Persuasive Maintenance of Benelux
-
Start your own damn topic. This one's mine!
I'm just trying to add to the atmosphere of Jeff-ness around here. So I decided to post in your topic, which is what they called the Side Bar in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say.
Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. I didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
-
None at all. It's a shared co-location facility
OK, that explains it. You do not have your own cabinet, so access to your machines comes with it access to other people's stuff.
Now, to get off @abarker's lawn. ;)
-
So I decided to post in your topic, which is in what they called the Side Bar in those days.
FTFY
-
i-could-tell-you-what-goes-on-in-there-but-first-i-would-have-to-kill-you
Telling someone something after you kill them tends to be rather counterproductive for both parties.
Why didn't we replace all four?
Preferably at once. Not only do you get fresh hardware, but there's so much free space afterwards!
-
Maybe you could only get half at a time so that the beer does not get warm.
A wise Chinese man once said1, "Even the greatest bender starts with the first half pint..."
- Probably in some Chinese dialect.
-
-
OK, that explains it. You do not have your own cabinet, so access to your machines comes with it access to other people's stuff.
Having had that before at a previous job, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with that ballache again.
2 people had fobs to get in, the rest of us needed to give like 4 days notice and all sorts of paperwork. Because all incidents give you 4 days notice they'll happen.
I don't need to visit servers in person these days but even if I did, we've got 2 entire data centres of our own so the sharing thing isn't an issue.
-
Having had that before at a previous job, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with that ballache again.
I have never had to deal with it. We started with a half cabinet in shared space. I looked at colocation, but I don't like other people screwing with my stuff because of reasons just like the OP talked about. The few times I have had to deal with "remote hands", they have not struck me as capable. I have told them to hard cycle a machine, told them the exact place it had in the rack and what the machine name was on the label, and had them reboot the wrong machine because the label was closer to the power button of the machine below it.
-
A previous company had a rack and a half. Rack 1? Fine. Was a hassle but less so because it was ours. The other half rack? Fuck. Better hope you don't need access in a rush unless you're 1 of the nominated 2 people.
If I ever need access in this job (and I don't) I can just send an email.
-
The other half rack? Fuck. Better hope you don't need access in a rush unless you're 1 of the nominated 2 people.
Was it not a split cabinet? Ours had two doors, we had the upper half and there were two doors to the cabinet and a divider in the middle that split it. When we moved up to a full cabinet, due to prior planning, all they had to do was replace the doors and take out the divider. Pretty easy, and we always had access.
That was at our old datacenter. They had plenty of other WTFs, but that part was always sane.
-
No. Full height door.
-
No. Full height door.
There's the WTF.
Like this:
http://www.sellntell.com/images/xm-ultra/ul-co_2comp_5.jpg
Although theirs were reconfigurable so that you could change the doors and take out a divider and have a full cabinet.
-
-
send out an enterprise email about what was happening and bunker down until the storm passed.
I think you hunker down here. Or you get into a bunker.
-
There's always a critic, which is one reason why I never tried for a writing position on the front page.
Also: I've heard it both ways. ;)
-
What could possibly go wrong?
This is a representative line from a conversation involving a failed RAID controller connecting an (IIRC) AS/400 to a 30-disk SAN: "You can't just go to Best Buy and pick up another one."
-
Also: I've heard it both ways.
The people telling you to bunker down were wrong. HTH, HAND.
-
I remember showing someone here a quote for buying SAN storage for some new functionality they wanted. Their response: "why can't I go down $pc_shop and buy a USB drive and we connect that".
.....
-
Saw our operations chief almost burst into flames the other day because some dev was being smart and kept on asking about rpm of the disks in the new multi tiered storage they are testing. I told him he should have simply responded: zero.
-
"Because it's not the same thing."
-
I remember showing someone here a quote for buying SAN storage for some new functionality they wanted. Their response: "why can't I go down $pc_shop and buy a USB drive and we connect that".
I once told a client that we needed to upgrade the storage on their server and I needed to order parts. A few days later, without replying to my email or consulting me, they tell me that they had the drives. I arrive to see a USB hard drive. Hmmmmm, not really redundant storage...
The kicker, this was quite a few years ago and the server in question was U320.
-
Explaining SAN vs NAS vs some shitty home USB drive from $pc_shop to that sort of person is like pissing in the wind.
In the end I just went with the dickweedy "I'm paid to understand this and you're not" approach.
-
I wouldn't try. "A single USB drive can't give you backup[1] capability."
[1] I know, I know, redundancy != backup. I would start here, with the simplification.
-
This is a thing? Like, you have no access to your own servers?
We don't even have admin rights to ours.
Even our admins don't have physical access.
There are separate admin teams for Windows, *nix, DB, and networking.
The non-Windows teams work only from tickets.
They gave the windows guys one giant ticket for us with high priority - so that works OK.Test is the same way - except we have read access to Test.
And dev isn't configured anywhere near to Test/Prod.
-
The people telling you to bunker down were wrong. HTH, HAND.
I could care less about people using the wrong words.
-
The kicker, this was quite a few years ago and the server in question was U320.
Sure it wasn't U-571? Seriously though, why is U320 significant? Google tells me this is a part number for headphones.
-
-
-
-
Do you work with me?
I play a game wherein every time I get a quote for servers, I figure out how much datacenter I could build and staff for the price.
Got a quote for two blades today. Could fill two racks with blade enclosures and fill those with high end blades.
-
I play a game wherein every time I get a quote for servers,
You can get a quote for servers?
Our customer provides old discarded junk for our dev environment. We have an 8+ blade server we can't use because no one will ante up and buy the cable to power it.
Hah! When I was child... our server just had one bit!
And you had to hand carry the stone from place to place.
-
-
I play a game wherein every time I get a quote for servers, I figure out how much datacenter I could build and staff for the price.
I enquired about getting a 2U server a couple of years ago. Our needs would have been more than amply met by a quad-core xeon and 16gb of ram and a TB or so of disk. Instead, IT quoted me $15,000 for a maxed-out PowerEdge. I don't need 128GB of RAM for a handful of development databases.
-
no one will ante up and buy the cable to power it.
how much is this cable? You should buy one, and then offer to take the server off work's hands since they won't pony up for the cable.
-
So when you say blade, so you actually mean blade as in the Super high density stuff with the cabinet providing connectivity, or do you use it to mean "normal rack mount server" like most people. This is the only place I've ever been where we actually use blade to mean an actual blade.
-
how much is this cable? You should buy one, and then offer to take the server off work's hands since they won't pony up for the cable.
Can't. Still belongs to the customer.
Uh-huh.
-
So when you say blade, so you actually mean blade as in the Super high density stuff with the cabinet providing connectivity, or do you use it to mean "normal rack mount server" like most people. This is the only place I've ever been where we actually use blade to mean an actual blade.
Yep. Box about as big as our old servers - slots for 8 or more blades... it's powered by some weird-voltage cable with specific connectors, which wasn't sent with it.
-
-
it's powered by some weird-voltage cable with specific connectors, which wasn't sent with it.
I guess you can't contact the person at the customer that probably has a pile of them lying around, either.
-
This is the only place I've ever been where we actually use blade to mean an actual blade.
We use actual blades. Racks and racks full of enclosures.
-
Impressive.
-
I guess you can't contact the person at the customer that probably has a pile of them lying around, either.
"A what cable? Well, we can look..."
I have no idea whether they really did look.
-
It's a lot easier when the data centres are ours, that reduces the cost significantly.
-
Our in house DCs are all classic rackmount with direct attached storage. We have a third party to which we outsourced most of our DC ops and are moving more into all the time that does blades and SAN.
The service is fucking terrible, backups unreliable, DR is only alleged and cannot be proven and it costs several orders of magnitude more than if we had one enormous in house DC with the same equipment.
-
-
We use actual blades. Racks and racks full of
enclosuresfuckin' machetes.What I wished you'd said.
-
What I wished you'd said.
....
this one does not wish to entertain the idea that has come into this one's head upon reading your edit.....
ICK!
-
....
this one does not wish to entertain the idea that has come into this one's head upon reading your edit.....
ICK!
No idea if we both thought the same thing… but if we did, it could explain how daggers are made
-
it could explain how daggers are made
it could indeed. not the exact image that went through my head, but you got the general gist.
-
it could indeed. not the exact image that went through my head, but you got the general gist.
…now I'm wondering if you thought of something worse.And if you'll use it as revenge for this