Is that really a place where you want things backed up?

Network admin working for this construction contractor is responsible for (among other things) providing networking to the company's trailers on construction job sites, which are spread all over the map.

"Being short-handed as most IT departments are, I occasionally subcontract out some of our offerings," says fish. "For this particular instance, we subbed out the management and maintenance of a backup appliance."

This particular backup device has had several problems in the past, but fish was able to solve the problems remotely. But one weekend, the device just disappears from the network -- as far as fish can see, connectivity is simply gone.

Because it's a several-hundred-mile round trip for fish to visit the job site, he asks the subcontractor to make a trip out to the site to investigate.

Not long after, fish gets a response from the sub, who reports that the source of the connectivity issue was immediately obvious: The backup appliance was no longer in its rack. He figured that as soon as he was able to locate it he might be able to fix the issue.

But upon further investigation, the sub says, he learned that the pizza-box-size appliance was in a closet right next to the main work area in the trailer -- and was also quite noisy.

"Being the good folks that construction types are, they decided to fix the noise issue without bothering the IT department," fish says. "They solved the issue by moving the box to the bathroom at the far end of the trailer and mounting it just above the toilet.

"Things might have gone better if the wire they used to run the new length wasn't a crossover cable."

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