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 | | 05/09/2007 5:40 AM |
| Yeah when is a disaster a disaster is a good one.... If it
is anything but super obvious (i.e. running fine day to day or oh my god
Cerberus just crawled up from a hole under the Data CentreΏ]) then the question
and resulting answers can be all over the map and debate ensues. The best I have
seen is that you have lost X capacity or you are out for Y time and realistic
thinking on repair time makes total outage Z. Still neither of those is great
really either because they are still open to interpretations and debate. It is
the same type of question of when do we pull the plug on Aunt Betsie in
intensive care... IMO, push the decision to the business, they are the ones that
feel the pain of the outage. IT again, gives info so the business can make a
decision but the business makes the call.
Once that decision is made though, the really really really
hard part is prioritization and it cannot realistically be done on the fly,
those answers need to be in place up front with expectations fully level set
with all business owners. I swear you go into a DR situation and you have
10,15,20 business units all show up at the DR site at once looking around
wondering why their shit isn't working and you will be back peddling and
explaining things the whole rest of the time and for months afterward. The
business needs to be full aware that IT isn't and likely can't run at 100%
immediate replacement capability. Most companies run IT on the assumption that
most everything is always mostly running fine. If you run into a period where
that isn't the case, SLAs and SLOs are likely to go out the window because the
assumptions aren't met. Anyone who cannot come to terms with that is not living
in the real world and needs to get to the real world ASAP.
joe
Ώ]
For my poor friends overseas who can't spell properly...
--
O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org
[mailto:ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Al
MulnickSent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 5:25 PMTo:
ActiveDir@mail.activedir.orgSubject: Re: [OT] Hey joe - Vista Connect
To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)
For the record, I am routinely unhappy with the answers to the DR
questions. You jumped way out in front of the issue I see many struggling
with, "What triggers a DR scenario in your organization?" One day I'll
write my memoirs and I'll include some of my favorite answers. At least
the ones that still make me smile.This is a great question. It is very important and people
need to be asking and forcing that issue more and more. Lets take a look at what
should be an easy aspect of this same question... How many people, by show of
hands, have a true DR plan that actually lays out the priorities of all
departments and all applications within those departments. My experience is
almost no one does that. They just do DR testing with the various groups at
different times with everyone thinking they will all be up and running first. I
forced that question in Treasury and it took them over six months to shake out
the real priorities and document them. It ended up with VPs and Directors
fighting with each other.That way when/if we ever had a true disaster, we
knew exactly the order of what to put together and the time frame and so did all
of the business owners. The chances of this not being done for DR is high which
means the chances it is not done in general is likely infinitely high. But my
thought is that IT should not be the deciding factor on the competing business
requirements.Well, OK. But you dodged the question.
:) Were you leaving that for a different bar^^^time?
On 5/9/07, joe wrote:
ROFL...
Eventually
the brain cells float up from the beer level... ;o)
Let me
make a quick correction about that worker, she wasn't responsible for *making*
billions a week. She was responsible for making sure it was properly tracked.
She was basically the admin assistance for the money traders. If that info was
lost, the company could be in serious trouble. For instance, say trade info
for 3 days was gone, that would be enough to put the company
under.
The
business, the Treasurey department for Credit, which is for all intents and
purposes a medium to large sized bank had lots of dedicated resources from IT.
Well actually they had a couple of things, they had a Business IT group called
Treasury Systems which was responsible for understanding the business
requirements and keeping most of the Treasury applicationsfunctioning
and primary interfaces with the business users. But they also had the job of
interfacing withIT/Office Automation to build/support the more complex
systems. In Office Automation we had people who were dedicated to dealing with
Treasury Systems and Treasury, these were called the Treasury Planning
Analysts. That is where I fit in, helped design and build
bulletproofsystems and then was primary support for them. Treasury paid
handsomely for all of this but they also made most of the money for Ford
Credit as well as Ford as a whole.
There was
another guy who did what is called securitization. His job was to maintain a
certain cash to credit ratio for the company. Now he was responsible for some
serious cash,he regularly put projectstogether that each resulted
in hundreds of millions in profit. That guy got anything he wanted and wasn't
afraid to ask. His workstations had far more power, storage, RAM, backup
capacity, you name it than several of our company wide servers used to
services thousands of users put together. He got his own dedicated internet
connections that were separate from the main corporate internet connections
and connected directly to his machine. His main PC was a towermachine
running Windows 3.11 with a6 disk SCSI RAID setin 1996... Whatever
he thought he needed, we got to try and figure out how to make work. At the
time, you would hear his name and your head would hit the desk with "oh no,
what now racing through it", now I think I understand it a little
better.
> Who do you see as the central
tie-breaker in cases where a company has multiple competing
requirements?
This is a
great question. It is very important and people need to be asking and forcing
that issue more and more. Lets take a look at what should be an easy aspect of
this same question... How many people, by show of hands, have a true DR plan
that actually lays out the priorities of all departments and all applications
within those departments. My experience is almost no one does that. They just
do DR testing with the various groups at different times with everyone
thinking they will all be up and running first. I forced that question in
Treasury and it took them over six months to shake out the real priorities and
document them. It ended up with VPs and Directors fighting with each
other.That way when/if we ever had a true disaster, we knew exactly the
order of what to put together and the time frame and so did all of the
business owners. The chances of this not being done for DR is high which means
the chances it is not done in general is likely infinitely high. But my
thought is that IT should not be the deciding factor on the competing business
requirements.
--
O'Reilly
Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org [mailto:ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Al
MulnickSent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 9:37 AMTo: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.orgSubject: Re:
[OT] Hey joe - Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU
deleted)
Makes sense to me then. I'm of the opinion that we build
systems to enable and enhance the business workers. In the case
cited below, she was responsible for billions a week? I think that
should be sufficient income to allow her to get what she wanted, how, when,
and why she wanted. It's that important to the business. Heck, a
personal assistant might have made sense as well if it would keep her focused
on the task of bringing in income. Same for users. I think that
the personal in personal computer should allow a user to use the machine in a
way that works best for them. We should not try to make users conform to
the system. It's a balancing act today though. We have to also
make sure that the user is functional when the system crashes and has to be
replaced because of the coffee and donut spilled on the machine (just in case
you weren't aware, electronics aren't all coffee proof. :) So today, we
have a myriad of solutions that allow us to customize, backup, force, cajole,
and otherwise make things conform. We do that to protect the greater
good and so that we can keep costs down. In reference to your other
thread about the future - should we have to do things this way? Who do you see
as the central tie-breaker in cases where a company has multiple competing
requirements? Who is the supreme court in that world of the future?
Today I see a vacuum filled by those most impacted - IT most often. Not
right, but seems to happen frequently enough that it's a process. I
see the computer becoming even more personal as time goes on. I see form
factor and location becoming irrelevant. But I do not see a monolithic
computing environment coming back into fashion and being the answer. We left
that because it did not scale in the way we needed it to. Not that it
can't scale, but it inherently doesn't scale to the way business needs need it
to scale. What does the world look like in 5-15 years? How does
computing fit into that? I'm sure it's not one-size fits all. I'm
sure that the current security model will have to change as well. It
must become much easier. Seamless and hiding the complexity from the
consumer is something that is by design and not by technology, so I'm not sure
that the newer products have to be responsible for that. They should
enable, but not consider themselves more important than the whole.
Curious. Sometimes I hate it when crackpots make my lazy brain start
to think. The creaking and whirring gets really loud
On 5/9/07, joe
wrote:
Yeah
back when I worked for Ford Credit in the 90's (statute of limitations
is now up on that one so I can mention it), we had a user who was
soparticular about her desktop that we had to print screen before and
after westarted working and put it with the official documentation so we
could prove that the desktop icons were all in identical places and no
colors had beenchanged... Yes business color printing was available
then, in general weweren't allowed to use it though because it was so
darn expensive, except for this one user... If we rebuilt the machine,
we woould spend so much timeputting everything back exactly as she was
used to. Anyone else, we rebuiltand they lived with it. This lady was in
charge of, if I recall correctly, tracking money moves for the money
trading FMCC did so literally wasresponsible for billions of dollars per
week. This was in say 1996/97 when abillion dollars was real
money...--O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
_____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org[mailto: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Dave
WadeSent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 3:22 AMTo: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)I think at this
point I start screaming. I know that the typical user I seeis not as IT
proficient as I would hope, but most of them complain if they have to
use the menus, they want "Icons on the desktop" and they want
them"NOW!". I am just waiting for some one to order a bigger monitor so
they canget more icons on the desktop where they can easily find them!
And also note that no one I have remote controlled into has been able to
use, or know whatthey "show desktop" icon is for. I just hope I only get
to support thereally bad ones.So I can half sympathise with
Microsoft when they try and force the issue, but only half. Some times
old things have to change to move forward, butperhaps in this case they
could have retained more of the old.Dave
Wade_____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org on behalf of
joeSent: Wed 09/05/2007 04:23To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.orgSubject: RE: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted) Yep, there is
no reason why they couldn't have left things where they wereAND enabled
search. New people could use search, the people who have gottenuber
proficient can go straight to the item.--O'Reilly Active
Directory Third Edition -http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
_____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org[mailto:
ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Brandon AikenSent:
Monday, May 07, 2007 2:35 PMTo: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)That only
makes sense if you use words to navigate, though.Not
everyonedoes.Lots of users use the icons or even the
location on the menu to find things.And who is to say you
remember the app's name instead of thefunction?That's why
moving things around *just to move them around* is abad
idea.Who else gets annoyed when they sit down at a user's
workstation and find they have the pre-WinXP menus enabled?I
have several users here who dothat, and most of them don't put My
Computer on the desktop, either.I walkaway wondering how
these people find anything on their PC (sure, I use
+ and +, but nobody else knows
about them).--Brandon AikenCS/IT Systems
Engineer_____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org[mailto:
ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Dave WadeSent:
Saturday, May 05, 2007 5:55 PMTo: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)All the
presentations I have seen about Vist have emphasised the use of
thesearch box rather than navigating menus. To be honest, why should you
have to learn to navigate menus when you can just type "word" ,
"PowerPoint" etc.I know, typing is a backward step, but having spent 5
minutes looking for aseldom used application in my start menu last
night, I am beginning to think it might be a step
forward...Dave Wade0161 474
5456_____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org on behalf of Brandon
Aiken Sent: Fri 04/05/2007 21:38To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.orgSubject: RE: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)"Let's hide it so
they have to search for it" was a design consideration? Oh, Lord, no
wonder MS says this is the last monolithic
release.--Brandon AikenCS/IT Systems
Engineer_____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org [mailto:ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Dave
WadeSent: Friday, May 04, 2007 5:12 AMTo: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.orgSubject: RE: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)>From
what I have seen as Vista the short cuts are deliberately hidden to
getyou to use the search box. What happens if you type "connect to" or a
connection name in the search box (I can't check at present as I don't
havea built VISTA
box)..._____From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org [mailto:ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Joe
PochedleySent: 03 May 2007 17:36To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: OT: Hey joe -
Vista Connect To (Was RE: [ActiveDir] OU deleted)I want to
know:How did Dean sort of fix it?It's one of my pet
peeveswith Vista too!On May 2, joe wrote:As we
speak I am spending considerable amount of time trying to put
theshortcuts that used to be in XP into Vista because someone decided to
spreadthings across multiple simple menus because they decided the users
weren't bright enough to deal with multiple things on a single menu.
Dean and I werebitching about Connect To for instance in Vista until all
of a sudden Deanfigured out how to sort of fix it. How many people are
pissed that you cannot just click start | connect to | connection
anymore? Instead you haveto dive through multiple menus, that is part of
the whole dumbing down. Ifwe have to dumb down and protect the servers,
the wrong people are running servers. Someone needs to go on the radio
and tell people listening to theads that "you to can become a network
admin in 3 simple weeks" that it isn'ttrue.Joe
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