Techie assumed boss knew what they were talking about and killed Exchange by deleting data

On Monday mornings, The Register began its new column, "Who, Me?" where readers share their mistakes and their consequences. This week, a reader identified only as "Phil" recounted an incident from many years ago when he started a new job that involved maintaining Microsoft's Exchange server. Phil had extensive experience with Exchange servers, having worked with them on Windows NT systems in the past.

One Friday afternoon, a user reported that email was running slowly and not reaching or leaving the building. Upon inspection, Phil found that the primary issue was a massive log file directory that had consumed most of the system's space. Confident in his abilities, Phil considered the usual fix - asking Outlook users to delete emails.

However, this wasn't feasible late on Friday when employees were rushing to finish their workweeks. Phil's IT director happened to observe him working with the log files, and the director suggested deleting them. Phil, assuming the director's expertise in Exchange management, proceeded to delete the 300GB of log files.

Upon leaving the office that Friday, Phil's alarm bells began ringing. When he returned on Sunday, he found that the entire system had crashed due to the deletion of those log files. The on-call technician for the weekend was overwhelmed with requests for help, but Phil took it upon himself to repair and rebuild the Exchange database using command line tools.

By Sunday afternoon, he had restored the services and got everything working again. He spent Monday facing potential disciplinary action, but instead, he was praised by the CEO for his dedication. Phil refrained from blaming the IT director for his mistake and accepted the praise graciously.