Saturday September 25, 2004

Moving sixty users and a terabyte of data...

Last weekend saw the culmination of several weeks worth of preparation in the move of sixty engineers and a terabyte of data. Nothing spectacular in that you might say but I would disagree. I support PTS and Solaris sustaining engineers in the UK who are now based in the third building 'sparc' at Sun's Guillemont Park campus in the UK. I think the engineers would agree that they are the most demanding of users they expect the best support/best environment and also want us to use as much of Sun's cutting edge technology as we can. So we use Sunrays, we have one Sunray server running zones and of course thats on top of the latest build of Solaris10 we can get our hands on. We have unique sharing tools used by all of PTS and other parts of Sunservices like the AS labs worldwide. We use live upgrade ,netconnect and much more. We log bugs when these things do not work. We look forward to learning Greenline, using Zfs to make better use of our always stretched storage hardware.

So what happened ? Well we decided on the servers to use, planned reducing the number by use of zones. Also by use of domains on a Serengeti platform. We loaded Solaris on them, preconfigured as much as we could and sent them to the new site a week before the move. We planned our data migration strategy. We had three ways of getting the data to the new site. In case one failed we HAD to have alternatives. We even planned if all them would fail. So we took down the old servers on Friday and started the changeover.. By Saturday email and most services were up. We finished off on the Sunday. We had teething problems for sure but by midweek most of the engineers seemed pretty impressed with how well it went.

The thrill I got out of this was two fold. First filling an empty room full of computer hardware and seeing it bootup and turn into an environment that allows these enginerers solve Sun's most difficult customer issues. The day I loose that interest is the day to go home and never come back. Years ago one person told me when I was getting excited about getting the latest fastest machine in my first IT company "Its just a tin box like your fridge in the kitchen", I could not then and cannot now understand him saying that.Computing should be fun.

Secondly I just enjoyed seeing the folks who work for me doing the hard work. I am a veteran now and aloohugh I can be useful now and then I just like seeing and ensuring all members of team felt and did work that really made this happen. We have students. Each of them built and setup a server each. The students will look after that server in the remaining time they are with us. Upgrading/patching fix ingproblems with it. I think they have to pinch themselves sometimes to believe they are REALLY doing it.

Of course my full time staff also rose to the challenge. PTS and solaris engineers also offered valuable help and advice.

A good weekend's work !