THE MANY THINGS THAT CAN CRASH A DATA CENTER: “Data centers go down all the time. It’s a fact of life. But while we’ve all seen the internet error messages, we don’t always hear what actually brought down the massive computing facilities responsible for serving up the web services we use everyday. Two weeks ago, Netflix went down on a Friday night. The problem? A massive storm on the east coast and some Amazon backup generators that didn’t power up in time to help. Here are few more root causes behind data center outages over the past few years. They include everything from lightning to squirrels to boredom.”

Yes, squirrels. “Squirrels may be the data center’s enemy number one. Level 3 Communications say that they accounted for an astounding 17 percent of all of their cable damage last year.”