This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by francotel
🕛 The Midnight Nightmare
It was midnight at SpookyCloud Inc.. The office was dark, and the only light came from Bob’s laptop screen. He was tired, ready to go home when suddenly...
🔔 Slack Alert: "EC2 instance terminated"
"Finally," Bob sighed. That old server was deleted weeks ago.
But then...
🔔 Slack Alert: "EC2 instance running"
Bob’s heart skipped a beat. "No... no way," he whispered.
He opened the AWS console — there it was, running again. He stopped it once more.
🔔 Slack Alert: "EC2 instance running"
😨 The server was back... again.
💀 The Monster Grows Stronger
Every time Bob stopped the server, it returned — stronger and angrier. The CPU usage climbed higher, draining resources like a hungry beast.
Bob checked the logs... nothing. No deployments, no cron jobs. It was as if the server had a mind of its own.
He grabbed his keyboard and typed:
aws ec2 describe-instances \
--filters "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" \
--query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[InstanceId,Tags]'
📋 The result? No tags. No owner. No clues.
"It's a ghost..." Bob muttered.
👁️ The Forgotten Curse
Digging deeper, Bob discovered the truth — the server belonged to a forgotten Auto Scaling Group from an ex-employee. Each time the server died, the group brought it back to life... like a cursed tomb opening again and again.
Bob’s fingers shook as he ran this final command:
aws autoscaling delete-auto-scaling-group \
--auto-scaling-group-name "zombie-asg" \
--force-delete
⚰️ The server was gone. For real this time.
📜 The Moral of the Story
Like any good fable, Bob learned important lessons that night:
🧟♂️ Always tag your resources. A tagless server is a mystery waiting to haunt you.
🧟♂️ Clean up old environments. Forgotten test systems may return from the grave.
🧟♂️ Review your Auto Scaling Groups. Hidden triggers can summon the undead.
🧟♂️ Automate cleanup tasks. Don’t leave ghost servers to haunt your bill.
🤝 Let's Connect!
If you find this repository useful and want to see more content like this, follow me on LinkedIn to stay updated on more projects and resources!
If you’d like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Thank you for your support!
Thank you for reading! 😊
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by francotel
francotel | Sciencx (2025-03-12T22:47:05+00:00) 🧟♂️ The Zombie Server That Wouldn’t Die 💀. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/03/12/%f0%9f%a7%9f%e2%99%82%ef%b8%8f-the-zombie-server-that-wouldnt-die-%f0%9f%92%80/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.