Rant: that 14 hour day I had last Tuesday in Cleveland

Got a call at 7am from a law firm in Cleveland. Their whole network was down. Server wouldn't boot. I get there and it's a failed RAID controller on a Dell PowerEdge they bought used off eBay. No backups of course. Spent 8 hours rebuilding the array and restoring what I could from shadow copies. Then the managing partner yells at me because his email is still missing from three years ago. I charged them $1,400 for the day. Has anyone else dealt with clients who expect magic from a decade old server with zero backups?

3 comments

3 Comments

victor77925d ago

People really think old hardware is immortal until it isn't"... yeah, that's the whole problem right there. I've started adding a line to my invoices for jobs like this that spells out the server's actual age and the lack of backups, so when they start yelling I can just point to the paper. If they want magic they need to pay for a real maintenance contract.

ryan_shah3825d ago

Bruh that's brutal. No backups on a decade old eBay server is just asking for disaster. The partner yelling about emails from three years ago is peak entitlement, like sir you literally have zero redundancy. $1,400 is honestly light for that kind of nightmare, should've charged double for the emotional damage alone. People really think old hardware is immortal until it isn't.

miller.rowan24d ago

Whoa, hold up. I see it different. A decade old eBay server with no backups? That's not entitlement from the partner. That's ignorance. Most people don't know hardware fails. They think it works like a car, you just drive it till it stops. I've walked into that mess before. They're not mad at you. They're scared. That server had their whole business on it. Emails, contracts, everything. Should they have had backups? Yeah. But most small business owners are just trying to keep the lights on. $1,400 for a data recovery and server rebuild on a ticking time bomb? That's fair. Maybe even cheap. But calling the partner entitled for panicking about their lost emails? That's harsh. They're just human. Fear makes people act stupid.