Facility Services built a demo environment that became production

“ChatGPT can probably regenerate it.”— Anja, Facility Services

Reason:

Mainly because the retention policy is "do not delete anything". Renamed three times to avoid attention.

Built by:

Anja, a working student

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

WordPress with eleven plugins

Database:

a MySQL database called test-new on a machine under a desk

Authentication:

the VPN password is the Wi-Fi password

Deployment:

using a self-signed certificate everybody has accepted

Responsible:

an external agency with no contract on file

Documentation:

a Confluence page copied from another project

Security situation:

production secrets are in a Slack message

Future disaster:

It will import production data into the test environment.

Age: 7.9 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 1 owner so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 2269 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 388 users, alive 412x longer than intended, 3 departments depend on it.