Our Jabber server is acting up. I think it is another application running on the box. We need to migrate the app to a new machine. Our new guy, Andrew is working on the new Jabber server. We are going to do a Jive server running on Suse 9 enterprise. I got the budget approval from bob today so we ordered a box. To get things going quicker we took a box earmarked for a domain controller in Kingston and borrowed it. We won’t need to deploy the DC until after the new hardware gets in anyway. We hope to have the new server built by the end of next week. Andrew has a test instance of the app up now. Hopefully we can have all the users configured in under 2 weeks for a cut over.
Jayson spent the entire day friday at our data center working with EMC setting up our SAN. For some reason I always underestimate time needed to do things at the data center. Besides the SAN he was working on 2 new database servers we are deploying to replace our existing box’s. They will hold us over until we cut over to the new database cluster design utilizing the SAN.
Our 5th cabinet is finally completed at our data center. we now have room for the growth we are expecting in our server farm. That also means we got rid of the last desktop computer in our data center. They were plaguing me for years. I blame Gus for saying just put anything up there. We finally are doing things right by only putting in nice rack mount servers!
I spent my days this week working on getting quotes for a new 6500 series switch at our data center. it will also do load balancing for our websites, or that is the goal. if we don’t it approved we will go with a standard load balance system. I still think the core switch idea is best. I also did research into a new gateway router for our call center. Actually when I think about it I did more quote, and status update work this week than I did technical work. Man, the management thing is pulling me deeper and deeper each week!
Besides the regular work this week I had enough problems. Jayson was dealing with a core switch at our data center that for some reason would wig out when touched on Tuesday. Again on Friday it seemed to reboot on its own. We are going to observe it and see if it does anything weird when no one is physically near it since both incidents happened when Jay was working on or near the switch. We also had problems over last weekend due to water damage on a smartjack that controls one of our internet circuits. Dam leaky roof in our call center. Then Friday we had another circuit go down at the call center. This time it was our local voice circuit. it took out all inbound local service and all outbound service. the call center can operate with all the inbound calls but can’t make calls out. our LEC is working on it, but they are SO slow. Several other minor issues riddled the week also.
I most likely have to goto our upstate office next week to interview people for the 2 support positions we have open. Originally Kai said I had to come up for 2 days because there were so many people he wanted me to meet, but then we got the number down to a level where I can do it in a day. I don’t like staying overnight up there so a day trip is good for me. it is a long day when you factor in all the travel, but it is a short work day since I am only in the office up there from 10:30 is to 3-4pm. that is needed in order to get back on a decent train. I will have more news on that early next week.