On 9/28/06, Brandon Darbro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Some shops, like mine, have what I call "strategic division of labor".
I can't grab another VM's disks. z/VM is handled by the mainframe
group, and Linux is handled by my Unix group. And while I might get
granted such access, that makes me the sole support person for tons of
VM's, because we haven't been successful getting many Unix admins to
train up on working in z/VM, and we get to do it so rarely, we forget
much of our training.
There's challenge to get the "strategic division" so that the work
gets done. I fully understand the battles to fight, and I just hope
that by discussing this we give you some ideas on what battles to try
to win in your shop. If you think something will not work for you, we
can help come up with alternatives. The only way you know for sure it
will not work is by not trying at all.
Many of us have shops where traditionally the network group were
aliens and had to be avoided. Getting an IP address for your Linux
virtual machines was extremely hard ("you already have an IP address
on the mainframe") and Alan's suggestion to call it a subnet was even
worse because "we manage routers and switches" boundaries of control.
It's not an all-or-nothing approach you have to use. You don't need a
userid that can access all disks, you just give every admin (or group
of admins) their own virtual server that can get at the disks they may
touch. With some standardization you can create an easy shell script
that will link the disks and mount them, and undo it again when you're
done. The good part in this is that it avoids discussions about
personal favorite tools that people like, because they don't need to
be installed on each machine anymore.
I noticed at the helpdesk that they often also do not bother to dig in
the Windows desktop of the user but stick the hard disk in their
docking station and run tools against it instead. It's much more
reliable.
Rob
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