The Sun Shines on the End of the Work Day
The Sun Shines on the End of the Work Day, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.
Last night it was HOT in London. Hot and sweaty, the weather forecast stats that it will be even hotter tonight. It got hotter in Eugene, but I don’t think it was ever so humid, even in the 90s.
Some Advice for IT Types
“IT is at the heart of business these days and there are real opportunities now to have a career in IT which will ultimately lead to a position on the board.”
If this is the case, why are so many IT jobs filled with people who have no idea what they are doing? I spoke to my share of IT reps from firms all over the Fortune 1000 and Fortune 50 that had no clue what they were doing, nor did they have any idea where they were going with their mandates. Often they had no plan or action plan.
One example really sticks out for me; a hardware changeover plan that had no “buffer” the IT rep wanted to replace an important firewall with another one. He felt assured that he could just replace the current device with a new and wholly different one if the new devide was configured correctly.
This was a bad plan for two reasons:
1) There was no fallback beyond dropping the old hardware in place.
2) The router was the MAIN ingress to their websites and mail systems. There were no external fallbacks or alternate sites for users to visit during the downtime. If the transition went BAD (new hardware fails and old device breaks during transition) there was no fallback.
I know, you’re thinking: Kevin, what would you have done?
I would have published a new set of DNS records with a TTL of about 15 minutes. I would publish them a week before I made the transition and made sure my DNS server was not inside the new router. Once in place you would have 15 minutes of downtime while you performed the transiton to a new host for your website if something went wrong during the switch. That’s fairly easy to deal with.
I like the idea of planning for downtime like that; you could even change the TTL on the DNS records back to 24 hours when you are done.
Here are some tips for outage planning
- Have a fallback plan for total failure:
If it is an internet enabled service that users need access to, publish DNS records that point to a “Server is down” page on the net (for web services) when the primary record(s) is/are down.
Keep offsite hard copies (by hard copies I mean stored on Hard disk or Tape)
Keep enough cash in the IT budget to buy server time on multiple hosts should short-term downtime become extended overtime.
Any server that is important enough to serve all your needs should have a clone on hand with all the same data, backed up every 6 to 12 hours (or less) so that if your primary server(s) go down a clone can go online in seconds.
- Announce the outage in as many ways possible. Email is never enough for big outages. Warn users in cloud writing if you think they will read it.
- When the outage is going to take a machine out of service forever, contact any old admins and/or users and determine if they have stored anything important on the box. You never know.
- Treat every outage as a potential crisis and be ready for complaints regardless of success or shortness of time.
- Confirm that all parts and plans are in order before the outage in underway, if at all possible create a schedule and checklist for the outage that creates a series of milestones and ETAs that can be delivered to end users and managers.
After all, you are the heart of the business when you are in IT, right?
Non-IT Grads don’t want IT Jobs
Just read this passage and wonder at it:
Non-IT graduates think a job in IT would be “boring,” despite its good career prospects, according to the Career Development Organisation (CDO).
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/06/24/231173/it-is-boring-say-graduates.htm
Read it again, I’ll wait.
Okay, got it? It opens with “Non-IT Graduates” as if to say someone who went through school to get their MBA or Masters in Psychology would be interested or even qualified to fill an IT position. I think the article is grasping for the why not IT in the first place kind of feeling, but instead comes to a screeching halt right up front with that first line. I read it as “people who were never interested in IT think that IT jobs are boring” and you know what, they should not get into IT if they feel that way.
I’m fairly certain that there are a number of people in IT these days who got into it for the money; and through sheer personality have excelled. Good for them. It’s kept down a few really smart people in the ranks because they don’t have the social skills to impress the uppers, but maybe those types will be weeded out and the more focused geeks will rise to prominence.
Time will tell I guess.
The Stacks of Beer
The Stacks of Beer, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.
Yeah, this is what I see on my way into work every day, the stacks, not the clouds. It’s nice and sunny outside right now, also very green.
I was worried that I would be giving up all the green when I came down here to the City; I’m no nature lover, but I do like the trees and grass the come with nature. London has proven to be very green, excessively so. But like Kubla Khan, I find wisdom in excess and think that the tree lined streets are awesome and I go out of my way to drive down the back streets to stay among said streets.
Visiting Manitoulin Island
From Wednesday through Friday Jen and I visited Manitoulin Island; in order to visit with the Guys at Manitoulin Transport.
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LifeStream
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
Full Day over, stumped by a copy/paste error in the afternoon
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: For Rememberance Sake and SSH in the Future http://tinyurl.com/6g2zbm
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
HTOP is the Shizz, that is all.
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: Racist of the Week: Sad Bastard BNP Member http://tinyurl.com/5kcsdt
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
I had to use a MAN page to resolve a question and consult Kernel notes to verify something, truly this is a golden nerdy age.
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
Good Morning, took ages to get going today, hopefully the flywheel is up to speed now.
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
On the phone praying to the Insurance Gods and listening to the same 4 songs over and over again...and again
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
On the phone praying to the Insurane Gods and listening to the same 4 songs over and over again...
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
My Question is: Will Jello Biafra be okay with Obama "Not" walking to his inauguration? The constant threats hove got to considered.
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Posted a tweet on Twitter.
Tragic and Entertaining - Tradgetaining http://tinyurl.com/5l75gl
