1. Discovering that the last 2u space in the rack is actually blocked by a rogue power cable threaded through the rails.
2. Not being able to figure out how to remove the crusty old rails that the last engineer left behind. Resorting to brute force leaves a smear of blood behind on the rack where your hand got caught on the sharp edge of the rail.
3. Losing a chunk of a finger trying to remove an old metal screw mount left behind by the last engineer.
4. Trying to lift a 30kg server up and onto flimsy metal rails at around face height and not being able to get all the notches lined up and locked in.
5. Discovering you’ve put the server in upside down.
6. The cable management arm won’t fit because the rack has ultra wide PDU’s. Create a new gash on your hand while trying to pull the arm back off of the rail.
7. While running the network cables you discover you have only 1m or 10m Ethernet cables when you really need 3m.
8. Powering on the server only to discover that one phase from the UPS is at capacity and that it’s the one that feeds your rack.
9. Dropping one of the bolts as you are removing the server to relocate it and it drops down the side of the rack into that weird sill at the bottom of the rack you can only get to when there are no servers in the rack. Smear a bit more blood on the rack trying to fish it out.
10. Discovering that the physical memory capacity is no longer enough due to more and larger VM’s. Then having having to order and replace all the RAM in all your hosts. Again.