HSM madness
Apr. 28th, 2006 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylPerhaps it was my fault. Perhaps I was unclear.
When the two HSM guys turned up to consult with my colleague, they tried to persuade him to find some spare disc space to allow them to mess around with stuff. When my colleague asked me if I knew whether a particular file system could be recycled, I said, "It's Friday. There's a bank holiday coming up. I really wouldn't make any changes to the system. If I were you, I'd leave it completely alone and sort it out next week." He looked suitably comprehending and went off. Then a few hours later, under the watchful eyes of my colleagues, the visitors were allowed to unmount one of the HSM managed file systems, the one that had spent the last 18 hours kicking up a stream of errors, and surprise surprise, the system panicked in a heap. Unwilling to sacrifice my precisely timetabled plans for this afternoon, I left others to dump the system and went home.
To my mind, today's problem simply emphasises two important rules of system administration: never, ever make changes on a Friday; and hierarchical storage managers are a total waste of time, far better to buy a bunch of cheapo discs than arse around with tapes and virtual storage.
When the two HSM guys turned up to consult with my colleague, they tried to persuade him to find some spare disc space to allow them to mess around with stuff. When my colleague asked me if I knew whether a particular file system could be recycled, I said, "It's Friday. There's a bank holiday coming up. I really wouldn't make any changes to the system. If I were you, I'd leave it completely alone and sort it out next week." He looked suitably comprehending and went off. Then a few hours later, under the watchful eyes of my colleagues, the visitors were allowed to unmount one of the HSM managed file systems, the one that had spent the last 18 hours kicking up a stream of errors, and surprise surprise, the system panicked in a heap. Unwilling to sacrifice my precisely timetabled plans for this afternoon, I left others to dump the system and went home.
To my mind, today's problem simply emphasises two important rules of system administration: never, ever make changes on a Friday; and hierarchical storage managers are a total waste of time, far better to buy a bunch of cheapo discs than arse around with tapes and virtual storage.
