The number one ability

I’ve thought about this many times since I got involved in computers as a full-time occupation (and it occurred to me yet again this past week as we held a couple interviews for an intern spot in our group). It comes up when I see or hear discussions about what a person needs if they want to get into a computer-related job, which I would say are mostly programming (software) or system administration (OS and hardware). What is the one ability or skill that a person must have if they are to excel in these lines of work? What, could you say, is a basic prerequisite ability or skill needed to make it?

I believe it can be answered with a simple question: How are you at problem solving? I’m not talking about Sudoku or Scrabble. I want to know about how you handle tackling problems that you encounter, not just at work, but also in general, in life itself of which work is only a part. How you go about analyzing a broken system (whether it’s a PC or server, or C code for an app, or your truck’s clutch going out, or the home water heater quitting, etc.) and come up with a plan tells me a lot about how you will perform in working in IT.

I feel that this is the absolutely most critical ability that has got me to where I am today. It was a developing factor in my life way before I hit the work force. I think for about any person, it’s adopting an attitude early in life where you decide that you will try to work out a problem on your own (for me, it started out in fixing up my own bikes). It’s about learning how to analyze and think through your situation, look at the tools you have available, consider your options, and see what you yourself can do about it. I’m so grateful for a dad who was a do-it-yourselfer, and I’m trying to instill this attitude in my own children.

I admit, there are some areas in which my first reaction is to call in help (electrician work!). And there are plenty of times when it just finally comes down to having to start a support case. But, I know I’ll make every possible effort to figure any issue out on my own. I don’t think it’s a matter of being too prideful, it’s just in my nature to figure it out on my own.

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Categorized as Work

Blame the SAN

Over the years, I wish I would have kept track of all the times that my SAN at work was blamed for causing problems.  It’s on my mind today after some work we did…

In our main facility, we have a Cisco MDS 9513 Director class chassis, with eight internal switch modules.  Looking at it from a high level, the switches work similarly to ethernet switches, as they basically allow connections between the end devices plugged into the ports.  Connections are controlled by zones which can be compared to network VLANs, in that a zone allows its included devices or end points to talk to each other.  A basic zone, for example, could be configured to include Server A and the ports associated with Storage Array B so that the server could access the luns on that storage array.  In my switches and probably a common setting for most others, if a given server is not included in a zone, it can’t talk to anything else.  Good for security as well as sanity!

So, this morning a couple FC attached tape drives were installed, and I connected them up to the MDS.  Once powered up and with the switch ports activated I configured them just like normal.  I zoned them up with several OpenVMS servers as they would be the ones using the tape drives for backup.  After the servers scanned for available new connections, they were drawing a blank.  Why weren’t the drives showing up?  It must be a problem with the SAN.  I double checked my end a couple times and nothing was amiss.  It was a similar configuration to other FC attached tape drives we have had online for years, so I was highly doubtful that now some aspect of it would be failing.

It turned out that there were some OS-specific scanning options that needed to be done so that the server systems could recognize the new drives, so all was well in the end.  And it only took a few hours to get to that point.

I am not writing this to vent or to complain, because I believe everything we do, right or wrong, is a learning experience for those involved.  I am not trying to put the blame back on any other system administrator, because I too have probably been guilty before of the mentality that says it can’t be a problem with my stuff, it has to be yours.  I do know, though, from many years of experience that a lot of times I’ve seen fellow workers get very defensive when a problem comes up and have been quick to point fingers at others only to find later it was their own issue.  I do know that my own systems, like the FC switches, have worked without issue for a very long time, and I trust that a new change similar to what I’ve done dozens of times in the past is going to work just like normal.

I also know that I am willing to do what I can to help someone out in trying to figure out an issue, especially if it involves my hardware.  I may not know everything (well, of course not!) but I’ll give you what I can.  Please, don’t just keep saying it’s the SAN… what are you doing on your end to help figure it out?

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Categorized as SAN, Work

Data migrations

By the middle of last year, I was up against a data crunch.  I have three older model HP EVA 8×00 arrays totally full of fiber channel drives (one rack each, no expansions), and the two oldest were around 95% full of data (yes… the growth got away from me with several major requests for lun space).  The third one was my safety valve but was also filling up faster than I liked.  Decisions… buy expansion racks or maybe try to migrate in higher capacity drives?  Either option was a lot of work, and it was pretty obvious due to the cost in time and effort and ongoing maintenance, not to mention the ill feelings about investing in older technology, that I needed to do some shopping for new hardware.

Working with our HP vendor, we arranged for a new EVA p6550 that got installed a couple months ago.  With newer, 2.5″ SAS drives, and only half populated, it would easily hold all the data from those two old EVAs, with room to spare!  Using the built-in Continuous Access software, we started a data migration plan that will be complete by next month.  The data replication groups were VERY easy to configure, took only a few days to sync up, and run in the background without any issues.  It does unfortunately require the reboot of all servers that are connected to the EVAs (HP Alphaservers and Itaniums running OpenVMS… hmmm, that’s worth another post…) to convert from their old array connections to the new p6550 but this has worked out well in coordination with our regularly scheduled maintenance.  I am also relieved that I can add in more drives to accommodate for 100% growth all in that single rack system.

Our first “big” SAN array, way back in the day, was an HP EVA5000.  It was a bit buggy at the time, but each iteration of the EVA that we implemented has only gotten better and they’ve been a reliable and solid bedrock upon which our company has built our storage infrastructure.

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Categorized as SAN, Work

Projects and Kanban

One of the issues that my group faces is our backlog of projects.  Early in 2012 we all sat down with our lists of different things we were working on, or had been stacking up because we were not able to get to them.  Once we had them all down in a spreadsheet format, our manager was able to prioritize them based on business needs.  We thought this was a good start on getting a handle on all the things that were on our plates.

Later in the year our company opted to go with the kanban way of organizing our work (the kanban way of tracking projects is definitely worth its own post!).  This involved getting projects down on notecards that are kept on a large board on a wall so that they can be moved around as they are worked on.  This concept is wonderful for allowing everyone who is interested to see what each of us is working on.  If they have a project for us, they can follow its progress across the board.  But, there was no way that we could find to put definitive overall project priorities on these kanban projects that is so easy to see in a spreadsheet format.

Unfortunately, we are still at an impasse on how to proceed on this.  Today we took our (now several months-old) project spreadsheet and gave it a good update.  We’re also trying to clean up our kanban board (some time ago we switched from a physical board to a digital web format).  Somehow we’re going to combine the two…