IT Tech-Guy office rant - server uprgade and impatient users

[narzy]

for all you lusers out there saying it should be a weekend job, or do it at night or whatever, it don't work that way where I work (comcrap) no matter what time we do it, we still get that group of 40yr old porn hounds with sticky fingers, or the pimple faced greasy nerds who know the local office's number calling at 2am when we've taken the network down to replace the boarder router which caught on fire earlier that day and we kept it alive with fire extinguisher dust till then... weekends are completely out, thats when you freaks invite your friends over to share in your golden broadband...I say fvck the lusers!

 

[Cyberian]

Originally posted by: SaigonK
Bah! You didi a downtime during the week? Crap i would kill for that!

We have ONE downtime every quarter, and in those 12 hours we have to get everything and anything done that we can.

I actually read this whole thread, and I really don't understand your criticism.
Did you, and could you please explain further?

 

[Evadman]

I bounce the fileserver at work for fun. The IT department is about 700 miles away, but the server is about 50 feet from my desk. Hitting that reset button is so much fun. Always makes me feel better . I got the damn server installed and they will not let me VNC, admin, or anything on it. I built all the programs running on it, and they are all mission critical, but yet I can not have access! ARRRGH!! I think I will hit the button again when I go in to work tommorow (yes, on a saturday )

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah... 90% of the "Mission Critical" calls that I get are BS. I do IT work for a development and test lab, and my customers STILL rant and rave every time I have to take down a server during business hours.

Anyway, I usually get into one of those situations once a day:

Whining Developer: "My application/server is down! Can you reboot/restart it for me?"

Me: "No, I'm in the middle of installing some security hotfixes/software upgrades/hardware upgrades. It will be back up soon. Didn't you get the note that I sent about this last week?"

Whining Developer: "But I'm in the middle of coding/testing/deploying unimportant/marginally important project X! I need to use the server NOW! Why can't you do this work later?!?"

Me: "No. This is a test and development lab. If you want 24/7 off-shift support, you can get your server moved to the production server room for $$$$$ dollars. (It's easily 5X what I charge) Would you be interested in looking into that?"

Whining Developer: "Ummm.... yeah. I'll have my boss look into that. Please let me know when the server is back up."

I hang up and smile. If the customer was particularly nasty, I'll make sure to time my snack break to start right before the server is finished

Occassionally, I'll get a complaint from the Whining Developer's manager, but their unimportant/marginally important project usually doesn't have the funding to get 24/7 support. My customers are stuck with me, whether they like it or not!

 

[SaigonK]

What i was saying is he was complaining that his users were upset with downtime during the weekday, he is lucky that he has that option to upgrade during the week.
As far as an earlier suggestion about the "lusers" and doing upgrades when they want, no wonder comcast is going tits up.

I CANNOT have any downtime during business hours, unfortunately for me this also means no downtime when the rest of my "lusers" are working..since we are a global comapny with 11,000 employees, that means our night is their day...Sunday is my only window..once a quarter (every three months).

 

[her209]

Originally posted by: SaigonK
What i was saying is he was complaining that his users were upset with downtime during the weekday, he is lucky that he has that option to upgrade during the week.
As far as an earlier suggestion about the "lusers" and doing upgrades when they want, no wonder comcast is going tits up.

I CANNOT have any downtime during business hours, unfortunately for me this also means no downtime when the rest of my "lusers" are working..since we are a global comapny with 11,000 employees, that means our night is their day...Sunday is my only window..once a quarter (every three months).

Damn that sucks for you.

 

[JonTheBaller]

You should have just reformatted the server.

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: werk
I soooo know what you mean.

exactly...and u know when i walk over to their monitor...
i see that they have not read the ! emails we have sent out about downtime etc.
Totally ignored. %#@!*%#!

 

[SaigonK]

Yeah it does suck, imagine only being able to fix a server during downtime, if it is limping along and you get woken up during on call at 3:00am because China or Korea cant print...ti just bites....

 

[SaigonK]

And find me a comapny that doesnt think email IS mission critical and I will show you a VERY small company that doesnt really USE email.

Try this out for size.

I have 4 - Quad Xeon Servers for email at just one site. Each is a Dell Poweredge 6650 - 4GB of ram, two fiber channel cards in each box to connect to an EMC Symmetrix
for large amounts of disk space and so that I can do multipathing....now tell me email isnt important.