I just had a downtime yesterday night, and I haven’t slept properly yet, which kinda prompted these thoughts.
I guess that we system administrators have no concept of normal hours, an 8 to 5 job, a normal life with friends and family - no siree we are those guys that lurk in dark, unseen, arctic data centers. As a system administrator, I’ve seen a good share of downtimes, but I think that downtime needn’t be a pain in the ass.
We sys admins have a small flaw (as I like to think of it), and that would be that we are not exactly the best guys to keep documents upto date - huh what’s that I hear, you actually did, good for you mate, that will help you definitely to manage your downtimes better. BUT, if you fall in the category like me where I haven’t really kept my documentation super good, it would be a good idea to plan, prepare and finally execute.
I guess we can’t exactly plan, a downtime occurred what’s to plan? Well, at that point of time, bleary eyed and half asleep/awake it’s better to collect your thoughts and think of what you want to do. Remember in the case of a very important system, it would be a good idea to have a backup of some configuration files or settings that might possibly get lost. It would be a good idea at this point of time to lock the doors and focus on the task that you’ve planned and prepared. Distractions in the case of an extremely important system result is a high risk of making mistakes.
Off-course, prevention would be the best policy but we live in an imperfect world. Even Google had their share of downtime.
I guess that we system administrators have no concept of normal hours, an 8 to 5 job, a normal life with friends and family - no siree we are those guys that lurk in dark, unseen, arctic data centers. As a system administrator, I’ve seen a good share of downtimes, but I think that downtime needn’t be a pain in the ass.
We sys admins have a small flaw (as I like to think of it), and that would be that we are not exactly the best guys to keep documents upto date - huh what’s that I hear, you actually did, good for you mate, that will help you definitely to manage your downtimes better. BUT, if you fall in the category like me where I haven’t really kept my documentation super good, it would be a good idea to plan, prepare and finally execute.
I guess we can’t exactly plan, a downtime occurred what’s to plan? Well, at that point of time, bleary eyed and half asleep/awake it’s better to collect your thoughts and think of what you want to do. Remember in the case of a very important system, it would be a good idea to have a backup of some configuration files or settings that might possibly get lost. It would be a good idea at this point of time to lock the doors and focus on the task that you’ve planned and prepared. Distractions in the case of an extremely important system result is a high risk of making mistakes.
Off-course, prevention would be the best policy but we live in an imperfect world. Even Google had their share of downtime.
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