[rescue] Re: [geeks] Re:Support Contracts

[Les]

I can certainly agree with Devin on this score.

There is also the responsibility on the admin's part to use every
available resource to get a critical system back up and functioning
as rapidly as possible.
My employers spend the money for contracts and I am EXPECTED
to initiate an incident within a very few minutes of a system outage.
If I do not do so, I better have a very good reason 
(like the phones are out, my cell phone is dead,  the phone companies
are all on strike and nobody hears the yelling)
If I have the problem fixed before I get any help from SUN that's fine.
If Sun fixes it, that's fine. If a reboot solves it, that's fine.
In my experience, the suits do not care who or how or why. 
They just want to know WHEN.
And if when is not soon enough too many times, somebody else
will be sitting in my seat.
You might call it a safety net, my bosses would call it a survival net.
THAT is what contracts are all about.
The admin part comes in mainly from  
"OK, how do we stop this from happening again?"
 or "how do we fix it quicker next time?"

I love to learn new things and I learn fast under pressure, but
the $$$$ flow into the checking account is the main measure
of how well I'm doing, & I don't make much while unemployed
and looking for a job!! 
I prefer job changes to be at my own pace and decision times.

Les

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Devin L. Ganger" <devin at thecabal.org>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 2:23 PM
Subject: Re: [rescue] Re: [geeks] THIS. MAKES. ME. SICK.


When I'm providing administration for a HA system, I *have to know* that
if I have a problem, I *will* get escalated after a certain amount of
time, and that resources *will* be given to me until my problem is
fixed.  Unofficial channels, peopled by fans, often give higher-quality
advice, but I have no recourse if someone there *doesn't* know the
answer or doesn't have the time to get to my problem.  With a support
contract and service-level agreements, I have an escalation path that
will sooner or later get me face-to-face (or headset-to-headset) with a
developer, if that's what it takes to solve the problem.
<snip>
I'm constantly looking at Internet-available resources -- web pages,
newsgroups, mailing lists.  I've set up an internal web server with all
sorts of archived material, as well as external links.  I'm training the
junior admin to look things over; as such, we solve most problems
without ever needing to pick up the phone.  But we've also identified a
threshhold at which we *will* initiate that call and have Sun Support be
*another* of the many resources we use to fix things.

-- 
Devin L. Ganger <devin at thecabal.org>
find / -name *base* -exec chown us:us {} \;
su -c someone 'export UP_US=thebomb'
for f in great justice ; do sed -e 's/zig//g' < $f ; done
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