Pranks and jokes in IT are generally a bad idea, but every now and then, an opportunity presents itself that is just too good to pass up. Recently, I was at a data center that was undergoing maintenance on one of the drive arrays that are part of a large fibre channel SAN.

A vendor performed the maintenance on a direct attached console to the drive array. The console had a monitor and keyboard with an interface to the drive system. The vendor finished their task and left the console open. This is where the prank opportunity arose. Clearly, the vendor just forgot to lock the console, or the timeout had yet to take effect.

The prank was to go to the local storage administrator and ramble off details of what was displayed on the screen. “So, I was entering my direct zoning request on the console of storage array 44, and the 2140 Mdisk group doesn’t seem to be giving all 8 Terabytes. I put it in on the console, but can’t seem to have the LUN appear.” The SAN administrator’s eyes lit up and I said, “Let me show you.” We walked over to the open console and then I said, “Oh, don’t worry, I went to Google and found instructions on making 8 Terabyte LUNs — it was really easy.”

Eventually, the SAN administrator determined I was pulling his chain, and it became a good laugh. The takeaway is that if you see a system that should have the console locked, don’t attempt to lock it yourself — but notify the owner that it is open.

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If you have a good workplace prank story, share it in the discussion. Also, check out these prank-themed TechRepublic resources: