Have you ever racked a server? 

I am by no means an IT 'graybeard'. I have been doing this kind of work for about nine years now and have been with a few different companies/environments in that time. One thing that hit me the other day is that I haven't put my hands on hardware in any real capacity since transitioning into the civilian workforce. When I was at EMC, we had a few stacks that we used for training, but my job was 95% software-focused, so it was more about knowing where certain parts were located on the server.

I did, however, have to rack a server during my time in the Navy. We were out on deployment when one of our Solaris servers decided to give up the ghost. When we pulled back into port, a huge shock-absorbent case labeled "Fire Control - Strike" (the name of my division) sat on the pier. Being one of the more technical members of the division, I was assigned to pull out the old stack and install the new one.

Normally, I'd just snap a photo of all of the connections in the old one, then replicate the setup in the new one. However, we weren't allowed to have cell phones in our working areas (due to the classification of the materials), and I had to get special permission from the weapons officer to use a camera phone for the task. He later stood over my shoulder and watched me delete the photo and the metadata associated.

Anyway, I said all that to tell a personal story and ask the question, Have you ever racked a server?