What is a zombie (comatose) server, and why should I care?

Whatis.com states that 'a zombie server is a physical server that is running but has no external communications or visibility and contributes no compute resources, that it consumes electricity but is serving no useful purpose.' In a time when a server was dedicated to running a particular application or performing a specific function such as the late 1990s or early 2000s, this definition of a 'zombie' made sense. Generally speaking, zombie servers happened because they were forgotten, or never configured for the purpose for which they had been acquired (a dirty secret of the IT industry). In many cases, once plugged in, the server… [Continue Reading]