westernind (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
westernind) wrote2005-04-26 04:23 pm
westernind) wrote2005-04-26 04:23 pm
Semi-inarticulate work rant
This is about an incompetent Lotus Domino admin and going to mean something to about two people.
The University of London Computer Centre have just buggered up one of my Lotus Domino servers again. The so-called admin is a nice guy, but not competent; he's been on a couple of sysadmin courses but never dealt with Domino in any other environment. He's on his own and just doesn't have the experience. It's even worse when he's away. They won't let me have terminal server access, leading to the bizarre situation in the last meltdown where I was on the phone, talking the temporary replacement ULCC know-nothing (who had full admin access to everything! scary or what!) through (among other things) how to restart the http task via the admin client. "Go to the Server tab... choose Server Console... type exactly what i tell you..."
This time our admin got most of the way through an incremental install of 6.5.4 and when it buggered up, panicked. He restored the previous night's backup straight over the top, thus destroying a day's worth of data. Had he phoned, I would have suggested that you do not need to overwrite the data directory. Not as the first option.
This is the guy who didn't understand Notes replication even after two training courses. And wondered why when he deleted directory documents on one of the clustered live server, his 'backup' on the other live server had disappeared.
At least this disaster happened on the development server. Except that the central Issues Database lives there. I should be hosting it on the live cluster, but it needs anonymous access for viewing without a username/password. Up to now, ULCC have utterly refused to enable anonymous access to the live servers, even when I told them what precautions to take. As of this afternoon's cockup they have at last conceded and I shall spend the next hour migrating the application. I wish it hadn't taken data loss for them to listen.
We are ULCC's only Domino customers; the admin is never going to get sufficient experience to do a decent job of supporting us. I'd love to move our hosting somewhere else, preferably somewhere where we don't pay eighty grand a year, but it's just not politically possible. :-(
Rant over. Thank-you.
The University of London Computer Centre have just buggered up one of my Lotus Domino servers again. The so-called admin is a nice guy, but not competent; he's been on a couple of sysadmin courses but never dealt with Domino in any other environment. He's on his own and just doesn't have the experience. It's even worse when he's away. They won't let me have terminal server access, leading to the bizarre situation in the last meltdown where I was on the phone, talking the temporary replacement ULCC know-nothing (who had full admin access to everything! scary or what!) through (among other things) how to restart the http task via the admin client. "Go to the Server tab... choose Server Console... type exactly what i tell you..."
This time our admin got most of the way through an incremental install of 6.5.4 and when it buggered up, panicked. He restored the previous night's backup straight over the top, thus destroying a day's worth of data. Had he phoned, I would have suggested that you do not need to overwrite the data directory. Not as the first option.
This is the guy who didn't understand Notes replication even after two training courses. And wondered why when he deleted directory documents on one of the clustered live server, his 'backup' on the other live server had disappeared.
At least this disaster happened on the development server. Except that the central Issues Database lives there. I should be hosting it on the live cluster, but it needs anonymous access for viewing without a username/password. Up to now, ULCC have utterly refused to enable anonymous access to the live servers, even when I told them what precautions to take. As of this afternoon's cockup they have at last conceded and I shall spend the next hour migrating the application. I wish it hadn't taken data loss for them to listen.
We are ULCC's only Domino customers; the admin is never going to get sufficient experience to do a decent job of supporting us. I'd love to move our hosting somewhere else, preferably somewhere where we don't pay eighty grand a year, but it's just not politically possible. :-(
Rant over. Thank-you.