New game for Scouts or engineering geeks maybe ;)
Good idea triggered by comment from a work colleague of mine.
Server rooms come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Some are well organised and others have more chaos!
When you work in them you often have to step carefully and elegantly and dodge and twist around equipment and cables.
Especially if you are debugging you might have to move in new equipment and search for boxes and follow different cables and plug in / un-plug and re-plug cables.
It can become quite an epic single-person twister jenga yoga tai-chi game!
This is maybe less common now with servers moving to cloud managed in big datacentres which are probably more organised with respect to cable routing and connectivity.
Even the area behind your TV should be getting more simple.
Anyway.
Game is a bit like jenga as well as twister - with elements of yoga and tai-chi - and frogger(slippy log croc dodging river crossing).
You don't hold the position like twister (unless a really cruel session of routing re-plugging multiple cables is needed! - or indeed cleaning optical cables before connecting)
In real life server rooms without a map lots of the clambering can be needed to just find the right boxes and ports.
I have had great fun in past.
Ideal location and equipment:
Old decomissioned server room with some old unused boxes, cables(power, ethernet and other), etc etc
Old network routers and modems are good which do not have a fixed home in rack so they end up on top of or under other boxes or just on the floor.
Probably best not to use live electrical sockets - a selection of power extension cables is needed.
Other unconnected electrical and telephone/modem sockets are optional.
Add in old household modems and TV/audio-visual and computer equipment of any sort.
You can also include kitchen appliances - anything with plug and cable.
Alternate location:
An area with a specific boundary - room or carpet or map (or tent?).
Alternate "equipment":
You can make pretend machines from cardboard boxes or other with ports for connecting rope cables. Get people to bring any WEEE(Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and bring all to recycling centre after you are done.
Audit equipment and cables and floor space.
Label each cable end as A or B
Make a random choice generator for 1. items of equipment 2. cables and end A or B
Optional random generator for specific port in each equipment(optional) matching cable.
Play:
Run random choice generators.
You must take the item of equipment and plug specified cable end into a compatible port.
(into the specified port if playing that variant)
You may move the item of equipment (as long as some other item of equipment or cable doesn't fall or break).
You cannot stand or bash into cables or equipment.
As the game runs you cannot unplug items.
The room should get more difficult to navigate as game progresses.
It would be good to keep some sort of order so that clutter is not too bad but .. well .. see how it goes.
You could setup room at start with heavy equipment down middle or at sides e.g. real server racks or fridges/...
Decoration: disco balls, shiny blinky lights, ...
Have fun!
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| Empty server room racks |
Further reading:
https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/22/cabling_horrors/
https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/messy-server-room.html
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