- May 18, 2001
- 7,882
- 380
- 126
Long story - I'll try to make it as short as possible.
Our Database Administrator wants to have complete and total control over the databases. She doesn't want anybody making any changes to them, which I totally understand. After all, she's the expert.
We have a dedicated test server on which is a test database for one of the software products I support. We just did a major upgrade of this software product. During the upgrade process we ran into some significant problems that I couldn't fix. During this time, I got the vendor's technical support to help out. They weren't sure how to fix our problems either, so I would allow them to remote into our server. They spent many long hours playing with settings and playing the "lets try this to see if it works" game. Finally, they got things to work and we upgraded our production software successfully.
A few days ago, a request came from the user who "owns" this software to refresh the test database. I did, and some of the old problems cropped up again. I messed around with it for a couple of days, but to no avail. Finally, I restored from backup the entire test server (which has only my software on it, and nothing else). The problem was solved.
A little while later, I started getting emails from Mary asking why the server was down for a while. After I explained the situation, I got a long bitchy email from her saying that I needed to leave the servers alone. She made the implication that since I'm a domain admin I was just changing any and all servers as I saw fit - which isn't true - I changed just my test server and would never think of even touching a production server.
So in order to keep the peace I sent an apologetic email back to her. Granted, I should have told her what I was doing. Also, she had been playing around with setting up some jobs on the test server; she probably lost that work, which is my fault.
But here is my case: she and I both had agreed that the test server was suspect because we don't know what the vendor had done to it; if the test server is to be of any value to us, it needs to 1) work, and 2) be as close to the production environment as possible. Also, it's a freakin' test server - she shouldn't be storing important work there, because the environment is open to anybody (me, users, other IT people) who wants to tinker on it (i.e. I don't think you should store important work in an open test environment).
Right now I'm feeling both guilty and a little angry. Admittedly, I screwed up. I also think she overreacted and overstepped her bounds.
What's the ATOT consensus?
Our Database Administrator wants to have complete and total control over the databases. She doesn't want anybody making any changes to them, which I totally understand. After all, she's the expert.
We have a dedicated test server on which is a test database for one of the software products I support. We just did a major upgrade of this software product. During the upgrade process we ran into some significant problems that I couldn't fix. During this time, I got the vendor's technical support to help out. They weren't sure how to fix our problems either, so I would allow them to remote into our server. They spent many long hours playing with settings and playing the "lets try this to see if it works" game. Finally, they got things to work and we upgraded our production software successfully.
A few days ago, a request came from the user who "owns" this software to refresh the test database. I did, and some of the old problems cropped up again. I messed around with it for a couple of days, but to no avail. Finally, I restored from backup the entire test server (which has only my software on it, and nothing else). The problem was solved.
A little while later, I started getting emails from Mary asking why the server was down for a while. After I explained the situation, I got a long bitchy email from her saying that I needed to leave the servers alone. She made the implication that since I'm a domain admin I was just changing any and all servers as I saw fit - which isn't true - I changed just my test server and would never think of even touching a production server.
So in order to keep the peace I sent an apologetic email back to her. Granted, I should have told her what I was doing. Also, she had been playing around with setting up some jobs on the test server; she probably lost that work, which is my fault.
But here is my case: she and I both had agreed that the test server was suspect because we don't know what the vendor had done to it; if the test server is to be of any value to us, it needs to 1) work, and 2) be as close to the production environment as possible. Also, it's a freakin' test server - she shouldn't be storing important work there, because the environment is open to anybody (me, users, other IT people) who wants to tinker on it (i.e. I don't think you should store important work in an open test environment).
Right now I'm feeling both guilty and a little angry. Admittedly, I screwed up. I also think she overreacted and overstepped her bounds.
What's the ATOT consensus?
Facebook
Twitter