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GOOCHY posted:Just due to laziness or what? Yes. You get lazy and you get stale. The procurement process means "New" is at best 2 years old. Then comes the IA. Best case scenario you are dealing with the previous version. Worst case scenario you are fighting to get off a product before it EOLs. Try talking up your latest Windows 2003 experience with SQLServer 2005 in an interview that's not Fed and see how that goes. Granted I just came back to private sector life so it still has that new car smell but I am 1000x happier being able to say  "That doesn't make sense, why do we do it that way?"  " " "OK, can we try it this way that makes way more logical sense?" "Sure." "Done!"  "Great idea. You saved us billions without affecting production!"(Total elapsed time 15 minutes)
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Sep 9, 2013 04:42
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skooma512 posted:I doubt you'll be touching much upcoming software . Business is a very slow adopter of things. We still use IE8 everywhere because nobody wants to pay the vendors for the new poo poo or it just doesn't work on new stuff deal with it. I think this is a pretty broad generalization to make. Certainly some businesses, especially large ones, are glacially slow to update software. And they may have a good reason, like a core product the business depends on is developed by shitlords and only supported on Win XP with Java 1.4 despite costing millions of dollars. But there are others that treat well-run IT and operations as a competitive advantage rather than just a cost center to be downsized as much as possible. This is my answer to a lot of IT questions, but I try to follow a wide swathe of blogs, podcasts and Twitter accounts to keep up to date on trends in the industry. I am not aware of a single print magazine that's worth reading these days; it's not the 90's. Anything that ends up in a print mag is months to years behind and written as a 1 page puff piece for the CIO to read on the crapper. If you can elaborate at all on what your company does, and what sort of tech you're hoping to take advantage of strategically, maybe we can recommend some more specific resources for you.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:21
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Docjowles posted:This is my answer to a lot of IT questions, but I try to follow a wide swathe of blogs, podcasts and Twitter accounts to keep up to date on trends in the industry. I am not aware of a single print magazine that's worth reading these days; it's not the 90's. Anything that ends up in a print mag is months to years behind and written as a 1 page puff piece for the CIO to read on the crapper. Ahh...I've been half expecting this answer! I don't think I was really expecting a "magic bullet" type answer for news. Up until now, most of my knowledge regarding business orientated applications has come from word of mouth via friends and previous experience of places I've worked (Which in itself is quite limited). I think the new role has just got me concious of this. I work in government/civil service, so money is always a point of contention. It's pretty much all MS based, and we have heaps of government-bespoke software which probably isn't going anywhere. A point of personal interest to me is probably remote access (both delivery of applications and the connection) - I'm not a fan of what we currently use for VPN, and there are plans to move away from the current provider. I appreciate this still might all be a bit too vague for you to help, but thanks for taking the time to confirm some of my suspicions. I think I just have to carry on looking for news sources that seem relevant and maybe compile a library of them.
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Sep 9, 2013 20:42
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Tab8715 posted:On the same subject - what's the biggest raise or salary jump anyone has received? In 2004 I was making $30k, 2005 it was 90k, 2008 it was 130k, 2010 it was 120k, now I am down to 80k (and waiting for this contract to end).
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Sep 9, 2013 21:15
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Your salary looks like a bell curve
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Sep 9, 2013 21:16
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Tasty Wheat posted:In 2004 I was making $30k, 2005 it was 90k, 2008 it was 130k, 2010 it was 120k, now I am down to 80k (and waiting for this contract to end). You were only making 120k overseas?
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Sep 9, 2013 21:58
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If there is a single Windows XP computer left in my district come April I'm going to consider it a personal failure. Doesn't stop me from getting software in the mail with floppy disk authentication keys and Windows 98 setup guides  Today my day sucked because my coworker gave out my personal cell phone number, one that I have never given out to anyone but him, to an on-site vendor for no discernible reason. I have a company cell phone. Today I had 5 missed calls and 3 voice mails from three different people. One guy couldn't figure out why he wasn't getting a wireless connection on the copier he was installing. "We copied all of the settings exactly from the old one," he says, "you can go check it out over there." He sure did copy the settings exactly, including the static IP, from the first machine, one that was still connected to the network. But I did find out that I'm getting an early review at the end of the month and it's pretty much guaranteed to be a glowing one  YOTP!
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Sep 9, 2013 22:48
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Today was a fun day. Discovered our make shift datacenter (converted office/conference room in midrise office building) is not going to provide the infrastructure to support our requirements and that our infrastructure could be too heavy of a load for the floors. This lead to a meeting with the Pres, VP of Finance, GC, VP of Ops and various department heads where we basically agreed its time to get a proper data center. Week 4 of  is off to a roaring start. Plan: 1 year of colo (so our computers don't fall through the floor) while we build a more tailored data center in the burbs. (Our management is not happy about colo-ing due to our line of business/data access/processing requirements) I just hope this gets to phase two as I spend a lot of time with our equipment right now and driving to a DC in Ashburn/Reston/Dulles from Bowie every day is not what I signed up for. This commute sucks, and double that time durring normal commuting:  Guess who has to manage a project to build a data center  Anyone got any decent reading on the topic? Books?
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Sep 10, 2013 02:46
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KennyG posted:Guess who has to manage a project to build a data center That's a miserable commute and I hate to be this way but: you can't learn this the right way the first time out of a book. You need experienced help or you're going to make some very big and expensive mistakes. Yes, learn all you can with all the resources you can, but you need someone on the project who has done this before many times or you will be sorry (and likely the sacrificial lamb when things go wrong). Your best move here is to make your company understand this is a thing you don't design in house (because it's not a typical line of business) but something you know enough about to administer a proper consultant to translate the business needs into a proper space for your stuff. I honestly don't know what to tell you to read because I've been doing this for too long. I don't really know any of it can be boiled down into a book or books because the needs can be so diverse. Depending on what your long term goals are you can go anywhere from "standard colo build at x-watts per Sq Ft" to a super custom "we are a special snowflake" thing. Without knowing a whole lot more about what you do now, where you think you are going, and how you intend to get there even figuring out how much space you need is impossible.
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Sep 10, 2013 03:22
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KennyG posted:I just hope this gets to phase two as I spend a lot of time with our equipment right now and driving to a DC in Ashburn/Reston/Dulles from Bowie every day is not what I signed up for. KennyG posted:Anyone got any decent reading on the topic? Books? That said, Data Center Knowledge is something I heavily relied on when we were designing our main datacenter back in 2007 or so. The Internet has a number of calculators where you can enter, say, the square footage of your datacenter and the BTUs put out by the fully-laden equipment load and figure out how much cooling you need. Use these to spot-check your consultants. After all this: unless you're talking more than a full colo cage worth of equipment, or a serious site-to-site bandwidth requirement, building a datacenter probably isn't something you actually want to do. If you want it done right, you'll probably find the colo to be a cheaper option in the medium-term. KennyG posted:(Our management is not happy about colo-ing due to our line of business/data access/processing requirements) Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 03:59
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KennyG posted:This commute sucks, and double that time durring normal commuting: I used to take this route from Odenton to Fairfax every day. It was unbelievably bad.
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Sep 10, 2013 04:07
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Yeah, hire a datacenter consultant. I've been involved with building 3 server rooms and have done it wrong 3 different times. Don't be me. Both Eaton or APC/Schneider will help you build your data center if you're buying their stuff.
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Sep 10, 2013 04:45
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skipdogg posted:Yeah, hire a datacenter consultant. I've been involved with building 3 server rooms and have done it wrong 3 different times. Don't be me.
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Sep 10, 2013 04:46
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Let me be abundantly clear. I am not designing this project. We will be using a consulting firm that does this 100% of the time as their sole business. He was the guy we brought in for our infrastructure issues at our current site. power, cooling etc. I got a free 'learned that the hard way' from my predecessor/coworker who basically embarked on building this thing (3 months before I got here) in a 500 sq' room in a mid rise office building. I will not be going this alone. However, I will be the last backstop of approval. If I say yes, it will get done. I really want to educate my self on this so I have some modicum of understanding before I go and say something completely stupid. Misogynist posted:
KennyG fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 04:53
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colo bad
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KennyG posted:Let me be abundantly clear. I am not designing this project.
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Sep 10, 2013 05:03
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Misogynist posted:Particulars that are less technical than BICSI specs but more technical than industry whitepapers are really hard to come by. Data Center Knowledge is reasonably good if you're willing to dig back in their archives. That said, I've helped design two datacenters in the past, one 3,000 square foot and one 1,000 square foot, and I'd be happy to look over equipment lists, blueprints or anything else you might need another pair of eyes on. Cool, thanks. The plan I think is going to be a 1000' environment with 3000-4000' of space (Use a Light Industrial zoned warehouse with front office space. Use the massive volume of the warehouse to act as heat dissipation) Cheap rent, finding some with upgraded power already 2000A 400V, and been looking at multiple net providers. Those are the three things you can't change about a facility right? Space available, power available and ISPs
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Sep 10, 2013 05:11
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KennyG posted:power available and ISPs How much money did you say you wanted to spend?
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Sep 10, 2013 07:35
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GOOCHY posted:I used to take this route from Odenton to Fairfax every day. It was unbelievably bad. I did this drive from Annapolis to Reston one time. I'd almost rather be unemployed.
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Sep 10, 2013 11:54
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KennyG posted:Cool, thanks.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:11
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psydude posted:I did this drive from Annapolis to Reston one time. I'd almost rather be unemployed. Jesus Christ, every day? That's unbelievable.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:13
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psydude posted:I did this drive from Annapolis to Reston one time. I'd almost rather be unemployed. I ended up quitting and moving back to Iowa. I just didn't make enough at the time to live in the Fairfax area. That commute was literally killing me due to stress and long hours. Ten years later and I'm trying to move my family back toward NoVA. 
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Sep 10, 2013 14:39
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KennyG posted:Basically we are a legal services company and lawyers want physical control. That's the arm chair version. Believe me, I asked this question on day 2. It's long, it's complicated, it's not really for sharing on the internet. Who knows, maybe colo will work just fine in which case I will either 1) demand a poo poo load more money or 2) start looking for a new job if I have to go there more than once a quarter. I'm just not seeing how loading multi-TB data sets over even 100mb net links is going to be feasible for our business model. It would take 6 days to load a moderate data set of 5TB or a trip to the data center and about 12 hours using current methods. You need a dedicated cage with its own keycard / biometric lock and video monitoring. Plenty of colos are focused on "Compliance" hosting for HIPAA / SOX / PCI-DSS companies and can do that all for you no problem. It's not cheap but you've gotta do what you've gotta do. At a minimum, ask for the IRS rate for miles: http://www.irs.gov/uac/2013-Standard-Mileage-Rates-Up-1-Cent-per-Mile-for-Business,-Medical-and-Moving You can also consider WAN accelerators. Worst case, hire an intern to drive back and forth with tapes or an external RAID array. Misogynist posted:Bring in a consultant if you want it done right. Your list is awesome but don't forget physical security systems. Biometrics, card readers, proper high security locks, video monitoring, all that good stuff. For a project this big, I'd do a bake off between at least three firms. Have them show you some designs they did for other local firms, and ask for references or tours. At a minimum, I'd bring in a big national firm like CDW's services arm (Or Dell or HP if they do datacenter design), then a well thought of local firm. This is one of those situations where it helps to have a wide group of local contacts you can call around for advice. Usergroups are a great way to make those connections. El_Matarife fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 14:48
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KennyG posted:Basically we are a legal services company and lawyers want physical control. That's the arm chair version. Believe me, I asked this question on day 2. It's long, it's complicated, it's not really for sharing on the internet. Who knows, maybe colo will work just fine in which case I will either 1) demand a poo poo load more money or 2) start looking for a new job if I have to go there more than once a quarter. I'm just not seeing how loading multi-TB data sets over even 100mb net links is going to be feasible for our business model. It would take 6 days to load a moderate data set of 5TB or a trip to the data center and about 12 hours using current methods. El_Matarife is right about the security features available at any decent colo. Regarding your Internet situation: you're in Washington, DC. I have a really hard time buying that you can't get a faster Internet connection. A 1 Gbps metro Ethernet link from CenturyLink or whoever is going to cost a lot less than dropping 1mil on facility costs for a new datacenter.
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Sep 10, 2013 14:55
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Does anyone have any experience with SCVMM and if so how is it as a monitoring tool? Almost everything is running in hyper-v and the only difference I can see between it and spiceworks is a nice interface which you can interact with the vms and live migration.
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Sep 10, 2013 15:27
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Tell me about working on AS400s and Mainframes - I'd like to know what I'd be potentially getting myself into.
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Sep 10, 2013 15:43
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Tab8715 posted:Tell me about working on AS400s and Mainframes - I'd like to know what I'd be potentially getting myself into. Antique programming languages and environments and the people in charge of them are usually stalwarts from the 80's. Also be prepared to work with a very small amount of high-priced consultants. What mainframe?
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Sep 10, 2013 15:51
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Myrdraayl posted:Does anyone have any experience with SCVMM and if so how is it as a monitoring tool? Almost everything is running in hyper-v and the only difference I can see between it and spiceworks is a nice interface which you can interact with the vms and live migration. SCVMM is not a monitoring tool, it is a VM Management tool, SCOM is monitoring. What are you really looking to do here? SCVMM is good for central management of a Hyper-V, XEN environment and integrates with vCenter to manage VMware, but it is not a monitoring tool.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:08
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Misogynist posted:I'm actually laughing at this. What does this even mean? It means the people making those decisions have a limited knowledge of computers, colo facilities, and the costs to build, operate and certify a datacenter. They need a proper colo. Someone who has already gone through all of the ISO, HIPAA, SOX, PCI, etc on the physical security, procedural compliance and monitoring, power infrastructure, data infrastructure, and climate control. All of these things absolutely DO get better and cheaper with scale, so whenever I hear the someone wants to build a datacenter for something other than a massive scale I pretty much assume they are doing it wrong. As mentioned by others in this thread, physical access is not a valid reason. If you can't manage your equipment 100% remotely you're doing something very wrong. If you need to keep touching your equipment whether for break/fix or physical add/moves/changes you are also doing something very wrong. People don't like to hear this, because almost all of them ARE doing it wrong. But once you see how to do it all properly you'll lock your cage/door/whatever and make it a hell of an occasion to walking there or allow anyone else to walk in there. You'll also see hugely better uptime and reliability and wonder how you even survived before. The worst enemy of most server installations is having people close enough that they feel like it's OK to just walk in there to "check on" things. NO, NO, NO. I can remotely manage EVERYTHING in my colos, and I know where every last cable comes from and goes to. Any changes are planned well in advance, documented (with a roll back plan), carefully orchestrated and tested, and then the documentation is updated. No exceptions. Ever. I sounds burdensome and it is at first, but once you get everything right, get it documented, and start thinking about doing things this way everything gets a lot better.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:11
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Bob Morales posted:Antique programming languages and environments and the people in charge of them are usually stalwarts from the 80's. Also be prepared to work with a very small amount of high-priced consultants. I've seen them around in literally every big enterprise but are they impossible to virtualize? Too expensive to recode everything into a modern language? How can you even get hardware for this stuff still?
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Sep 10, 2013 16:14
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Tab8715 posted:I've seen them around in literally every big enterprise but are they impossible to virtualize? Too expensive to recode everything into a modern language? How can you even get hardware for this stuff still? It's not a really a mainframe but we are using an HP Itanium server (new in 2004) running HP/UX. We run Universe database, which supposedly could instead run on Windows or Linux. But the actual application code and hourly/nightly jobs all still run on the machine, and it's a internal piece of software that we've been working on for 25 years. It would be a massive project to move over to .NET or PHP or Rails or whatever, and would probably bankrupt the company if we tried. It would be nice if we did - that's assuming we built modern web front ends to our applications. Right now we run a mix of green-screen terminals (most interaction with the system is done through Dynamic Connect which is a terminal emulator straight out of 1992) and a few web applications and an old VB6 Windows app that do a lovely screen-scraping job. The database connector we use for the VB6 app is no longer supported either so good luck troubleshooting that poo poo when it randomly crashes. Another thing that would be nice is if the database ran on MySQL or MS SQL. Backups, replication, clones for reporting, all this stuff is a giant hurdle when you're using LARGE COMPANY ANCIENT DATABASE SOFTWARE. HP still supports the OS and Strategy7 still supports our hardware. We had one of the redundant power supplies go out in our tape backup a few weeks ago and a guy showed up from HP the next morning with the part and replaced it under our maintenance agreement. We bought another Itanium on eBay that I have to scavenger the 4GB of RAM out of and install it in the production system one night. We're getting a pair of 300GB Ultra320 drives to replace the 146GB drives in another Itanium server we have that I'm configuring as a clone that we will have ready to go in our disaster recovery colo. This project has been 'in the works' for the last 4 years, I'm the only person they've ever hired with any UNIX knowledge so we're finally getting the ball rolling on it. You could virtualize it but not in the traditional sense because it's not x86 hardware. But mainframes have been doing their own virtualization since the days of DOS.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:30
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Bob Morales posted:Itanium, HP/UX, Dynamic Connect. I can't help on the first two, but the .gov i worked at really loved the Attachmate's Reflection Suite (http://www.attachmate.com/Products/Terminal+Emulation/emulation.htm) as a terminal emulator.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:42
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Nebulis01 posted:I can't help on the first two, but the .gov i worked at really loved the Attachmate's Reflection Suite (http://www.attachmate.com/Products/Terminal+Emulation/emulation.htm) as a terminal emulator. I don't use any of actual programs, I just do admin stuff on the system. So use Putty and iTerm, changed my shell and such. Boss: YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU NEED TO USE DIRECT CONNECT! 
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Sep 10, 2013 16:44
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Tab8715 posted:I've seen them around in literally every big enterprise but are they impossible to virtualize? Too expensive to recode everything into a modern language? How can you even get hardware for this stuff still? IBM makes a loving fortune selling and maintaining AS400 compatible hardware. They still make it and people still buy it. Say you have a 24/7/365 system in a mega enterprise that does everything you need it to do, still works great, and you have a workforce of 30,000 people trained on using it. You're not going to rip it out and replace it with something that will run on x64 for no reason. It's much cheaper to just keep the current system going than the costs to port, migrate, and retrain everyone.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:50
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Bob Morales posted:Antique programming languages and environments and the people in charge of them are usually stalwarts from the 80's. Also be prepared to work with a very small amount of high-priced consultants. System Z (and AS400 in general) happily runs Linux instances with languages and tools as modern as anything RHEL6 can throw at it. Yes, you'll have traditional COBOL/JCL stuff running on it somewhere, but they're not necessarily as antiquated as this makes them out to be. Bob Morales posted:It's not a really a mainframe but we are using an HP Itanium server (new in 2004) running HP/UX. We run Universe database, which supposedly could instead run on Windows or Linux. But the actual application code and hourly/nightly jobs all still run on the machine, and it's a internal piece of software that we've been working on for 25 years. It would be a massive project to move over to .NET or PHP or Rails or whatever, and would probably bankrupt the company if we tried.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:06
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Lollers. Snagged the RTM Windows Server 2012 R2 install from Technet to spin up in a test environment, and the installer hangs if you have whatever broadcom NIC that I have installed on this server. Hopefully it's not ALL broadcom NICs, or else this is going to be a sad release.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:07
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DragonReach posted:SCVMM is not a monitoring tool, it is a VM Management tool, SCOM is monitoring. What are you really looking to do here? Haha, I guess I should have figured that out from the name itself. My boss was interested in using SCVMM to look after our machines but SCOM sounds more relevant. Do you mind telling me your experience with it? Edit: Actually a better question, what hardware/software monitoring tool would you recommend a small business that has its own development team and oversees backups and hosting of other companies use? vvvvvvv Thanks for the quick response DragonReach, I'll probably go over it with my boss and ask what exactly he wants and if it's still SCVMM then I'll send you a pm. Myrdraayl fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 17:34
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evol262 posted:System Z (and AS400 in general) happily runs Linux instances with languages and tools as modern as anything RHEL6 can throw at it. Yes, you'll have traditional COBOL/JCL stuff running on it somewhere, but they're not necessarily as antiquated as this makes them out to be. Because of bad management and lack of technical resources.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:44
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Myrdraayl posted:Haha, I guess I should have figured that out from the name itself. My boss was interested in using SCVMM to look after our machines but SCOM sounds more relevant. Do you mind telling me your experience with it? I work for Microsoft and support high availability stuff, so cluster, Hyper-v and some associated pieces. SCOM is not really my forte, but I do ok with SCVMM and have worked with a number of companies on their virtualization environments. SCVMM has a bit of a learning curve, and some of the decisions made by the dev team still puzzle me, but it works for deploying, and managing a Hyper-V environment. Best bet is PM me with specifics and if I don't know I can e-mail people who do. Standard disclaimer: Since I work for MS I am biased, keep that perspective in mind.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:50
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KennyG posted:This commute sucks, and double that time durring normal commuting: Ouch. I'm not familiar with the area, but it the distance alone is terrible. This was my commute for 3 years (Moved about ~6mos. ago, so I'm only 8Mi away now):  The worst commute I had was after I was laid off back in 2008. I took a temp job that had me going to 3 different sites. The one I visited most was in Salinas (The others were in Fresno and Milpitas): 
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Sep 10, 2013 18:27
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Bob Morales posted:Because of bad management and lack of technical resources. I know it's not your fault, but keeping HP-UX servers going and eBaying hardware when a 3 month development push onto commodity hardware would probably cost less than your support contracts every year is
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Sep 10, 2013 18:32
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