The poor little guy held on for years. Lightning strikes, an overload of choking dust, power surges, accidental unplugs, and Leisurely Larry, the incompetent IT guy never taking care of the poor little fella. And then, on that fateful day, when it was needed the most, when all of the company’s backups were scheduled, the servant server slipped away into the great beyond. Its power supply was fried, and the single hard drive that was begging for some redundancy spun its last rotation. Larry was baffled. Dumbfounded. “Why would it just die like that?” he asked himself. Now, what to do with the 48 pound lifeless hunk of metal, diodes, fans, and failed drives. Larry couldn’t bring himself to simply dump the poor little bugger off in the dumpster out back, it just didn’t feel right. What to do, what to do. Larry had a lightbulb go off, he’ll leave it outside the office door, someone will pick it up and use it for scrap metal. It was genius and he’d save the company money. Daydreaming about his employee of the month award that would surely be bestowed upon him for this victory, he dragged the lifeless corpse out the back door, propped it up, and headed for home.
The next morning Larry, after picking up his triple soy, single pump vanilla, 2 shots of decaf espresso with light froth, he rushed to the back door of the office. “It worked” he thought! The server was gone, vanished, departed, and he had saved the day. Until he didn’t.
A few days went by Larry’s boss Samson dropped by his IT closet. “Larry, a word” Samson announced with some extra power in his voice. “Be right there, boss” Larry said as he chugged down a few gulps of coffee. Larry trudged on up to Samson’s office and sait down kicking his feet up on the edge of Samson’s desk. “Did we just retire the server?” Samson asked. Larry spoke up with a sense of pride in his voice: “Ummmm, yeah Boss, it died the other day and “recycled” it. Samson pressed “Where did you recycle it?” Larry exclaimed “I didn’t want it rust out at the landfill so I left outside so that someone could recycle it.” He was beaming with pride, as if he had just saved the planet. Samson, who was starting to turn red out of anger raised his voice. “I just got an email from a cyber thug wanting to sell our company data back to us or they are going to take down our entire network AND sell our company data on the dark web.” Larry was baffled. “But that hard drive was dead.” Samson interrupted him, “That doesn’t mean that the data was erased you nimrod!!!” “You’re fired Larry, get out of my office.”
Larry shuffled off while Samson called Advanced Systems Solutions to come and replace the server AND to help mitigate the ransomware situation. When ASSI dropped by, they also recommended that the company put an End of Life plan into place so that when other hardware passes away it is processed swiftly and by professionals who shred hard drives and destroy every other critical component. The company now has its data back, has a shiny new server that is handled with care by ASSI remotely, and has a plan in place to retire equipment and ensure that their materials are handled securely. Oh, and they saved a TON of money by not having Larry, the liability around anymore.
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