Platform & DevOps·Infrastructure described in a file
there is one machine everyone is afraid to reboot, and its configuration exists only in the history of who logged in.
Snowflake server
Also calledsnowflake, unique server, artisanal host
A host whose configuration has diverged so far through manual changes that it cannot be reproduced. It is the direct output of in-place changes over years, and the risk is not that it is unusual but that it is unrecoverable — a hardware failure becomes an archaeology project. The standard remedy is to rebuild it from code once, deliberately, while it is still working rather than after it is not.