A quick aptitude test

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

Last week I received an e-mail from one of our facilities staff containing switch port assignments for a small cluster of servers. I configured the ports to spec and informed both the facilities guy and the server/application guy, then continued on my merry way with other projects stacked up in my "In" tray.

A day later I received an e-mail from said guy, inquiring as to why he could not access his servers. I told him that everything on my side was configured correctly for him to access them and to e-mail the facilities guys. The ports were shown in a down/down state.

A week later - ie. today - the issue was finally resolved after three senior managers and four other techs were involved. Two things were wrong. A shiny penny for you if you can guess what they were. It's probably an unnecessary hint, but I suggested both things to the server guy even though I was half joking.

I work for a company with billions in turnover a year, by the way. Good to know that we're in good hands.

Comments

[japester.livejournal.com]

No cable between the server and the patch panel?
Still got dhcp turned on?

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

First one is correct.

[jokergirl.livejournal.com]

Yay, I guessed it!
(and got flashbacks to my CNAP course)

;)

[mouser.livejournal.com]

"You broke the interweb!"

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

It probably helps if you turn the servers on, hey?

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

...and there's the second one!

That sonic boom you hear is the sound barrier being broken as my hand reaches my forehead.

[phyphor.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joys of miscommunication I guess.

If it's anything like the scenarios I've seen this happen then someone "installed" the server (meaning it was physically in the rack, i.e. the heavy lifting is done), but nobody "installed" the server (actually connecting it to power and network).

The joys of one word meaning different things based on context.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Cheers!

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

add to that "build" meaning both "physically construct" and "install operating system and software on".

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

hang on, you're phyphor off mono.

*friends you*

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

Well, zok, I was correctly guessing the first one "no patch cable", but the second one was not quite so obvious -- I was expecting "power cable not plugged in correctly". I guess this job really does require branes.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

Branes?

Ah, yes. I suppose maybe in one/many of the other infinite multitude of dimensions, one/many villages are missing their idiot(s)...

[jecook]

We have the same issue here with our network/server people. They are good people, but....

For the past three months or so, we've have weekly complaints from one set of people about net latency at their workstations. why? because the network guy never informed support that the network drops were put in and that we could remove the small linksys hub that was causing the problem that we had put in as a stopgap measure. ::headdesk::

I'm so glad I've got the next couple days off. I got a bunch of stuff handed to me for "cleanup" work yesterday...