Monday, April 24, 2006
Cluster crunch time
I thought it was ready to go. The MQ cluster, that is. Until I asked my boss about switching over one of our apps, the enterprise service bus. He hadn't responded to the failover issues I raised three weeks ago. Then I find out from him that the server guys aren't going to be able to help with heartbeat. Not enough priority according to their team leader. So my boss starts digging into it. He points out some additional functions. I run some tests on the production server and they work well. We can do the failover a lot more elegantly and quickly using the hb_standby command than the original reboot setup supposedly created by IBM. Then I try it on QA and no joy. Oh well! Back to the server team.
The one application project that has been actively testing on the cluster has reported a problem where their application server doesn't pick up messages after sitting overnight. We tried a few things without success. The difference between their old setup and the cluster is connecting through the network. Again, I mention it to my boss and he reminds me about the firewall session timeout after two hours of inactivity. I had worked on the same kind of problem the first week on the job. I don't understand why they are using firewalls as gateways. Luckily, I don't think the problem exists in QA. I have to convince the production support leader to let us do a quick setup in QA so we can confirm. I need to check out production.
D.
The one application project that has been actively testing on the cluster has reported a problem where their application server doesn't pick up messages after sitting overnight. We tried a few things without success. The difference between their old setup and the cluster is connecting through the network. Again, I mention it to my boss and he reminds me about the firewall session timeout after two hours of inactivity. I had worked on the same kind of problem the first week on the job. I don't understand why they are using firewalls as gateways. Luckily, I don't think the problem exists in QA. I have to convince the production support leader to let us do a quick setup in QA so we can confirm. I need to check out production.
D.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
The creeps
I think they fired the Change Manager today. He started the same day I did.
"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
Actually, I might know someone qualified for this position.
D.
"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
Actually, I might know someone qualified for this position.
D.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Have you been transformed (yet)?
The department is embarking on a Transformation program for the third time. The business, or at least the CEO, wants IT to be "simple, nimble & agile and cost-effective". Hopefully, the third time's the charm because the first two initiatives failed.
There was a lot of venting at the kickoff meeting, very reactionary. It sounded just like my old company in the late eighties/early nineties. The company readjusted that attitude by firing 300 people in one day. The next purge was kinder and gentler-only 150 people spread over two days. Every time Head Office got to certain head count after that, I started looking over my shoulder.
D.
There was a lot of venting at the kickoff meeting, very reactionary. It sounded just like my old company in the late eighties/early nineties. The company readjusted that attitude by firing 300 people in one day. The next purge was kinder and gentler-only 150 people spread over two days. Every time Head Office got to certain head count after that, I started looking over my shoulder.
D.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Personally overcommitted
I wrote my insurance exam Monday morning. I think I passed, but I drew a complete blank on one question about the sections of a policy. The test site was only a half hour drive from home. It was nice to have the rest of the day off, especially after spending most of Saturday waiting around at the DR test. That's one thing out of the way. I've been spending a lot of time studying over the past few weeks, and almost no time on housework.
The check engine light came on in my car tonight.
Saturday morning, I'm supposed to do a demo of Ukrainian baking at my church. I've only made these pineapple things (like a crescent) once. They didn't look like Baba's, but they tasted like it. I don't know how to say the name in Ukrainian. I ran an M&P meeting this week, and I have an Interim Steering Committee meeting next week (to rough out the new Constitution) and the week after (to present the new Constitution to the Presbytery reps) immediately proceeded by a board meeting. And Easter's coming! Something's got to go.
D.
The check engine light came on in my car tonight.
Saturday morning, I'm supposed to do a demo of Ukrainian baking at my church. I've only made these pineapple things (like a crescent) once. They didn't look like Baba's, but they tasted like it. I don't know how to say the name in Ukrainian. I ran an M&P meeting this week, and I have an Interim Steering Committee meeting next week (to rough out the new Constitution) and the week after (to present the new Constitution to the Presbytery reps) immediately proceeded by a board meeting. And Easter's coming! Something's got to go.
D.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
A complete disaster
I spent 10 hr at the IBM disaster recovery site yesterday, and created one queue manager on Windows which is about 30 sec. of work. They didn't have a server assigned for the MQ cluster so we couldn't have done it if we wanted to. I did get some studying done for my general insurance exam tomorrow.
The recovery tapes didn't match the TSM database so a lot of files couldn't be recovered. They'd done several "reclaims" since the day of declaration, and the tapes hadn't been pulled so they got recycled or scratched. At midnight last night, they sent everybody home and tried to restore TSM from the latest backup. I got home just before 1 a.m., but had a hard time getting to sleep and lost an hour due to the time change (spring forward).
One of the apps I was supposed to help with was dropped immediately. Another wouldn't recover when I called in mid morning so I went to church. I told them I could be there a little after noon, and that was OK with them. I ducked out of the service before it was quite finished to call in before I headed back down. The last application on my list was also having problems with missing files so I didn't have to bother going in. Hurray!
Thank goodness this was just an infrastructure test. I learned a lot even though I didn't do much. I'll be better prepared for the real thing in June.
D.
The recovery tapes didn't match the TSM database so a lot of files couldn't be recovered. They'd done several "reclaims" since the day of declaration, and the tapes hadn't been pulled so they got recycled or scratched. At midnight last night, they sent everybody home and tried to restore TSM from the latest backup. I got home just before 1 a.m., but had a hard time getting to sleep and lost an hour due to the time change (spring forward).
One of the apps I was supposed to help with was dropped immediately. Another wouldn't recover when I called in mid morning so I went to church. I told them I could be there a little after noon, and that was OK with them. I ducked out of the service before it was quite finished to call in before I headed back down. The last application on my list was also having problems with missing files so I didn't have to bother going in. Hurray!
Thank goodness this was just an infrastructure test. I learned a lot even though I didn't do much. I'll be better prepared for the real thing in June.
D.
