There was a time when a system administrator knew their server intimately. They could tell you every fan noise, the meaning of every beep, and what it sounded like when the metal expanded as the server got hot.
As with the hardware, the software was almost supernaturally indexed in the system administrator's head, and they could tell you at the drop of a pin what version of OpenSSL, Apache, or Midnight Commander they were running.
There's an obvious problem with this: the hit by a bus effect.
If a sysadmin were to be unfortunately mowed down one morning, his Walkman being thrown to the road alongside the shattered remains of his Game Boy Color, all the knowledge of the server would be lost in a singular moment. The knowledge of the strange way in which the server was set to boot, meaning it has to have the keyboard unplugged at just the right moment, will...
