Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

For all the sysadmin types out there, about what percentage of your architecture is x86 compatible and what's proprietary (like POWER, SPARC, zEnterprise, etc)? I work for a certain blue behemoth so my picture of what people run is kind of skewed.

Also, what's everyone's opinion of the closed systems? I know in school I was taught that the world runs on Windows and Linux on x86 (virtualization notwithstanding) and then there are a few people to still run UNIX variants and that mainframes are dead and buried. I've seen this is very much not the case, but what's everyone else's perception?

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 04:09

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 13:59

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

adorai posted:

Probably >95% of our clock cycles in the data center are x86. We have one power7 as/400, no idea how many CPUs it is licensed for because I don't have to support it.

You should totally get into the 400. They're so much fun :3

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 04:15

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Docjowles posted:

I've only ever worked at small companies (less than 200 employees) so it's been all x86 for me. The closest I've come to "big iron" was when I worked at an ISP and we outsourced our billing to CSG Systems. The back end obviously ran on a giant fuckoff ancient mainframe from the 60's and the admin interface was a lovely terminal emulator. I can't find a good screen shot of it online but it was the absolute worst interface to anything I've ever encountered.

I'd love to know what system this is. Computing history is fascinating to me, the mainframe is a huge part of that, and a huge reason why I now work where I do.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 18:31

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

evol262 posted:

IRIX isn't actually that exotic, though SGI's hardware was. IRIX is so run-of-the-mill that you can use pkgsrc on it.

z/OS is not that different from OS/400 or OS/390 or OS/360 or... the line follows pretty logically back to the 60s.

MVS, AOS (and RDOS), and VMS are the dead mainframe operating systems that are fun to play with. Actually, AOS, RDOS, and MVS aren't fun, but they're enlightening in a "look how far we've come" way, as is GCOS.

That said, for odd but important operating systems, playing with CP/M, QNX, VxWorks (if you can get your hands on it), and Minix can teach you an awful lot about how things came to be the way they are, both in realtime OSes and otherwise.

z/OS is vastly different from OS/400 (AKA IBMi nowadays), they're two completely distinct systems. They intersect somewhat in that neither are gui-driven, but that's about it. z/OS traces its roots to the System/360 introduced in 1964, whereas OS/400 was designed for midrange computers as a successor to the System/36 and System/38 in the 1980's.

MVS is not dead at all; it's continued evolving but OS/360 MVT=MVS=OS/390=z/OS. You can trot out a COBOL program that was written for System/370 in 1975 and run it on a z/OS LPAR you installed on a zEC12 last week with no modification. It's a very tricky OS to run because it has basically no architectural similarities to anything else currently in use today, as well as a lot of complexity to maintain full backwards compatibility. UNIX system services are available that provide a POSIX-compatible interface to the OS, but it's not terribly widely used in my experience.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 19:50

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Cenodoxus posted:

I'm hearing a lot of mixed signals about how "the mainframe is back" and "the mainframe is dead". What has your experience been career-wise with it? How did you get your start working on mainframes? I think it'd be neat to get some exposure to them but it seems the only way in is through IBM these days.

tl;dr mainframes are alive and well and I love sperging over them

The mainframe as "the lone computer that runs the business" isn't dead, but its role has changed. Lots of big businesses (banking, government, insurance, healthcare, etc) still run the mainframe with z/OS or other legacy enterprise operating systems because their core business has been built on that model for the past 40 years. It's cost-effective, it's well-documented, and most of all it is more reliable than any other system in the business. That said, there are probably not too many companies today adopting this sort of centralized computing infrastructure. That's where IBM has been diligent in making sure the mainframe continues to evolve.

The biggest push the mainframe has been making lately is Linux on Z. If you're a shop that already runs a lot of Linux and is looking to save money, the mainframe can be a great option, since you can consolidate racks' worth of machines into a single mainframe, saving floor space, power, and cooling, in addition to gaining uptime because the platform is so bulletproof. On top of this now the mainframe supports direct connectivity to expansion units containing Intel and POWER blades, allowing you to basically consolidate your entire business's IT operations into one System Z environment. Obviously, though, you need to carefully crunch numbers to see if this is a viable option, because a million-dollar outlay for systems is a huge up front cost compared to buying a few dozen Intel servers or something, so you need to plan to see if and when you will achieve return on investment for distributed vs centralized systems.

I got into Z as a systems operator in a diverse environment- Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, VOS, and mainframe. I went to school for systems administration, where I was basically told that the world runs on Windows & Linux under x86 except for a few special snowflakes who run UNIX on proprietary hardware, and that 20 years ago the mainframe died. When I got hired as an operator I was plunked down in front of the mainframe console, learned the ops side from the more senior guys, and was completely hooked. Plus I saw the IBM field engineer in and out of the account and thought he had a pretty neat job, so when working third shift operations got old, there happened to be a local job opening for Big Blue that I jumped into. I work on all our systems, but I'm most fascinated by the mainframe.

evol262 posted:

While they're distinct systems, the compatibility subsystems and ability to trot out code from the 70s is why I described them as similar. System z or z/Series or whatever it's called now is a different heritage and can't really be replaced as an operator console or JCL host, but I guess I tend to see them all as "RUN YER COBOL HERE" and the I've never laid eyes or hands on an actual i/Series or AS/400 or whatever IBM is calling it now, so my only interactions have been inside a partition on a z/Series and I conflate them.

As a former operator, oldschool 3270 (now emulated) consoles and JCL still are critical to the mainframe. IBMi doesn't run on Z hardware, even partitioned or virtualized, only on POWER systems.

Aunt Beth fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Aug 1, 2014

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 21:25

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

psydude posted:

I love it when HR people obviously write job descriptions:

"Manages core network protocols such as OSPF, BGP, MPLS, DHCP, ARP, and ICMP"

Turns out we had a critical ICMP outage on one of our servers the other day. Boy were my customers happy when I plugged their PC back in.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 08:39

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Paladine_PSoT posted:

My new go-to is "I work with supercomputers." People stop asking questions.

I actually do work with supercomputers! I never realized how powerful a deterrent that word could be.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2015 00:04

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Paladine_PSoT posted:

I used to have analogies ready to explain the scale of the machines, then I gave up and just started saying supercomputer. I'm guessing it has the same impact as saying "I'm the court alchemist" in the 1200s. Most people are detered by the thought of black magic and the occasional medicine woman (today's hobbiest) would start asking tons of questions you can just squash.

Luckily though when pressed I can usually just come back with "Maytag man for computers." If they keep going beyond that I launch into a greybeard-caliber rant about mainframes. :corsair:

*grumble grumble* the LPARs *grumble* sysplex timer *grumble grumble* count-key DASD *cough* control unit

Aunt Beth fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Sep 5, 2020

# ¿ Jan 3, 2015 01:01

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Mr Shiny Pants posted:

I hope it is not too little too late. IBM has a knack for making cool stuff and ruining it with licensing ( "We are only enterprise, so be prepared to pay us ridiculous amounts of money" ) or some other boneheaded move.

Lenovo bought their server division and in a couple of months I have seen more activity regarding former IBM servers on forums (Thinkserver TS140) than all the other years combined. I get that it is not fashionable to be on the low end, but if people buy your stuff and it leaves a good impression it will work its way up.

Mindshare is pretty important.

Lenovo bought System X. POWER and System Z is still very much still IBM.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 19:38

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Danith posted:

So last week I was sitting around doing things and my boss came up and said our remaining AIX system is now my baby, here's the root password, and the AIX admin has been let go.

Uhh.. so just being thrown in there, my current role being more of a computer operator/dabbling in a bunch of other things position, any tips on what I should look at on the system?

I took an initial look and the previous admin had deleted his 2 directories that held all his scripts, cron looks clean except for a call to a now non-existent monitoring script (reported swap usage, space available, processes) which I think I can recreate pretty easily.

Thankfully it's been a pretty trouble free box. Unfortunately we don't have a AIX test box anymore so I can't try things :|

Depending on what type of machine it is and its current configuration, you should spin up a test lpar alongside your prod. Ain't nobody got time to learn Oracle on a production system.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 19:40

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Tab8715 posted:

Aunt Beth, have you or has anyone else worked on IBM i before?

I work on hardware, so I don't have a tremendous amount of knowledge on the OS side of iSeries, but yes, I have. I think it's a really underappreciated system for a lot of reasons. Why do you ask?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 20:58

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Tab8715 posted:

I've spoken to two senior IBM i admins (or so they say) who insist executing PWRDWNSYS(*IMMED) is an acceptable way to end sub-systems (and jobs with-in) this however does so immediately without warning. Unless I am wildly missing something it's no different than bringing up Task Manager and ending a process non-gracefully or kill -9.

I've brought this up but they've told me that often the system will get hung on some sort of internal job such as a user still being logged in or a print job running and trying to figure out what's holding down the OS isn't practical and *IMMED is appropriate. I'm not knowledgeable enough when it comes to user and job interaction but is IBM i just that fundamentally different than other operating systems or am I being sold a bridge?

There is some truth in the greybeards' statements, though IMMED is not an option to use lightly. Obviously the right way to shut down a 400 is to gracefully end jobs and subsystems, either with ENDSBS or with PWRDWNSYS parameters. But it is true, especially with print jobs (because gently caress printers) that the system will hang trying to end some job or subsystem and IMMED will just take care of that. Luckily there are so many failsafes built into IBMi that usually the worst I've seen happen from an unclean shutdown is a much slower than usual IPL as the system recovers journals and checks databases.

Danith posted:

Not really comfortable doing this on a live system unless it was really needed I think I found a site to help me with things http://aix4admins.blogspot.com/

But that's the point of lpars! It doesn't affect production because it's basically a whole separate system. And also, I swear I'm not schilling my own company's products, but if you don't have your IBM hardware and software on IBM maintenance, you're missing out. If your company pays for it, IBM's software support will help you competently work through any configuration issues that you have a hard time figuring out.

Aunt Beth fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 7, 2015

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 01:57

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Tab8715 posted:

Point taken on the other hand aren't LPARs analogous to VMs? If there is a difference, what is it?

Analagous, yes. If your system is newer than POWER4 (which Oh God It Had Better Be) it is likely managed by an HMC and thus only capable of operating in LPAR mode.

When you power on a P machine, you bring it from a Power Off state to a Standby state, which boots the P hypervisor in the system's service processor. When the machine is at a standby state, then you can load an LPAR and IPL an OS image. The hypervisor in this case acts more as a traffic cop than it does a virtualization platform. When you build an LPAR on P, you assign amounts of CPU, memory, dasd, and I/O that can be used by the image. In this case, you are assigning entire physical resources. For example LPAR 1 can be assigned 1 CPU, 4GB of memory, disk in slot 1, and I/O cards in slots 1-2, and LPAR 2 can be assigned 3 CPU's, 60GB of memory, disks in slots 2-8, and I/O in slots 3-6. The resources assigned to LPAR 1 cannot be manipulated by LPAR 2 without reallocating them from 1 to 2 (and vice versa).

IBM's Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) is often used in a way an x86 virtualization platform is, where the VIOS instance is assigned all the hardware in the machine and then is used to create fully virtual system resources, which can then be assigned to other LPARs on the system, and allows for more granular control and assignment of resources.

So if you build a test LPAR on your POWER system, you will be allocating system resources completely independent of your production, so if you accidentally rm -rf, shutdown, etc your test, it has no way of damaging your production data and is a great little sandbox to go hog wild in learning AIX.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 17:00

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Zorak of Michigan posted:

Why do some software vendors still think it's OK to ship UNIX software packaged as an install script and a README? If you're going to charge good money for a product on an officially supported platform, they ought to package it properly. I have some small sympathy for people who don't want to learn IPS for Solaris 11, but an RPM cannot possibly be too much to ask for.

I don't mind this, makes troubleshooting easier if(when) things inevitably fail. You can just look at the script and see where the software is trying to spew itself. Takes more doing with a package.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 17:37

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Farking Bastage posted:

The version of safari that came with Yosemite also horribly broke Sharepoint.

The version of Safari that came with Yosemite is the most frightening browser I've seen since Netscape Communicator. Since when did Apple decide to have the most complex-looking product of its class?

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 23:27

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Goons, help settle a useless argument with my IT-employed friends:

Datacenter vs Computer Room vs Server Room. Which one is right? When do you use each? Generally I consider a room full of systems, dasd, etc to be a computer room, while the building these rooms are in is the datacenter. But most of the time when I call a computer room a computer room, I get laughed at for sounding antiquated. Opinions?

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 01:17

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

psydude posted:

Without issue. Boss, PM, and good coworker were all bummed, but weren't surprised with the recent implosion of the client's management and my federal coworker going off the deep on several occasions.

Quitting a job where you like the people is kind of like breaking up with someone.

I did this, left my former employer to work for one of their vendors. Former employer loves having me manage their account because I know intimately how they operate. I loved everyone I worked with and the company, but a better opportunity presented itself.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 06:12

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Toshimo posted:

Why to we have unholy password requirements? PCOMM
Why are we still on 32-bit windows? PCOMM
Why did we have NT4 until Vista was old? PCOMM
Why do we have to name all the new laptops the exact same as the desktops we are removing? PCOMM

PCOMM runs just fine on 64-bit Windows? I have a session open on Win7x64 right now.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 20:24

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

I'm trying to write up a college class for my local community college district and I'd like to hear some opinions.

It's Introduction to Virtualization Technology and the idea is that it'll be a quick dip into the shallow end of the pool of a variety of platforms.

The main goal is that at the end of the course, a student will be able to run VMware Player or VirtualBox on their laptop, have a basic idea of virtualization concepts and have some basic familiarity with vSphere, HyperV and maybe XenServer.

Has anyone seen a class like this before or maybe a book that fits this general role? I've never done this kind of thing before so it'd be nice to not have to blaze my own trail.

As far as literature is concerned, The Register has a short ebook out called A Brief History of Virtualization. It travels back to its invention in mainframe-land and up to modern day. Might help get the theory down. It's a quick, and pretty amusing read.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 01:11

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

OAquinas posted:

Plus, Kinko's doesn't exist anymore, I don't think.

It's the FedEx Office or whatever they call it.

# ¿ May 17, 2015 04:46

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Zero VGS posted:

I just did this same thing! Only I got my way:

You consider this winning? You're winding up with a one-of-a-kind special snowflake production environment built on used parts. This will wind up being your baby 24x7x365 with no chance to pawn problems off on vendors, warranties, or maintenance agreements.

I hope your backups aren't also going to be kept on systems held together by prayers.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 05:04

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Internet Explorer posted:

Please just ignore Zero VGS he posts his dumb shoestring budgets poo poo in every thread and it's exhausting to read in a "goon in well" sort of way. Apparently the company he works for is a competitor to VMware or something but can't actually give him any sort of budget or let them use their hypervisor. Actually, maybe it's Citrix. That would explain a lot.

You are the only version of IE that has ever made me smile.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 05:38

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

MustardFacial posted:

1. Is there an IT job where all you do is setup and maintain large server rooms? What's it called?

This title sort of varies depending on the nuances of the role, but I've seen it referred to as hardware planner, infrastructure architect, or datacenter manager. They're the ones responsible for the buildout of a computer room, power capacity and architecture, cooling, and generally rack/equipment placement as well one the room is up and running so that proper airflow and so forth is maintained.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 23:42

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

MustardFacial posted:

So for someone with zero experience (outside of that games networking thing), zero certs, and zero professional training. Should I be looking for something like that? or is there a lower level of that job I can get more easily and then learn up and gain experience in the job?

As the others have said, yes, you'd probably want to look at NOC Tech or datacenter tech first off, typically the other roles tend to go to either people who have been in computer rooms their whole careers or have an engineering background (or at least technical project management background to deal with engineers)

# ¿ Jun 16, 2015 01:12

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

theperminator posted:

Use RatticDB instead, it doesn't even encrypt and the devs recommend using LUKS to keep your data safe...

Seriously? This is even a thing? :wth:

# ¿ Jun 16, 2015 05:03

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Wonder_Bread posted:

Lotus Domino/Notes oh my god I am so sorry.

Neither are that bad, it's just the bloaty Eclipse GUI's that they use that makes it so painful.

That said I still miss GroupWise. Cut my teeth on that suite

# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 07:06

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

jaegerx posted:

Verse is coming soon to get rid of that crap. I am unfortunately not in the beta but from what I've heard it's great.

I've been using the beta. I guess I don't let my collaboration suite run my life enough though, because I have yet to derive much value from the analytical parts of it. Plus I prefer a native client over a web ui. It has a great amount of potential. I'm curious if they're going to figure out some way to jam traditional Notes databases into it. Moving my mail and calendar to a different utility is nice, but we have a zillion Notes databases that we use every day, so I'll still have to have the Notes client up alongside Verse for the foreseeable future.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 07:33

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Working in IT 3.0: Contract to Fire, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Do the Needful

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 04:01

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

go3 posted:

I won the printer game.

In the game of printers, you win or you die.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2015 15:37

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

CloFan posted:

We use first four of their birthday and last four of their social.

Do you work for an Upstate NY community college?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 05:53

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Tab8715 posted:

Does IBM have any cloud offerings or is that all through Softlayer?

Softlayer and Bluemix are IBM's big two cloudy offerings. There are a ton of niche services besides those two.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2015 05:41

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

KillHour posted:

I think I went here....

HVCC? That's what I'm thinking of. Maybe this password formula is just SOP in education.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 04:17

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

I'll add this one I saw earlier this week.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2015 16:28

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Ahdinko posted:

What are the chances that if you lift up that mess and look behind the cables, you'd find that to cut costs there is no networking hardware in those racks at all, just a poor, disheveled contractor routing all the bits by hand? Pay no attention to that resource behind the curtain!

# ¿ Aug 21, 2015 17:10

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Judge Schnoopy posted:

This is why class a addresses are a huge waste and need to be forcibly reclaimed from the shitheads that still think they need 500 million routable addresses (Microsoft).

Fun fact, IBM owns 9.0.0.0 and doesn't route any of it!

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 16:00

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Methanar is the new larches. Let's get him out of his well.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 19:45

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

22 Eargesplitten posted:

The director of IT just got terminated.

Me IRL:

I've had four managers in four years. Ain't no thang.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2015 23:18

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Tab8715 posted:

Seconding times a thousand and it's one of big reason why the AS/400 hasn't died. A TN5250 emulator does wonders even in TYOOL2015. It might not be pretty but it's just as functional as a webapp and a hell of lot faster especially once you've got a hang of the function keys.

Also POWER hardware is bone reliable.

But is is almost magical to see a really good iSeries admin or operator just hurtle through screens without looking until suddenly they're done.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 06:17

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

Sprechensiesexy posted:

I wonder what the next fad after the cloud is gonna be

The cloud certainly has it uses but I get skeptical when a thing is being over hyped.

I'm pretty sure the next fad is already here, and it's Internet of Things, because people in Big Companies and all the CIO type magazines won't shut up about it.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 19:51

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 13:59

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

adorai posted:

from a price standpoint, UCS really shines at 3 or more chassis. You can really save some cash at that point over HP or ~~IBM~~Lenovo .

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 04:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

«‹›6 »