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R2-D2 Monitors Your Web Servers
1sockchuck writes "What happens when you hire Star Wars enthusiasts as the system admins for your data center? You end up with the R2-D2 server monitoring system. The staff at Japan's Syun (only if you read Japanese) have converted an R2-D2 DVD projector into a Nagios-based server monitoring system that alerts them whenever a server goes offline." Say what you will, but that's a lot harder to ignore than a beeper.
Well, not before they've spent 6 hours saying "the switch is configured just fine, it must be a server problem" first.
Sure we pretend to be busy so that it looks like we are genius. A network admin that needs to run has done a bad job at establishing redundancy. So, not on my shift.
If all us admins took 2 minutes to fix a 2 minute problem, that would just serve to place unrealistic expectations that all problems require a 2 minute fix, thus leading to tears and suffering when a big problem occurs. And the user would probably also get upset!
I know of one guy here who has made a career out of looking busy walking around with a piece of paper while every 2 minute job takes AT LEAST a week! True! Unfortunately for us he is a moron, albeit a highly paid moron.
The only problem I see is that it would take a while for the projector to warm up.
Now if they made this thing capable of walking up and using a telescoping robotic arm to replace the cable, then they would have something. VPN from 200 miles away and direct this thing to do physical layer stuff for you. That would be awesome.
Still pretty nifty in a dog-and-pony show way.
You're not alone, most of us have managers.
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