Eight Long Days

It has been entirely too long since I have posted a blog.  I have been very busy at my new job in Moncks Corner working at Santee Cooper Power.  I have been there a month now and I am hopeful that I will be there for another 5 months or longer.  Only time can tell when it comes to I.T. contracts so I will take it one day at a time.  So far so good so I am happy about that.

Thus far I have been learning Tivoli Storage Management and how that system backs up data in the enterprise.  Basically there is a Tivoli Server that sits on the network and schedules backup jobs for the nodes, which are the other servers running a TSM client.  The TSM client nodes sit on the network and listen for the TSM Server (Host) to call upon them to run a scheduled backup job.  When the server (client) hears its name being called across the network the TSM Scheduler service kicks off and starts the backup of data from the server across the network to the TSM Host.  As I understand the process data is hot copied from the volume of one drive on the client server to the SAN volume for the HOST TSM server which is a very fast process since the network backbone is at gigabit speeds.  Once that data is moved to the SAN then it is moved over to tape.  This is a very broad overview of how all of this happens but trust me when I tell you there are a lot of other systems and subsystems that are involved in this process.

I have also been spending a lot of time with Pro IT which is like HP Openview which monitors all of our network nodes which are scattered all over the state of South Carolina.  The nodes are listed on the map and if they are green then all is well.  If there is a blue dot on the map that means that there is an informational alarm to look at but is not critical.  If there is a yellow or red dot on the map that means there is a critical alert that needs to be acted upon.  We support UNIX, Linux, HP UNIX, Novell Netware and Windows Server operating systems.  There is a staff of 83 folks who watch and maintain these systems and trust me when I say this is a full time job since there are 200+ servers to monitor.  This does not include all the WAN devices such as Routers, Switches and communications lines that our WAN folks monitor.  I have spent a LOT of time reading and researching Windows Server specific alerts.  Have I ever told you how vague some of these alerts can be?  Microsoft did not spend a lot of time on explaining what some of these vague error messages mean.  That means if there is a new one that I am not familiar with that means I have to go to the Microsoft Knowledge Base or places like TechRepublic.com or Expert Exchange which I am a member of both.  
Once the research is done I use that information to make changes to the system affected so it does not come back as an alarm.  If the alert is something that is part of the normal behavior of the Operating System then I shoot off an e-mail to my manager and request that the alert be either downgraded to a non critical alert or have specific alert thresholds raised so that we are only alerted when specific danger levels are reached.  

I have also been having a lot of fun with Dell Openmanage which is the hardware specific monitoring software that Dell installs or lets us install on all of the servers that we have.  Dell Openmanage is the server equivalent of sysinfo for Microsoft desktop OS or programs like Everest etc.  Dell Openmanage monitors the drivers, bios levels, firmware levels, hardware temperatures etc and if there is a problem it can alert the staff in numerous ways such as paging us or sending us an e-mail.  

The other thing that I have been doing which frees me up from my cubicle/cage during the day is to go into the data center and help put together new server racks and server chassis for ongoing growth.  Since I have been there I have helped to install four different blade server chassis in a new Dell Server rack.  Each one of these chassis has 4 power supplies which provide plenty of electricity and redundant power sources in case one of them fails.  Each chassis can hold up to twenty blades or servers.  Each blade server is as powerful if not more powerful than most of the stand alone Dell servers that we have currently.  What is nice about blade servers is that it has a much smaller footprint in the data center which means you can have four times as many servers in half the space.  Each chassis also has what is called a DRAC or Dell Remote Access Card.  This card when configured on the network has its own IP address and you can connect to it via telnet or http.  The access to this DRAC is independent of the servers themselves or the OS that is installed on each server.  The DRAC acts somewhat like Dell Openmanage on the server because it monitors core temperatures on the server as well as the backplanes that the blade servers plug into.  Should anything happen to one of these subsystems the DRAC can be configured to send out an alert via e-mail or pager.  One of my jobs has been to connect a laptop to the serial port on the new DRAC’s and configure them for the network.  I used HyperTerminal in the XP desktop OS on the laptop to connect to the DRAC and make the configuration changes that were needed.  Then I plugged in an Ethernet cable to each network port on all four chassis and now we have access to them from across the network.  Well, anyway, that is a small part of what I get to do every day at my job so now on to more personal family and church life events that are going on.  

As you remember the other day I had a rant in which I blathered on and on about how I felt I was treated at the Walmart in Moncks Corner.  Guess what folks, I have only been there one time since then and it was one of those in and out raids where I knew what I wanted , found it and ran like heck to get out of there.   In the last 8 days I have spent some time on the telephone trying to convince the doctor at the health clinic downtown where I got my blood pressure medicine prescribed to renew that prescription.    One of my mistakes was that I waited until I was OUT of medicine completely before I tried to reorder it online then I found out there were NO MORE REFILLS.  If you take medicine all the time and are dependent upon it for quality of life issues or just to stay alive then you know how panicked you can get when you discover you are completely out.  So, last Thursday when I discovered that I had not had the prescription renewed I made a phone call to the Walmart pharmacy and asked them to call the doctor and have them renew it over the phone.  I had already requested a refill online so all they had to do was do some phone calling and that would be that.  NOT so quick Charlie Brown.  The Walmart pharmacy decided to call the clinic in Summerville instead of the one downtown.  I guess they made an honest mistake and assumed that I had gone to the Summerville location vs. the downtown location.  Many moons ago when I had been working downtown anyway it was more convenient to go there instead of in Summerville.  The clinic in Summerville did not ever call Walmart back and say “ we are sorry but Doctor so and so does not work here but they are stationed in the downtown clinic and here is their number”.  Instead they just threw the message away and ignored it.  That means that I did not discover this until Tuesday of this week.  Once I got the Walmart pharmacy clued in they started calling the clinic downtown.  On Thursday of this week I started making a phone call in the morning and the afternoon so I could make this happen in my life time.  I found out that it can take upwards of 48 hours for the doctor to return the phone call and renew the prescription over the phone.  I finally told the pharmacy tech at the clinic downtown that I had finally run out of patience in this matter.  I told her that I knew it was not her fault personally and that the system had basically fallen apart and sucked as far as I was concerned.  I told her it was time for me to take this matter up the latter to the next level to see if we could get some blood pressure medicine before I stroke out or have a heart attack.  When I put it to the tech that way she asked me to hold off and she promised to go back to the area where the doctor was and personally has them address this issue within 15 minutes and to call her back.  When I called back in 20 minutes the tech assured me she would call my renewal in after she hung up with me.  This evening, 8 days later I have my prescription renewed and a brand new supply of meds sitting on my desk. Of course , for unknown reasons , the doctor decided to NOT allow any refills and the doctor has to authorize each and every refill.  That means that I will be calling three days in advance BEFORE I run out of meds to have them renew my prescription.  This time I will know who to call and what to ask for.  LOL…  

As you already know Katy received her educator’s certificate in the mail last week.  Katy was led to believe by her employer that she would be receiving a sign on bonus AND receive all her back pay from September of last year until February of this year.  Katy received her back pay and it was ONLY for January of this year.  Supposedly she was only going to get back pay for the time she worked AFTER she got her certificate.  That means that the HR department of the school district promised my wife she would make X amount of dollars per year but only paid her for a beginning teacher with NO experience until she got her certificate.  I asked Katy if she has been given a hire letter verifying her position and pay rate and of course HR covered their bases by not putting anything in writing which means it is her word against theirs.  Katy told me she is going to write an e-mail to someone in HR about this.  I told her that if it was me I would write a formal letter and send it certified mail to someone way above the pay grade of an HR employee to see if they are aware of their deceptive hiring practices.  

Well, I have lots more to say but I have a three day weekend where I will have plenty of time to write about this and that.  So, for now, I will blog some more later.