I Helped Create a Monster! IT Guru...

[Katahdin]

I have about 25 years experience in IT. Started in web development and moved on to UNIX/Linux Systems administration.

First two companies as an admin were financial and retail processing, they kept systems refreshed with current hardware for the most part.

17 years at one job, then upper management decided to outsource the entire Tech Ops and Quality Departments to CSC. That was a major cluster f**k. They missed 100 applications and everyone was effectively fired before you could be re-hired. There was a mass exodus of experience. I chose to take my 2-weeks per year severance and escape the drama. I miss some of the people, but I have no regrets not pursuing further employment with either the outsourcer or outsourcee. I heard the contract fell apart after 18 months and they had to in-source again. New management then decided to slam everything into the cloud, and there were lots of issues there.

Current gig is for a semi-conductor factory. We're still running Dec Alphas, SunOS4, a lot of Solaris 8, furnaces run on HP-UX 10.20. 20-year-old stuff. In some ways its fun to be retro, in other ways not so much. I warned management 2 years ago the lithium chips in the SunFire 3800 system controllers will expire, the controller's JavaOS will not boot, and I would not be able to power on the system in a power outage. So...their factory reporting systems will turn into a boat anchor!

A factory in Canada has a Sun V210 customer web server down now for 2 weeks because nobody has it under a support contract and nobody local is willing to expense a $100 CPU Fan/Heat sink. Its a lot of extra red tape to get the global systems team get that part. The business has contractual obligations to keep systems current and patched but they're not putting the money into it.

Some of the older Dec Alpha and Sparc Chip systems are now being emulated on new Intel Linux systems I'm building. It's good to get them off old hardware, but the software is still old an unpatched. I've done lots of work in the past with vulnerability scans and remediation. I warned them when the internal scanning starts we're in a lot of trouble.

I can't say this job is worse than the others, just different BS to deal with. The only reason I've kept my employment here is they have decent follow-the-sun support in other regions. I get maybe one after-hours call a year. I like that.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it to retirement in IT, however, I think I need to find another line of work!

 

[MossRoad]

I have about 25 years experience in IT. Started in web development and moved on to UNIX/Linux Systems administration.

First two companies as an admin were financial and retail processing, they kept systems refreshed with current hardware for the most part.

17 years at one job, then upper management decided to outsource the entire Tech Ops and Quality Departments to CSC. That was a major cluster f**k. They missed 100 applications and everyone was effectively fired before you could be re-hired. There was a mass exodus of experience. I chose to take my 2-weeks per year severance and escape the drama. I miss some of the people, but I have no regrets not pursuing further employment with either the outsourcer or outsourcee. I heard the contract fell apart after 18 months and they had to in-source again. New management then decided to slam everything into the cloud, and there were lots of issues there.

Current gig is for a semi-conductor factory. We're still running Dec Alphas, SunOS4, a lot of Solaris 8, furnaces run on HP-UX 10.20. 20-year-old stuff. In some ways its fun to be retro, in other ways not so much. I warned management 2 years ago the lithium chips in the SunFire 3800 system controllers will expire, the controller's JavaOS will not boot, and I would not be able to power on the system in a power outage. So...their factory reporting systems will turn into a boat anchor!

A factory in Canada has a Sun V210 customer web server down now for 2 weeks because nobody has it under a support contract and nobody local is willing to expense a $100 CPU Fan/Heat sink. Its a lot of extra red tape to get the global systems team get that part. The business has contractual obligations to keep systems current and patched but they're not putting the money into it.

Some of the older Dec Alpha and Sparc Chip systems are now being emulated on new Intel Linux systems I'm building. It's good to get them off old hardware, but the software is still old an unpatched. I've done lots of work in the past with vulnerability scans and remediation. I warned them when the internal scanning starts we're in a lot of trouble.

I can't say this job is worse than the others, just different BS to deal with. The only reason I've kept my employment here is they have decent follow-the-sun support in other regions. I get maybe one after-hours call a year. I like that.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it to retirement in IT, however, I think I need to find another line of work!

Who's doing hardware support on the Alphas?

 

[Katahdin]

Who's doing hardware support on the Alphas?

Both Park Place and HPE have been in to do limited work. They weren't able to repair one Alpha that was running Console Works, so it was virtualized on linux.

Dec Alpha emulation software and support on Intel Linux is through Stromasys.

 

[MossRoad]

That's some old stuff. My old employer kept hardware and software support contracts on their Alphas for quite a while. Agreements stated spare parts had to be in stock, on the shelf. 9-5 Mon-Fri 2 hour response times. Never failed the systems would barf at 5:05 on a Friday night.

We were fortunate in that we always ran high availability clusters with two nodes and redundant storage, but it was a nail biter to run 3 days on 1 node over a weekend.

I did all of the hardware on the RAID systems, with the exception of a couple backplane failures. Backplanes were not in the hardware agreement, one failed, and it took months to find a replacement. That's when they started looking at replacement for the Alphas and their storage.

Anyone recall the first time they saw a disk yanked from a live system and it kept running because of RAID? Man, that was a tense, yet magical moment. :laughing:

 

[JethroB]

I remember the IBM support we had from the mid 80s to the mid 90s for the S/36. We had over a dozen installs in 7 states, mostly in small rural cities. I was a accounting manager and accounting owned the systems. Boy it was a relief to see those IBM guys walk through the door wearing their coats and ties within a couple of hours. 90 pound 100 MB disk packs, 8 inch floppys in magazines, IPLs, $20,000 line printers. I learned to despise twinax cable connectors though.

 

[drssg]

I'm surprised to read that some DEC equipment is still in use. I worked for DEC for just a couple of years in the early nineties. At my first big company meeting, our regional manager said there would be a "transition" in the coming weeks. I didn't know what he meant, but he seemed quite positive about it, and he even made it sound rather exciting. I eventually realized they were transitioning people to the unemployment line.

 

[Howling]

I spend about 15 years doing IT for consultants and small businesses. Watched hardware get cheaper and cookie cutter support from big companies. Hard to compete with big box tech working from script. Many customers realized a little late that commodity support lacks the how does this make my business better.

Transitioned fully back to industrial control systems few years ago. Different attitude from clients about value of time and 35 years of experience. Enjoying working with and training young engineers and techs. Have noted a few times "I have doing this longer than you have been alive...".

Now off hours call and work are actual tasks that important enough not to wait for help.

 

[Oaktree]

I remember the IBM support we had from the mid 80s to the mid 90s for the S/36. We had over a dozen installs in 7 states, mostly in small rural cities. I was a accounting manager and accounting owned the systems. Boy it was a relief to see those IBM guys walk through the door wearing their coats and ties within a couple of hours. 90 pound 100 MB disk packs, 8 inch floppys in magazines, IPLs, $20,000 line printers. I learned to despise twinax cable connectors though.

Place I worked at in the mid 70s had a couple IBM systems for bookkeeping-type applications. Had these hard drives where the head actuators were hydraulic, not magnetic like most. They tended to leak a lot. Didn't envy those IBM techs working on that in suit-and-tie. Don't even think they were allowed to roll up their sleeves.
Very down-to-business by the book guys, were never chatty, etc. like some of the techs from other vendors.

 

[Macinnis]

A humorous British comedy.... The I.T. Crowd.

Love that series. Have watched it 2-3 times.

 

[MossRoad]

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?


:laughing: