Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor

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Santa's SLA First published 05 December 2006 A cheering festive tale of the SLA that didn't deliver all it seemed to promise. For reasons too personal to be interesting, Christmas brings out the worst in me. My happiest Christmas was spent covering for a DBA colleague. I was on double time, and sitting in a nice quiet spot in the Server Room where only swipe-card holders could enter. (We somehow neglected to issue swipe-cards to the management. It must have slipped our minds.) I was contentedly sipping a sherry and gazing at the performance monitor, as one does with a Lava Lamp, relishing its calming, hypnotic, qualities. 'God rest you merry' ... A deep peace was all around me. Just then, a disk failed in a SCSI array on a critical database. I knew that, if another one went, it meant big trouble. I was working for a Telecommunications company, and Christmas Day generated one of the peak
292 Santa's SLA revenue days for the company in the entire year, as people phoned home. Putting down my sherry-glass, I rummaged around the store cupboard to slot another one in. There wasn't one. I phoned the DBA at his home. "Hello, it's Phil here. I'm at work." There was a scream of overexcited children in the background, blowing off an e-number binge by quarrelling noisily. "Ah yes," he said wistfully. "18 Gig SCSI drive gone tits," I told him, lapsing into esoteric jargon. "Ooh," he exclaimed hopefully, "do you think I ought to come over?" "No need." I responded, cruelly. Christmas, as I've already explained, does that to me. "Just tell me where the spare 18 Gig SCSIs are kept. Even I know how to hot-swap a drive in a RAID array." "Hmm. No spares, we don't carry them any more. We were hoping to get a new RAID array with larger-capacity drives after Christmas." "So what is the solution?" "We have a service-level agreement with the supplier that guarantees a twohour response time. Just give them a ring and let them do the worrying". After a long wait, ringing the supplier, then probably the largest providers of Enterprise-level servers in the world, a voice answered. "Hello," said the voice irrelevantly. "I'm with xxxxx Company, and we have a maintenance agreement with you for our servers." I quoted the reference numbers. "Mo," There was a tapping on a keyboard at the other end after which he came back and asked what the problem was. "18 Gig SCSI drive has handed in the dinner pail. It has croaked." "Oh, I'll just put you on hold while I put you through." Then the 'calming' music ... … When it snows ain't it thrilling Though your nose gets a chilling We'll frolic and play the Eskimo way walking in a winter wonderland … Aaargh!! Any residual pining to be celebrating a festive Xmas in the bosom of my family died at that moment. A 'Bob Cratchitt' chill entered my heart.
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Best of Simple Talk Confessions of
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ii Copyright Phil Factor 2009 ISBN
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iv Clinging to the Flotsam. A Survi
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Introduction During my career as an
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10 Training Your IT Manager The DBA
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12 Training Your IT Manager Section
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14 Training Your IT Manager via cur
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16 Training Your IT Manager it. Per
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18 Training Your IT Manager Of cour
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20 The Septic Tank Miscellaneous el
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The Yancey Men First published 03 O
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Section I: On Learning to Love your
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Bunnikins! First published 24 Augus
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36 Betting on Promotion At one stag
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38 Betting on Promotion could at le
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40 How to Prevent Initiatives that
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42 How to Prevent Initiatives Guys,
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Irregular verbs for IT managers Fir
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Phrases with which to discourage id
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52 Initiating a project with a Stra
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Looking Busy First published 23 Nov
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60 Doing things - The Manual Do som
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62 The Incident of 'The Two Johns'
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Section II: The Strange Business of
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66 Going It Alone I had it working,
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The Walrus and the Manager First Pu
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Click-A-Crematorium First published
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80 A Chilling Prophecy Some time ag
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82 Talking Technical explaining tha
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The Diary of a Microsoft Marketing
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Microsoft Boy announces his School
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92 The March of Technology "Just be
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94 The March of Technology got the
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Clinging to the Flotsam. A Survivor
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Section III: Software Projects: the
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110 Confessions of an IT Strategist
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112 Confessions of an IT Strategist
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114 The Technically Minded Subclass
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The Data Dialog First Published 30
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The Joy of NAD First Published 30 O
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Smoke and Mirrors First Published 1
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132 The Acronym Playpen Basic. I ch
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The Writing on the Wall First publi
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The Ghost in the Machine First publ
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146 The Sticking Page-Down-Key Inci
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148 The Sticking Page-Down-Key Inci
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150 The Escape from Developer Hell
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152 The Escape from Developer Hell
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154 The Time Bomb The bolt from the
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156 The Time Bomb I made sure that
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158 The Time Bomb For us, it was so
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160 On the Trail with the Cowboy Co
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162 On the Trail with the Cowboy Co
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164 When the Fever is Over, and one
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The Computer that Swore First Publi
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Section IV: Hiring, Firing and othe
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IT Agencies and the Devil First pub
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The Stepford Geeks First published
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192 The Terror of Technical Tests t
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194 The Interview with the Psychome
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196 Brown Shoes Don't Make It in th
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Technical Interviews and Tests Have
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204 Two stops short of Dagenham Eve
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The March of Time First published 2
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Fired With Enthusiasm First Publish
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The Whipping Boy First published 21
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220 Hens that Crow He seemed compel
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222 Hens that Crow street. I spent
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224 The New Man subject he knew abs
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226 The New Man told me the Directo
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Section V: What If …? 229 Had IT
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Section V: What If …? 231 energy
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Had offshoring been responsible for
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Section V: What If …? 235 Beaumon
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Section V: What If …? 237 Jonson:
Page 241 and 242: 240 Had Tennyson been a Technical A
Page 243 and 244: 242 Had God been a Technical Author
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Page 251 and 252: 250 Captain Codd and the Simple Pro
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Page 256 and 257: Section VI: Hiccoughs in the Workin
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Page 261 and 262: 260 The Pub Lunch and Programming i
Page 263 and 264: 262 At half-past three, it's time f
Page 265 and 266: 264 At half-past three, it's time f
Page 267 and 268: 266 Cha: Tea-drinking for IT Develo
Page 270 and 271: Survival Tips for PowerPoint Boredo
Page 277 and 278: 276 The Joy of IT Meetings period.
Page 280 and 281: Why do we call them 'Bugs'? First p
Page 282 and 283: The Ballad of the Tuple Relation Fi
Page 284 and 285: Common Law, and the Need for Restra
Page 289 and 290: 288 Phil Factor on the Law my appli
Page 291: 290 Phil Factor on the Law Meanwhil
Page 296 and 297: Tomorrow will be our Dancing Day Ph
Page 303 and 304: 302 The Data Center that Exploded:
Page 305 and 306: 304 The Data Center that Exploded:
Page 307: About Red Gate You know those annoy
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