Today started early with a network circuit outage, and closed the day with another network circuit outage. All told i think we had three distinct circuits go on the fritz. We had backups, but one needed to be manually switched and the outages caused us to stop everything and work on the problems. It was a long tiring day. I passed up going out for my dad’s birthday because i was so tired and i had a minor head ache.
Work
Looking Forward
I wanted to write a bit about some of the cool new projects i am working on at my new job. I am not going to go into great detail but it is something.
One of the biggest things i am doing is working on a plan to move an existing self hosted data center to a Co-Location facility. We just need more space. Thankfully instead of physically moving all of our gear we are looking at getting an all new setup built out and retire most of the old gear. The timing works out perfectly for us so we are giving it a try. We will be moving some stuff, but not a whole lot. Another thing we are trying to do is make this data center site the model (for us at least) for Virtualization. We are going to build out as much if not everything with the exception of SQL server as Virtual Machines running on VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3. If all goes according to plan it will be really cool setup. The TCO will also be allot less than doing it physically, it will be quicker to build out and deploy, and it will consume allot less power! The way i think about it is if we get a request for new servers to be build we just see how much Virtual capacity we have and just provision a new machine. If we don’t have extra space, we just purchase an additional node and more SAN storage and add to our VI3 cluster. The goal is to stay far enough ahead in available capacity (minus the N+1 for redundancy) that we always can accommodate even the largest provisioning requests. I can’t wait to see how this turns out! It will be interesting.
Technorati Tags: virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, vmware, VMware ESX Server
The Wet Mini Road Trip
Today I left the island of Manhattan and my reliance on the public transit system to go out to Long Island for a data center tour. In theory everything should have been fine even in the rain. My car was late showing up, but I still made it to the site a few minutes early. That should have been a good thing, but apparently there is no reception area at the place I went to so I was standing out in the rain with no way of getting inside.
Thankfully my boss drove to the site so eventually he showed up and I had the dryness of his car. We tried to sort out the whole situation. Apparently there is no one typically onsite at this facility that can greet people or give tours. Some how they messed up the fact that we were showing up for a our so we were out of luck.
Since the tour was a bust we hit a local diner for some early lunch, and then I called a car to take me back home. With the amount of time lost going back and forth to the island, this was the perfect day to work from home. And that is exactly what I did. Once I got home I got online via the wonderful world of VPN and worked the rest of the day from the dry confines of my apartment.
I ended up not going out to meet Danny after work even though we had tentative plans. I was no where near the office, and I was tired and didn’t really want to go out after a crazy wet morning. So laziness kicked in and I hung out at home.
Technorati Tags: car service, data center, datacenter, travel
The Three Month Rule
I was once told that it takes someone three months or so to fully adjust to a new job. I have believed that theory that it takes that long to be a fully functioning member of a new team, but personally I haven’t put that theory to the test for some time. Of course that was because I was at the same job for almost 6 years. That was until about 2 1/2 month ago.
This week I started to notice that I am able to take on more responsibility and a more active role in my team. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything for 2 1/2 months, but what I was doing before was specific tasks and projects. Now I am starting to grasp the bigger picture and taking a more active role in shaping that big picture. Then I looked at my calendar and saw that it has been more than 2 1/2 months since I started. I proved my own theory right. I does take about 3 months for everything to fall into place. It may take me many more months to fully understand everything but I am now feeling more connected to what is going on. And to be honest it actually feels good. It is also weird that it doesn’t feel like that much time has past since I moved jobs, but looking at my calendar proves my gut feeling wrong. How time can fly.
Data Center Tour
Today was busy with meetings and an offsite tour of a data center. We are looking to take some of our self hosted gear and put it at a hosting facility. We looked at one in the city today. It was a decent facility but not the nicest I have ever seen. It does meet our needs, but we need to audit what we want to put there and get a real space and power estimate. Other than that, nothing else went on that was worth noting.
Sort of Lazy Day
Not much going on at work again today. I got in around noon. Then went to lunch with Rob and James. We hit the outback. It was good. Then I went back and cleaned up my office a bit. I then went out and had my Mac Mini’s memory upgraded. Since Jay and I upgraded my old one I could probably get through the upgrade myself but I read that the new Intel Mini’s are even harder to upgrade since you have to remove the drives to access the memory slot. For the $50 they charged to do the install it was worth it. Only took like 30 minutes for the whole thing.
After the upgrade I went back to the office and carried a bunch of my remaining stuff home. Man, you can accumulate allot of crap over 5+ years somewhere.
Yesterday
My exit interview was interesting. I spoke my mind, and HR took it all in. Surprisingly (or not) I hear that my feelings are not only my own. I know the guys in my group feel the same way, but it appears that others that have left may have eluded to similar issues.
Yesterday afternoon turned out pretty much like I thought it would. Jayson ended up coming with me to see Jeff. I ended up seeing Jeff, David, Nick, Jeffery, and others. It was weird to see so many people who used to work at Jeff’s company return to it. I think Lefty and I are the only ones that haven’t returned. David, Jeff, Jay and I went to Pete’s Tavern for lunch. It was nice to catch up with them.
Plan for the Day
My exit interview is in a little while. I am not leaving for over a week, but I was hoping to get some time off next week so I am doing it now. After that I am off to lunch with an old friend (and old boss) Jeff. I am going to meet him down by his office. It is usually too long between when we get together so I am looking forward to lunch.
Other than those plans, I am not sure what the day has in store for me yet.
5 Years and a Ton of Crap
I never realized how much crap stuff I accumulated at work over 5 plus years until I went to the office to start cleaning up and taking my personal stuff home. Jayson and I went in on Saturday to clean up. I didn’t want to be bringing tons of crap home every night between now and when I leave. It turns out that I will probably still be doing that at least for this week. I have just too much stuff and I don’t want to throw it all out. I have books, gifts, nick naks, etc that have materialized over the years. I totally forgot I had an overnight bag stashed away in case I had to stay overnight at the office. It happened during the blackout that I didn’t make it home so I now keep a bag.
I think I probably will end up tossing some of the books I have but almost everything else needs to get home somehow. I don’t know how people in the movies leave jobs with one little cardboard box. At least I am not Jayson who has to deal with giving away an entire salt water fish tank.
Apartment Cleanup
I spent the past 2 days trying to clean up the mess that is my apartment. It is not going well. I see no improvement to the situation. That is what happens when I decide to rearrange some piece of electronics gear. Everything gets moved around and messy. I should try and finish up tonight, but I am just tired. The events of last week have still not sunk in. It will eventually, but not yet.
Well I stopped writing and got off my but for a while and I cleaned up decent amount. I still want to tidy up a bit more. I have also decided to wipe my mini, and remove the XP partition on it. I also brought back my dedicated DVR Windows XP machine. The Beyond TV Link software and the dual booting the Mini was not cutting it for me. I will use my regular DVR machine on my TV until the Apple TV thing ships and then I will plug that into my TV as well. My Mini is now plugged into my KVM. My main Windows box is not feeling too well after the moving of stuff. I think the power supply went. It is over 2 years old so I don’t know what I am going to do to it just yet.
Still cleaning…