameraphone in the 90s. There were tons of data centers, IT rooms, telco, labs, meetme rooms, sewers, all done at the seat of your pants.

One building I worked at had their DMARC room/closet only accessible from the handicapped stall in the men’s restroom. Yup.

Working in Malaysia in 2001, had to fireup some backup fans some weekends, as the building owner would switch off our floor aircon. Fortunately lived in the neighbouring residential tower so it wasn't far to walk to check on it. Eventually got a dedicated circuit for the server room.

When I was a operator at a computer room (early 80s) with 3 Wang VS Systems and a couple of 2200 systems and multiple large line printers. The company had the cheapest AC Systems installed and no raised floors, all wires would drop down from the ceiling instead.

So in the summer time, the room would sometimes be well above 90F (32C). When that happened we had to have multiple large fans brought in. To add to that, the room was on the top floor (3rd) and during heavy rain storms, the roof would leak. So out came clear plastic tarps to cover the units.

I wish I had taken pictures. But I will say something, we never had no hardware failures due to heat and water dripping. After a few years the company finally built a real computer room.

Man I forgot this website even existed. I'm so pleased to see it's still up and running. It was a regular fixture on my RSS feed back in my university days (20 years ago, yeesh). I might have to take some time this morning going through the past couple of decades of posts.

One building I worked at had their DMARC room/closet only accessible from the handicapped stall in the men’s restroom. Yup.

Theoretically, if a handicapped man had to use the restroom for 30 minutes at exactly the same time some sort of DMARC emergency happened, would the guy get priority, or the employees who really need access?

Goodness. I wish I had a cameraphone in the 90s. There were tons of data centers, IT rooms, telco, labs, meetme rooms, sewers, all done at the seat of your pants.

I wish I had taken pictures. But I will say something, we never had no hardware failures due to heat and water dripping. After a few years the company finally built a real computer room.

and it worked. Something to keep in mind whenever your boss won't let you requisition a whatever.

And here we have first-hand testimony of early datacenters wasting perfectly good water!

and it worked. Something to keep in mind whenever your boss won't let you requisition a whatever.

Pretty sure most? people would agree the person needing to use the bathroom gets priority. I wouldn't want to be the one to clean up after him otherwise.

Just turn off smtp for 30 minutes and fix your spf/dkim after the air clears?

And here we have first-hand testimony of early datacenters wasting perfectly good water!

Just turn off smtp for 30 minutes and fix your spf/dkim after the air clears?

Pretty sure most? people would agree the person needing to use the bathroom gets priority. I wouldn't want to be the one to clean up after him otherwise.

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2026-07-22 Edit

It's been pretty hot lately. Probably should use a fan to cool off. Mind the trip hazards. Original. --Remy

"It's that time of year again," Robert Rossegger wrote, "you know, when the underpowered air conditioner just can't cope with the non-winter weather? Fortunately, we have a solution for that... and all we need to do is just keep an extra eye on people walking near the (completely ajar) server room door."

"For as long as anyone can remember," Mike E wrote, "the fax machine in one particular office was a bit spotty whenever it was wet out. After having the telco test the lines from the DMARC to the office, I replaced the hardware, looked for water leaks all along the run, and found precisely nothing. The telco disavowed all responsibility, so the best solution I could offer was to tell the users affected by this to look out the window and, if raining, go to another fax machine."

"One day, we had the telco out adding a T1 and they had the cap off of the vault where our cables come in to the building. Being curious by nature, I wandered over when nobody was around and wound up taking this picture. After emailing same to the district manager of the telco, suddenly we had the truck out for an extra day (accompanied by one very sullen technician) and the fax machine worked perfectly from then on."

"I found this when I came back in to work after some time off," writes Sam Nicholson, "that drive is actually earmarked for 'off-site backup'. Also, this is what passes for a server rack at this particular software company. Yes, it's made of wood."

"Some people use 'proper electrical wiring'," writes Mike, "others use 'extension cords'. We, on the other hand, apparently do this."

"I was staying at a hotel in Manhattan and somehow took a wrong turn and wound up in the stairwell," wrote Dan, "not only is all their equipment in a public place (without even a door), it's mostly hanging from cables in several places."

"I spotted this in China," writes Matt, "This poor switch was bolted to a column in the middle of some metal shop about 4m above ground. There were many more curious things, but I decided to keep a low profile and stop taking pictures."

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Classic WTF: Server Room Fans and More Fun

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