Slashdot Mirror
Half of All Data Centers Understaffed
alphadogg writes "Fifty percent of IT executives say their data centers are understaffed, and companies are still looking for more ways to cut costs, according to Symantec's latest 'State of the Data Center' report. Sixteen percent of survey respondents said their data centers are extremely understaffed, and another 34% called their data centers somewhat understaffed. At the same time, data centers are becoming more complex and harder to manage, with more applications, data and increasingly demanding service-level agreements. 'Data center complexity has led to a lot of staffing challenges,' says Sean Derrington, director of storage management and high availability at Symantec."
Banks are "guilty" of under staffing too. You call a bank for help or a query on something very dear to you and here's what you are likely to face:
1: A long wait for service after being informed that they've been "receiving higher than normal call volumes..."
2: You then face a menu system that tries to keep you away from speaking to any human being...
3: When you finally get to speak to a one, this human being knows nothing about what you need...or cannot help you!
4: Or if he/she can be of any help, their accent makes you take "too long" to actually get service...
5: When you decide to 'attack' your branch office to "actually get service", you realize that you are dealing with a fella who is paid small amount of cash...almost minimum wage...that they are actually inefficient...
These financial institutions are guilty guilty guilty too.
I don't think the parent is talking about the people actually setting up the servers, installing hardware or software, designing the networks, and monitoring it all, but rather the management who tells them what to do.
I haven't worked in IT in a long time, but when I did in the '70s and mid-'80s, everyone in management, even up to the CTO or CIO or VP of Technology, had degrees and extensive background in electrical engineering or computer science. This was true at the five separate companies I worked for during that time, from insurance to healthcare to large engineering firms.
From my relatives who work in IT at various places, I hear this isn't the case any longer. Most of their managers were brought in externally, and aren't technical at all. Some of them were saying that they spend more time fighting their management for basic resources than they do actually performing their IT duties.
- James
The problem is when the company requires you to work "on-call" for 6-7 days a week on the 12-hour night shift. If/when problems arise you are required to stay for the 8AM morning meeting, and boom, your little 12-hour shift from 6PM to 6AM becomes a 15 hour shift because you have to explain why the accounting database was down for 45 minutes last night, and all the reports based on it are backed up by 2 hours because the batch process had to be restarted. Followed by another 12-hour shift in a few hours.
The problem is, offshore programmers aren't taught a lick of JCL to run the code properly.
I worked in Data Centers for years, I was happy and enjoyed the night shift until working for "Big Blue". They would promise clients dedicated operators, but "double-dip". Sunday nights you would routinely be watching 2 or 3 client systems at the same time, clients who were asking for / requiring dedicated operators. Sure, you ran an IPL on Sunday night and nothing was going to happen for most of the night, but it's still wrong.
The pay was great. Overtime was paid at time-and-a-half. But working 70-80 hours a week for 6-weeks straight did a number on me. It was the reason I left IT. The client system I was responsible for had 3 operators working 12-hour shifts when I came in as the fourth. That's right, 3 people covering 12-hour shifts 7-days a week, 365-days a year. That's why there was double-dipping. Just have an Operator watching another system and keep an eye on this one. It happened with almost all the clients that hired out Mainframe Operations (The majority were run this way). Management fought against bringing me on, and after I left, did not fill the position.
As for the Brazillions IBM sent some jobs to, they came to Boulder to train (It's called Boulder, but the IBM facility is closer to Niwot). The majority of them had never used a computer, and they all claimed the only requirement for the job was to speak English. It was a slap in the face for the American Operators, who had to have a college degree plus experience for the same positions.
In closing, I would go back to 12-hour shifts at a company with a dedicated Data Center. I would never go back to a service company like IBM that treats operators like junk.
Unions were invented to protect unsuspecting workers from manipulative business owners
No. It was really much simpler than that. People were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of people were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of those people were plenty smart. How else do you think they got organized?
Before unions, the institution of the 5-day work week was another long, hard-fought, pitched political battle that business was *sure* would absolutely end the U.S. economy. When Ford doubled pay and shrank working hours, the rest of American industry would not follow because from a capitalist's perspective, you are blowing your labor costs out of site! History suggests it seemed to have worked for Ford.
You don't get to blame organized labor for all of the auto industry's ills. Maybe you recall the Pontiac Aztek as possibly the apex of bad auto product? The labor that allocated resources for that project and a long history of uninspiring ones before that, weren't part of a Union. What's the managerial ratio at those companies 'burdened' by Union labor? What are the managerial labor costs at those firms 'burdened' by Union labor? I think you will find them both expensive and inefficient non-union workforces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
It's time to bury that notion that Unions cripple an economy. It's used primarily to reinforce the ridiculous American ideal of 'rugged individualism triumphs over all" and concentrates power and resources to the least efficient few.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Some of the most productive car plants in the world are there, the Unions in Germany (who actually have input in how the companies are run) would be classed as nothing but communist by most Usians from their brainwashed point of view of world politics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Analogy and metaphor are never perfect.
However I stand by my statements. When a vehicle I use for business is not working, it is not making money for me (in fact it is losing money). Oil Changes are actually regularly scheduled preventative maintenance. Its not to be done _just whenever_ I don't happen need the vehicle.
It is a fact _regularly scheduled_ maintenance is to be performed as normal course of business. It is for sure I want to keep the vehicle operating as much as possible as to why it is done in the first place! It's not that I don't need just then the vehicle -- server or apps. I really need the minor _regularly scheduled_ maintenance change to it to better offer the primary service, and that is what must function perfectly.
Regularly scheduled IT maintenance ought to be predictable, repeatable, and quick and seen to be done as course of business not late at night on weekends. That time is for really necessary things that can't be done otherwise.
You bring up regular business hours... but don't realize that means exactly nothing in IT. 06:00-16:00 GMT or 08:00-18:30 EST? What day is not a regular day: Boxing Day, the last Thursday in November for the USA. That the customers (internal or external) will of course be on the IT guy's same calendar schedule is a misjudgment.
You say that few business are not prepared to pay the cost of a completely redundant system. I'd say that IT models exist where this is not necessary. Virtualized hosts are one way that is just now being explored but conceptually and actually has been around since S/390. The consumers haven't asked to their vendors why redundant systems are so expensive. Business has to vote with their purchasing and vendor allegiances.
10 years ago you could buy a truck for your company that had more built in "safety systems," "3rd party crash & reliability analysis", and monitoring telemetry than a WinTel server. Today that has changed, HP has improved iLO, IBM has done a bit with RSA, and RealWeasel saved a few butts Im sure.
Yet, today I still meet admins that don't know without going to google how to collate & leverage the results from SMART, thermo sensors, and serial/terminal console hardware errors. These are "free" predictive monitors when the system is up.
Fewer out of techschool/university know about IBM RSA, HP iLO, DELL DRAC or similar technologies that you have to use after the server is casters up. I don't see them just as out of band management but "flight data recorders" as well -- if you know how to use them.
Still missing is the "3rd party crash & reliability analysis." Why purchase IBM over Dell servers? What is the defect rate of Seagate HDD over XYZ? At what rate are PSU failures, rate of memory failures, etc... What are the vendor RMA rates? All this is hidden actually by IT having poor practices. Firestone nearly went bankrupt with its fiasco of popping tires - federal investigations I think were held. If you get a bunch of bad capacitors (The capacitor plague of late 90's) into crucial product lines no one screams, no one calls for investigations. IT scrambles and survives and hopes not to repeat the mistake.
Any such reliability rating & metrics for software producers of consumer products has been self deemed impossible or too expensive by IT professionals and thus not seriously spoken of anymore. This is the greatest cop out and con job of the 20th and 21st Century.
A great step forward and yet backward for IT professionalism.
Lastly, other industries and businesses know how to hire skilled labor to maintain their business _while_ the business is running (Bankers, doctors, nurses, janitorial, construction, plumbers, etc). These skilled professionals know how to effect changes to the work place discretely and to not give bad impressions to the customer.
IT as an industry isn't picking up the same "we work in the background unnoticed, perhaps just screened off" but instead loudly and obtrusively makes business bend to IT practi