[ale] uptime?

[Bao Ha]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ale at ale.org [mailto:owner-ale at ale.org]On Behalf Of Jim
> Popovitch
> Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 8:05 PM
> To: Gary Maltzen
> Cc: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] uptime?
> .....
> I did find this one comment by you utterly offensive.  Especially to
> those of us who consider systems management a science, not a science
> project.  Just the thought of "Reboot-to-Restore-Resources" RtRR (c)
> being associated with good job skills sends a shiver up my spine. 
> Imagine if you had to periodically shut your $30,000 car off, as you
> were driving down the interstate, to reset unintended leaks.  
> You would
> have a vicious attitude towards Detroit for insulting you with such a
> lousy design.  Hmmm, Maybe that's why sales guys from Redmond 
> remind me
> of car salesmen. :)
>

Years ago at another lifetime, I used to work for a very big 
company in a remote area of SC.

They have a habit of scheduling rebooting their servers at least
once a week to fix a mamory leak problem.  I understand you
may need to do it with WinNT, but AIX?  Give me a break!  AIX is 
designed for database transactions.  It is supposed to run forever 
like a mainframe, developed by an experienced mainframe manufacturer. 

Also one time, we had a visit from a Sun rep.  I think I could feel 
his disgust at the way we were using his products.

Since I am the mode of bashing my old company, few years earlier
we were asked to switch from All-in-one to CCmail.  It took a very
long time to accomplish it.  Anyway, during the transition, the mail
processes were running  on Novell Netware and OS/2.  When everybody
was on CCmail, it was decided to go NT all the ways.  It took more
than 3 years and thousands of dollars to send these guys to Redmond
for certifications.  But, IT management decided to skip it to the 
next major e-mail evolution, Lotus Note.  NT was never stable enough 
to take over the jobs of Netware and OS/2!  The promises of NT 3.5 to
4 and SP1/2/3/4 did not come.

Final note, systems management is not a science, it is an art.  Just
ask those poor sys admin at First Union.  Their banking frontline is
all Unix: Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.  The portal is going down almost
weekly.  It is not easy to manage a multi-purpose server farm of
hundreds of units, in the class of Sun E4500 and above.

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