I’m sure there are a ton of people out there that have had this scenario.
A system fails. Locate the issue. A rush to repair or replace. Update while it’s out of service. Patch related systems and drivers. Add some buttons and bells. Turn it on. Hope for the best. Chase issues. Fix issues. Hope for the best. Track dependencies. Fix issues. Hope for the best. Fix issues. Prey it works. Fix issues. Hope for the best.
This, to me, represents the path of a lot of technical staff when backs are against the wall. It happens to all of us especially when dealing with production systems in a fluid corporate environment. Management seldom knows, or cares, what it takes to resolve most IT issues. They only see down time and dollars. They seldom approve test and development of new or updated systems because they only see things from a cost and man hour view point. It’s their job. Pencils and pennies.
I came from both sides of this coin. Pun intended. I’ve worked in small business when there simply wasn’t any money for testing new systems and also in very large corporate environment where change is seen as the root evil of the balance sheet. When you work in a department where the bean counters list you as a major red blotch in the bottom line it’s very difficult to justify updates/upgrades let alone a test environment to figure things out before you throw the switch on a whim idea some marketing knuckle head sold to their boss.
I’ve been fortunate, in most cases, to have some testing time before production. I’ve always padded my schedule and budget to allow for it. I did say ‘most cases’.
I recently built a new system for my in house network. It was a file server to replace three other storage devices. I was able to create virtual instances of each of the applications I was considering prior to choosing one for production and also prior to the actual build itself. I researched and destroyed the virtual applications while testing multiple times. I made mistakes and reloaded applications more often than I’ll admit here. I then used everything I learned screwing things up to build what I wanted in a production package.
Here’s the point, There is so much information available for free out there that the only real cost for testing and development has been reduced to time. I understand that in a firestorm, time is what you don’t have, however, when things are quite and systems are running as they should be you should be expanding your knowledge of how to make things better. Test beds and virtual environments are so easy to package these days at such a minimal cost they are easy to justify to the bean counters as preventative maintenance.
My flow normally follows the path of idea, virtual environment, AWS or Digital Ocean configurations then proposal and funding for production hardware. I can have multiple systems packaged over dozens of virtual machines in any combination for concept, testing and approval. I then will have a proven package in a working environment prior to ever putting together a proposal and I can present it in a functional product with confidence of proof of concept. If they say no I delete it. I has only cost me time and brain cells. No RMA’s required.
We put men on the moon. We can read license plates from satellites in outer space. Our cell phones have more technology in them than those same rocket ships that landed on the lunar surface. We watch our embassy and our people destroyed and killed in real time from the other side of the world. When we want something we can blink and have it delivered to our doors through automation via Walmart and Amazon. Even ordering a pizza for delivery is fully automated to the point you get a picture of what your pie will look like when your choose the toppings.
Do you really believe that the conspiracy theory of “Chem Trails” and the potential of governments using it to disperse mind control substances onto the population exist. The Loch Ness Monster. Who actually killed Kennedy! Crop circles.
One would only assume, and hope, that the United States has more sophisticated and better developed technology than Turkey. Please say it’s so. Now tell me why we are still playing games wondering if this jack wad Rosenstein at the FBI was trying to set Trump up. I’m sure someone was wearing a secret button or lapel pin on their Gucci Italian suit that recorded a fart blocks away. It’s the fucking FBI!
We woke up to a rumbling of thunder and lightning one early morning and in a blink of an eye a huge bolt of lightning hit near by and the house went dark for a couple seconds. I was instantly awake and listened patiently for each of my systems to begin their shutdown cycle and send out notifications to my phone.
So even though the spike wreaked havoc on a UPS circuit board, killed a couple batteries and melted the filter stack to the point it was necessary to replace the UPS itself, the system actually did what it was supposed to do. My system was protected, fail-over worked correctly and the FreeNAS file server was isolated to protect itself. All the other systems came up and notifications went zipping to my phone as planned.
Huh? Duhhhhh. I didn’t know that.
Can you imagine what Einstein and even Aristotle were viewed as when they theorized some of the greatest answers we now see as reality. Friggen crack pots! They were giving truthful answers to things individuals had blindly thought and believed were the truth for they’re entire lives, even history. Really, Einstein theorized gravity from an acorn falling out of a tree and a distortion of space? You know they thought he was nuts! Pun intended.
I use an old Dell machine to run my firewall. I built the Freenas system which has so many features and options I haven’t even touched the surface of it yet. What am I going to do with this?
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