The nifty thing no one has mentioned about serial communications is the ability to provide reasonably reliable remote access into remote equipment. I worked for a consulting and services group which always located at least one modem into each customer site. That modem linked to a terminal server where access to firewalls, switching, routers load balancing equipment, servers and in some cases storage was available. If you can't reach a site this can answer all sorts of questions and provide a really fast way to put a customer back into service saving the time and potential travel costs.
If the widget is right next to you, USB or even network connection can make a lot of sense. If you're forcing a switch to fail over or rebooting a server from a PDA with a modem, serial is the way to go.
Not enough information to make a decision here. 30 end users with some virtual servers. . . What's the impact (co$t) of downtime? What sort of traffic do these systems support? Some virtual servers How many physical servers and what are the network, power and cooling requirements. You probably don't want your UPS to run these systems when cooling has been out for hours.
So, work out what financial impact downtime will have. Then you can start looking at options. At one end of the scale, move everything into a hosted data center and bring up a point to point VPN. Let someone else deal with power, cooling and redundant networking. Your midpoint will be rack sized (half rack maybe) UPS that can feed your equipment. Include cooling and or temperature monitors as well. At the low end, buy a couple of rack sized UPS for 15 minutes or so and hope things work out. Don't forget to scale this option to allow for that new storage expansion or the server uplift which will add more CPUs and have larger power budget.
Work out the numbers cost versus business requirements. I worked with one company when we had a prolonged power outage, (greater than 15 minutes) we shut down our development and staging servers, left customer facing equipment and networking running and located ginormous fans on UPS power to purge hot air and bring in outside air. It's always cooler outside than behind the racks.
Bottom line is the cost of downtime against the cost of preparation. Run the numbers, make a recommendation and remember I told you so although satisfying may or may not be good long term career option.
Exactly so. In one case I stopped being a target after I started a few fights. If everyone is rubbing blue mud in their naval, you'd be better grab a handful of big blue or you're going to the heretic.
I was involved in a large out-sourcing contract where a county government laid off it's entire IT staff and hired a team of contractors to support and maintain systems. The majority of staff moved to winning bidder. The key issues with this contract where the short term focus on metrics like time to resolve a ticket. If rebooting a system led to ticket resolution, that was that. If a system went down every three days and rebooting was the fix, well, that only brings up your average. Any sort of long term upgrades were considered add work and needed to be funded. This led to silliness such as refreshing a server (Wintel server refresh built into the contract) with newly installed out of support software. Migration to the latest version of Oracle wasn't covered in the server refresh you got new hardware with an out date o/s and a version of Oracle that went of support last month. Would you like to fund that update? No?
The short term focus leads to a infrastructure that older and older and held together by quick fixes. With no one in IT encouraged to take a long term big picture view, the deferred costs continue to add up. Eventually I left since I was bored and didn't want to become a reboot monkey. There's a spectacular failure coming up.
Digital Equipment Corporation. DEC was considered "too big to fail" back in those days. We had about $5 million in software licensing alone. Over the course of five years, the vendor that was "too big to fail" proved otherwise.
How did you manage to miss the take over by Compaq and then HP? I had systems under service that went to Compaq and then HP. Three companies later and we're still buying Digital kit supported by HP. The fact that Compaq and HP diss-assembled the world wide service organization that Digital had in place and replaced it with off shore script monkeys could be be problem, but there are enough ex-Digits out there that the gap can be closed.
>>> When someone starts talking to you, you have two options: a) schedule them in with the rest, and make them believe you're not paying attention (and/or are unable to, hence ADHD), or b) throw your whole state of mind out the window, and listen to their highly informative and productive inane ramblings.
Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive. We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. from
The Graphing Calculator Story
Digital Equipment Corp, DEC, digital These folks started making test equipment, rivaled IBM when the PDP and VAX systems roamed the data centers. Their customer support was a pleasure to deal with. The only time a DEC field service engineer ever told me they didn't have a part in town, he told me it was coming in on a 2:00 pm flight and he'd be at my door by 3:00. A series of management by accountants slowly dissolved the company into take over bait. Despite making quality products they faded away. The low bidder trumps all.
>>>refuse to provide funds for expensive lab equipment, test circuits and for reasonable time to get testing done before moving equipment or configs into production.
Make sure that every change request implementation documents that this change is being placed intro the production environment for testing. Document impact ranging from total network failure to moderate inconvenience and include roll out time tables. The roll out needs include travel times such drive to site B or fly cross country.
Of course the downside of this is that management may go out and hire someone who knows, or at least pretends to know, how to drop changes into place without whining about ignorance and making customers uncomfortable.
Don't forget that DC area drivers look at on ramps as a pit stop area. They will charge down the ramp and just before merging into traffic, suddenly come to a complete stop. After the full stop, they wait until they can jump in front of oncoming traffic. Bonus points if they can force the lead car to stop and get rear ended while they charge ahead down the main drag. I lived there for three years, and I was always afraid I was going to rear end some lack wit on a ramp.
I used to think Lotus Notes was painful, bloated and clumsy. Then the business unit I was in was sold to a Microsoft Exchange company. After the ease of Lotus, the support for on/off/unknown network states realize how ungrateful I was. I miss the Lotus and easy synchronization.
I already thought George W Bush is Nehemiah Scudder. RAH missed the first coming but he knew it out there.
Another thought, Get the Original Harlan Ellison script for City on the Edge of Forever - Star Trek and compare the script to the production episode. The drug problem was censored out to portray an ideal Star Fleet and crewmen with issues. (Greed and substance abuser). Good fodder for discussion.
The Cold Equations Tom Godwin
This is a grounded Science Fiction story. The problem has one solution and the laws of physics don't allow for extigent circumstance. The Last Question Asimov
Another physics question.
And then there were none Eric Frank Russell Farenheit 451 Bradbury Moon is Harsh Mistress Heinlein Voyage from Yesteryear James Hogan Postman David Brin
Now we're involved in social science fiction. Does society have the right to dictate to the individual? The Postman makes a case for social cooperation over individualism. And shows how an individual can unknowingly light the fires of social unity with selfish lie. Damn, I need to go read that again.
I Robot Asimov. These stories show people using tools, designing safeties and how those safeties can fail. Forever War Joe Haldeman. Ongoing misunderstood war. What rights do your troops have once they're signed? Monument Lloyd Biggle Jr. Light fiction, big social commentary. Death, Pollution, Pirate (developers). The People series Zenna Henderson - They live among us and just want to be left alone. To Serve Man The want to be our friends Bernie the Faust William Tenn - Let's make a deal First Contract Greg Costikyan Let's make a deal. Earth Abides George Stewart - The original apocalypse book. A Boy and his Dog Harlan Ellison. Another apocalypse story, a nifty film. Possibly a good pick when you'd like to collect unemployment due to some racey bits. Lucifer's Hammer Niven and Pournelle. This could happen next Tuesday.
Princess Bride Goldman - Silly Fantasy incredible commentary. Allow extra credit for biography of Morgenstern. Silverlock George Myers Myers - A roll up of Fantasy Inferno Niven and Pournelle - Compare Dante to the the update. Midsummer Night's Tale The Bard - Yes it does so fit.
Or you could set up a Vonage line and have it simultaneously ring your cell. I worked at home for 4 years and took advantage of this. Any calls to my home number were promptly answered.
Re:Electronic Health Records is very hard
on
IT and Health Care
·
· Score: 1
>>> Indeed, there's a higher chance of the neutrino changing the state of the doctor's own neurons and making him flip out and start turning patients into mutant zombies in a plan to take over the world...
Lotus Dancing Eye Candy-TM was a nifty feature. While a user entered the password, a random sequence of glyphs flashed on screen and drew the eye. It was a real effort to shoulder surf password until we went to Outlook.
I was part of a company in San Diego that was acquired by a group in Overland Park Kansas. They had a habit making offers to move to Kansas with no relocation package. You can take a tax break. State of Kansas or state of unemployment deals. After 3 to 6 months of cross training the immigrants from California were laid off. Repeat with the remaining body count. I turned down several of these deals, it was an attractive deal, but unemployment 10 minutes from the beach is better than unemployment in the middle of Jesus County. I wound up doing some fast and dirty consulting work after my layoff which turned into a nice little group with some of my comrades from the original team. Seems the new company won't do any custom work, every customer has to use the same package build. We can't build on their code, but we can customize around the data and extend functionality.
Adding to the comments already posted, I used a quick and dirty internal web server to host documentation on off lease kit. The key point is internal access control and easy to update. That job required management of customer networks as well as hosted applications and internal sites. They all went up on the web server. I also posted jpg photos of equipment, locations, customer offices. Backup and equipment configurations. If you can dump configuration files from your networking gear, post them. Update as required.
You'll also want inventory, service contract information in place. Equipment under contract and equipment that's just out there. I used to see off lease equipment go into internal service since it was inexpensive. Of course, the users never wanted to put it under service, that would take funds. Everyone here knows what happened next.
If there are services or equipment where redundancy is required or was waived the next guy needs to know. When something's down, it'll be a big problem but when service renewal is up no one wants to open the checkbook.
My CS teachers are a bunch of idiots who only release key information for a week group project two days before the delivery date
It's just the beginning young man. In the real working world, your customers will release key information 24 to 48 hours after the delivery date. Your company will be expected to pay penalties based on missing said delivery date.
I was getting way to many calls on my cell number. Rather than be frustrated, I downloaded the out of service tone and have it cued to quick playlist. When I get unrecognized calls now, I play the standard disconnect message. This has been way more effective than asking to be on the do not call list.
Slashdot Mirror
The nifty thing no one has mentioned about serial communications is the ability to provide reasonably reliable remote access into remote equipment. I worked for a consulting and services group which always located at least one modem into each customer site. That modem linked to a terminal server where access to firewalls, switching, routers load balancing equipment, servers and in some cases storage was available. If you can't reach a site this can answer all sorts of questions and provide a really fast way to put a customer back into service saving the time and potential travel costs.
If the widget is right next to you, USB or even network connection can make a lot of sense. If you're forcing a switch to fail over or rebooting a server from a PDA with a modem, serial is the way to go.
Not enough information to make a decision here. 30 end users with some virtual servers. . . What's the impact (co$t) of downtime? What sort of traffic do these systems support? Some virtual servers How many physical servers and what are the network, power and cooling requirements. You probably don't want your UPS to run these systems when cooling has been out for hours.
So, work out what financial impact downtime will have. Then you can start looking at options. At one end of the scale, move everything into a hosted data center and bring up a point to point VPN. Let someone else deal with power, cooling and redundant networking. Your midpoint will be rack sized (half rack maybe) UPS that can feed your equipment. Include cooling and or temperature monitors as well. At the low end, buy a couple of rack sized UPS for 15 minutes or so and hope things work out. Don't forget to scale this option to allow for that new storage expansion or the server uplift which will add more CPUs and have larger power budget.
Work out the numbers cost versus business requirements. I worked with one company when we had a prolonged power outage, (greater than 15 minutes) we shut down our development and staging servers, left customer facing equipment and networking running and located ginormous fans on UPS power to purge hot air and bring in outside air. It's always cooler outside than behind the racks.
Bottom line is the cost of downtime against the cost of preparation. Run the numbers, make a recommendation and remember I told you so although satisfying may or may not be good long term career option.
Exactly so. In one case I stopped being a target after I started a few fights. If everyone is rubbing blue mud in their naval, you'd be better grab a handful of big blue or you're going to the heretic.
The short term focus leads to a infrastructure that older and older and held together by quick fixes. With no one in IT encouraged to take a long term big picture view, the deferred costs continue to add up. Eventually I left since I was bored and didn't want to become a reboot monkey. There's a spectacular failure coming up.
How did you manage to miss the take over by Compaq and then HP? I had systems under service that went to Compaq and then HP. Three companies later and we're still buying Digital kit supported by HP. The fact that Compaq and HP diss-assembled the world wide service organization that Digital had in place and replaced it with off shore script monkeys could be be problem, but there are enough ex-Digits out there that the gap can be closed.
Generally well written, a background story arc and long shot odds. Peter Weller was way cool.
It's called marriage.
Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive. We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. from The Graphing Calculator Story
Digital Equipment Corp, DEC, digital These folks started making test equipment, rivaled IBM when the PDP and VAX systems roamed the data centers. Their customer support was a pleasure to deal with. The only time a DEC field service engineer ever told me they didn't have a part in town, he told me it was coming in on a 2:00 pm flight and he'd be at my door by 3:00. A series of management by accountants slowly dissolved the company into take over bait. Despite making quality products they faded away. The low bidder trumps all.
Make sure that every change request implementation documents that this change is being placed intro the production environment for testing. Document impact ranging from total network failure to moderate inconvenience and include roll out time tables. The roll out needs include travel times such drive to site B or fly cross country.
Of course the downside of this is that management may go out and hire someone who knows, or at least pretends to know, how to drop changes into place without whining about ignorance and making customers uncomfortable.
Hot Fudge Sundae has been postponed again. If this had been actual Hot Fudge Sundae the government would have covered it up.
Don't forget that DC area drivers look at on ramps as a pit stop area. They will charge down the ramp and just before merging into traffic, suddenly come to a complete stop. After the full stop, they wait until they can jump in front of oncoming traffic. Bonus points if they can force the lead car to stop and get rear ended while they charge ahead down the main drag. I lived there for three years, and I was always afraid I was going to rear end some lack wit on a ramp.
I used to think Lotus Notes was painful, bloated and clumsy. Then the business unit I was in was sold to a Microsoft Exchange company. After the ease of Lotus, the support for on/off/unknown network states realize how ungrateful I was. I miss the Lotus and easy synchronization.
Nifty story, and the writer dealt with fuel and arms limits very well.
Another thought, Get the Original Harlan Ellison script for City on the Edge of Forever - Star Trek and compare the script to the production episode. The drug problem was censored out to portray an ideal Star Fleet and crewmen with issues. (Greed and substance abuser). Good fodder for discussion.
This is a grounded Science Fiction story. The problem has one solution and the laws of physics don't allow for extigent circumstance.
The Last Question Asimov
Another physics question.
And then there were none Eric Frank Russell
Farenheit 451 Bradbury
Moon is Harsh Mistress Heinlein
Voyage from Yesteryear James Hogan
Postman David Brin
Now we're involved in social science fiction. Does society have the right to dictate to the individual? The Postman makes a case for social cooperation over individualism. And shows how an individual can unknowingly light the fires of social unity with selfish lie. Damn, I need to go read that again.
I Robot Asimov. These stories show people using tools, designing safeties and how those safeties can fail.
Forever War Joe Haldeman. Ongoing misunderstood war. What rights do your troops have once they're signed?
Monument Lloyd Biggle Jr. Light fiction, big social commentary. Death, Pollution, Pirate (developers).
The People series Zenna Henderson - They live among us and just want to be left alone.
To Serve Man The want to be our friends
Bernie the Faust William Tenn - Let's make a deal
First Contract Greg Costikyan Let's make a deal.
Earth Abides George Stewart - The original apocalypse book.
A Boy and his Dog Harlan Ellison. Another apocalypse story, a nifty film. Possibly a good pick when you'd like to collect unemployment due to some racey bits.
Lucifer's Hammer Niven and Pournelle. This could happen next Tuesday.
Princess Bride Goldman - Silly Fantasy incredible commentary. Allow extra credit for biography of Morgenstern.
Silverlock George Myers Myers - A roll up of Fantasy
Inferno Niven and Pournelle - Compare Dante to the the update.
Midsummer Night's Tale The Bard - Yes it does so fit.
Is COBAL the latest open source COBOL compiler?
Or you could set up a Vonage line and have it simultaneously ring your cell. I worked at home for 4 years and took advantage of this. Any calls to my home number were promptly answered.
Or just wait for Google Voice
I guess that explains Kaiser and whole HMO thing.
Lotus Dancing Eye Candy-TM was a nifty feature. While a user entered the password, a random sequence of glyphs flashed on screen and drew the eye. It was a real effort to shoulder surf password until we went to Outlook.
First the ABC News announced a victor with the results neck and neck. Then the recount was voided and the Supreme Court announced a winner.
I was part of a company in San Diego that was acquired by a group in Overland Park Kansas. They had a habit making offers to move to Kansas with no relocation package. You can take a tax break. State of Kansas or state of unemployment deals. After 3 to 6 months of cross training the immigrants from California were laid off. Repeat with the remaining body count. I turned down several of these deals, it was an attractive deal, but unemployment 10 minutes from the beach is better than unemployment in the middle of Jesus County. I wound up doing some fast and dirty consulting work after my layoff which turned into a nice little group with some of my comrades from the original team. Seems the new company won't do any custom work, every customer has to use the same package build. We can't build on their code, but we can customize around the data and extend functionality.
You'll also want inventory, service contract information in place. Equipment under contract and equipment that's just out there. I used to see off lease equipment go into internal service since it was inexpensive. Of course, the users never wanted to put it under service, that would take funds. Everyone here knows what happened next.
If there are services or equipment where redundancy is required or was waived the next guy needs to know. When something's down, it'll be a big problem but when service renewal is up no one wants to open the checkbook.
It's just the beginning young man. In the real working world, your customers will release key information 24 to 48 hours after the delivery date. Your company will be expected to pay penalties based on missing said delivery date.
I was getting way to many calls on my cell number. Rather than be frustrated, I downloaded the out of service tone and have it cued to quick playlist. When I get unrecognized calls now, I play the standard disconnect message. This has been way more effective than asking to be on the do not call list.