----- Original Message ----- > JK> I guess we could start by asking something like this: "What is a > JK> System Administrator not responsible for?" and working backwards. > > I bet that anything anyone suggests, someone else can come up with an > anecdote where they (or a sysadmin they know) was responsible for > that > thing. Certainly anything vaguely reasonable (like "allocating office > space" or "watering the plants"), and probably even a lot of > unreasonable > things too. :^p > > -Josh ([email protected])
I've become the system administrator responsible for the care of Phyllis, our office Philodendron....which originally covered had spread to cover all the cubes in two rooms. Though it hasn't coped with staff reductions, reorgs, and cubicle rearrangements....several large sections died off, like the canopy that $boss had made over his cube.... We might have to resort to removing some more tubes from the overhead lights. Phyllis is still one of the first things people notice when they visit our area....though its no longer one plant. But the largest portion is now coming from my cube. The system administrator that had brought the cutting that start it all seems intent on killing that portion now. Apparently someone in the janitorial staff thought they would be helpful and water her...but didn't pay attention and overflowed the pot which rained down onto his computer below.... I've been known to do that occasionally with my pots, but they aren't placed anywhere to cause that problem (though I am using an old computer as stand for one pot....) Its a different system administrator that does the space allocations, though lately people who have nothing to do with us are meddling in how we use our space. Like our spare parts rack where things are neatly organized for what servers they are for, is going to be tasked to an it security student to cram into a cabinet by what the item is. Dont' know if he'll pay any attention to size or type of drive, etc. Seemingly because our CISO is also our interim director, but it was approved on the condition that he keep the two sides completely separate. Bad enough that it was our security group that made us move our spare parts away from the datacenter, because they wanted the space next to the datacenter for their offices....the same space that is now earmarked for department colo, because its already a raised floor area...it was always intended to be an extension of the datacenter, but we don't have the cooling capacity to use it. We're starting to push the limits of the capacity we have now. Originally the main datacenter was for the mainframe, and unix servers for the addon...but instead of we had to find corners (we had 3) to put our unix servers...and we used the space for staging and such. But, now mainframe is gone....and we've gone through cycles where we'd go into the datacenter to warm up, because our cubes are freezing......though its because we're under the building chiller that includes university archives (on the top floor)....so its more important to keep the archives cold than to worry about staff though I wonder if they have any heating in the basement. I know on the upper floors they run heating to bring temps up in the staff/patron areas. Which I guess now is a very common way to do things. When I first heard about this at previous job, I thought it was really strange. It was why whenever the compressor failed, the building temps would quickly go to 100+... though the building we moved to after that had heat pumps scattered about....where cooling outages were due to sediment screens clogging. Which seemed to only affect the computer room, because it was running continuously. I had spec'd it out for 50% duty cycle...but what we got initially wasn't enough to meet 100%. No recovery capacity, and on really hot days it would slowly lose ground. Guess it was good that we went from a building that had generator power to one that didn't...though it was a race to see if servers shutdown due to UPS depletion or thermal limit. :) Wonder which system administrator inherited the job of walking the basement to see if it got flooded anywhere after a fire alarm. Building has an aging Pre-action system, where pretty much after every false alarm there's some area that got flooded. I think its a private funded project underway to replace the whole system going on now. I think we're well over half a billion in deferred maintenance for the University.... though generally whenever money becomes available, the two of the priority areas are addressing fire code violations and ADA compliance. In another ITS building, they wanted to move the bathrooms as part of a remodel...they ended spending most of the money on the project on the bathrooms, because the remodel triggered the need to make it ADA compliant. (which annoyed them because its not a public bathroom, and there are currently no employees demanding it...though some of us are just getting by for now...) Just as other remodels are discouraged in other b uildings since it would trigger the need to remove asbestos...including from areas not directly affected by the remodel.... -- Who: Lawrence K. Chen, P.Eng. - W0LKC - Senior Unix Systems Administrator For: Enterprise Server Technologies (EST) -- & SafeZone Ally Snail: Computing and Telecommunications Services (CTS) Kansas State University, 109 East Stadium, Manhattan, KS 66506-3102 Phone: (785) 532-4916 - Fax: (785) 532-3515 - Email: [email protected] Web: http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~lkchen - Where: 11 Hale Library _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
