Uncle Sam's IT bods find 2,000 data centers they FORGOT about

Re: Down the back of the couch, under the seat cushions, where else?

"Look, it's simple. If you can't find the XP machines, stop issuing them IP addresses. The users will find you soon enough."

Depends. I once got called out to "fix" a networked printer that wasn't connecting. After checking the settings and seeing all the right flashy lighty things looking normal I phoned their IT guys and asked them to confirm the IP address of the BootP server the printer was looking for. Silence. Then "what BootP server?"

It turns out the last BootP server had been decommissioned two years previously but no one had ever switched the printer off until there was a power cut so it had just carried on working with it's existing settings.

In respect of these old XP PCs, they might be running off fixed IPs and so be even harder to find. They might need to hire in some script kiddies :-)

Every level of government is swiming in quicksand...

Watched a friend help a county government consolidate from many buildings down to one new one, and part of that was sizing the data room and most importantly the AC/power required. Quite enough people/groups returned the questionaires/queries about what they had and needed, that the coordinators really felt they had gotten everybody, even better as some things trickled in after a few weeks so even the laggards were accounted for, right?

After all the power/AC/server contracts had been let and announcements about projected scheduling/timing for early moves were distributed, the third half of the requirements showed up from groups that just hadn't bothered, and with no recognition that now they'd created an impossibility. It wasn't just "can we stuff that many servers into the space", it was that "we don't know how to reinforce the roof to hold that much AC", or even "will that much AC fit in the available roof area!?!"

I don't know what resulted - I did the "hear no evil" thing. If "the cloud" was available back then I think the panic would have driven them to it. It was only tax records, budgets, payroll, criminal records, court proceedings, and the like after all...

@ Mark 85

Aww, come on... who of us can honestly say that this sort of thing hasn't happened to them as well every now and then...

Re: 500 sqft +

"Not surprisingly, Dept of Defense has the most lost ones."

Maybe they told someone but then had to shoot them.

@kain preacher, Well - it shows you how good the govt are at hiding stuff away. If you have big enough budgets and lack of accountability you can hide all sorts of big stuff...

@kain preacher - You do not live here to see the outrageous incompetency at the federal level compounded by state and local idiots. Others wonder way many American think the feral government is a bunch of thieving criminals with something the Mafia never had - legal protection. 2,000 is probably an order of magnitude low.

Re: Not to worry

"All of these problems will be dealt with when Congress passes the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act Reform Act."

FITARAR?

Re: "Lost datacentres"

That could be such an incredible movie... a bunch of auditors accidentally stumble into a long forgotten data centre and meet the BOFH of BOFHs...

Re: I can't believe anyone else has not already said this!

Nah.. not NSA. TSA owns them and all the servers therein have the unpatched, unprotected databases.

Saudi Arabia finances Datacenter Madrassas?

Keep up...

Skynet has been around since the 60s...