This place had something like five thousand servers over several data centers. Like most places that size or larger, the admin never actually sees the servers

This place had something like five thousand servers over several data centers. Like most places that size or larger, the admin never actually sees the servers. You (the admin) get a serial console and at best tell the monkey to replace part X or Y. At worst, it gets shipped back to dell, and reported as a new box when dell doesn't fix it (dell never fixes intermittent problems, unless you can tell them /exactly/ what the problem is. )