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Jorath posted:We pay per-MIPS for mainframe usage. I don't know how this hasn't become the industry standard. Damnit, new page. Here's a picture of a clear 2964 that IBM drags around to special events.  Aunt Beth fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 15:57
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larchesdanrew posted:He's gone. He slipped out at some point. The computer is on, his card is tucked into the monitor bezel, and Windows is sitting on the "Setting up Windows" screen. The computer ate him. He's like the electric gremlin now, invading your network and will be causing all sorts of problems in the nearby future. Get some extra firewalls up.
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Dec 14, 2016 16:17
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I love it when a client has their own IT person, and that person (and their boss) are such clueless idiots that we end up not renewing their contract  Case in point - have a client that's part of a pretty large datacenter that services several businesses. They had a single on site IT guy who was supposed to be our "go to" for anything after hours that needed on site work. Guy was under contract for a long time and was practically unreachable after hours so we ended up doing all the grunt work he was supposed to help with. Client finally hires this doofus on full time with the expectation that he'll actually step in and do things, and so far the only thing he's helped with is an occasional server reboot. We even did everything possible to train this dude up on their environment since he hadn't messed around in VMWare much and had domain admin level access. More than once the guy has continued to be unreachable and uncooperative, most recently in the last week when we've had to go on site more than once to reboot a janky old server that runs their video surveillance system. We kept telling them to virtualize and replace the drat thing because it's like 3 years out of warranty but the on site IT guy and his idiot boss both (a) don't understand the scope of the work, and (b) don't want to spend the money to get it done. We've been harping on them for almost a year to replace this server and another one that are woefully outdated and having performance problems but they never sign off on any quotes or give us a game plan of their own. So we had a meeting yesterday, brought up all the stuff we've done and everything they've declined, and explained that they're not the kind of client we're interested in keeping. Basically, in a polite way, stating that they're all pain in the rear end tightwads and we're tired of not getting help from their on site IT guy when we need it, so we're not renewing their contract. It was pretty nice for once to lay out everything we do and all the systems we manage, and seeing their IT dude's eyes go wide and his jaw practically hit the floor when he realized HE didn't know how much we managed, and didn't have experience with a lot of it. Too bad idiot, looks like you have about 2 more weeks to figure out what the hell you're doing while we send you our documents and wipe our hands clean. 
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Dec 14, 2016 16:27
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Aunt Beth posted:Ah, the Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. A close cousin of MSU, Misleading Service Units. Nobody's figured out a good way to effectively measure how much people computer, but IBM has been (relatively) consistent. But how many bitcoins can it mine?
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Dec 14, 2016 17:05
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Aunt Beth posted:Ah, the Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. A close cousin of MSU, Misleading Service Units. Nobody's figured out a good way to effectively measure how much people computer, but IBM has been (relatively) consistent. I'll take 3
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Dec 14, 2016 17:29
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Nuggan posted:The computer ate him. He's like the electric gremlin now, invading your network and will be causing all sorts of problems in the nearby future. Get some extra firewalls up. Or he's driving around a motorcycle made of light and running from tanks.
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Dec 14, 2016 17:31
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:But how many bitcoins can it mine?
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Dec 14, 2016 17:39
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Antioch posted:I got a new needful. I like this one I hope this person found medical assistance as they appear to have had a stroke while typing that.
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Dec 14, 2016 18:02
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Aunt Beth posted:Ah, the Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. A close cousin of MSU, Misleading Service Units. Nobody's figured out a good way to effectively measure how much people computer, but IBM has been (relatively) consistent. At first I thought that IBM z13 was neon lighting, which would be 
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Dec 14, 2016 18:10
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Inspector_666 posted:At first I thought that IBM z13 was neon lighting, which would be Giant Nixie tubes.
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Dec 14, 2016 19:02
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Johnny Aztec posted:Giant Nixie tubes.
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Dec 14, 2016 19:23
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Aunt Beth posted:Ah, the Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. A close cousin of MSU, Misleading Service Units. Nobody's figured out a good way to effectively measure how much people computer, but IBM has been (relatively) consistent. That's one way of increasing the density, look at the size of the heat exchanger on the thing, just count the number of little copper U-bends.
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Dec 14, 2016 19:50
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:That's one way of increasing the density, look at the size of the heat exchanger on the thing, just count the number of little copper U-bends.
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Dec 14, 2016 20:03
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Aunt Beth posted:Rumor has it the z14 is going to be an artisanal, small-batch mainframe that's handcrafted by only the crankiest greybeards on a steady diet of diner coffee and tape head cleaner. Each channel subsystem will feature a uniquely numbered vacuum tube to provide that rich, warm I/O as it enters and exits the system, ensuring your transactions will maintain that natural, lifelike quality you've come to expect over 50+ years of System/360 compatible systems. I love this, and if a sales pitch included this I bet a lot of clueless C levels would have no problem purchasing
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Dec 14, 2016 20:50
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Aunt Beth posted:Ah, the Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. A close cousin of MSU, Misleading Service Units. Nobody's figured out a good way to effectively measure how much people computer, but IBM has been (relatively) consistent. These fukkin things
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Dec 14, 2016 22:13
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Nuggan posted:The computer ate him. He's like the electric gremlin now, invading your network and will be causing all sorts of problems in the nearby future. Get some extra firewalls up.  No Photoshop on this computer or I'd have added a Dell business card, oh well
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Dec 14, 2016 22:19
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Nuggan posted:The computer ate him. He's like the electric gremlin now, invading your network and will be causing all sorts of problems in the nearby future. Get some extra firewalls up. Horace Pinker lives!
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Dec 15, 2016 00:00
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Aunt Beth posted:They're water cooled either via a self-contained system or they can also be connected to central water if your computer room has the capability. If it's a self-contained system the radiators are then cooled by blowers. Water cooling was new this generation in an attempt by IBM to go greener. The past enterprise-class mainframes had closed refrigerant loops. People are using water cooling in enterprise-level stuff!? I sure hope it's a bit more secure and protected than my home-built custom loop  The first time I turned it on, I got a fountain
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Dec 15, 2016 00:00
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Deuce posted:People are using water cooling in enterprise-level stuff!? I hope they set it up outside of the case, possibly using the mobo box as a platform to do a power off leak test.
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Dec 15, 2016 00:11
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BOOTY-ADE posted:I love it when a client has their own IT person, and that person (and their boss) are such clueless idiots that we end up not renewing their contract My sypervisor and manager got invited to see another company's fancy new NOC (they're both really competent clever people), and at one point they're shown a room and told "this is our crisis center". Apparently they spent the rest of the tour nudging out questions like "so is this a clear-corridor route to there?" Because hosed if there was any respect left .
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Dec 15, 2016 00:15
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BOOTY-ADE posted:I love it when a client has their own IT person, and that person (and their boss) are such clueless idiots that we end up not renewing their contract Ah client IT people. It's always fun showing up on a client site for an install to find that the IT person either a) didn't know you were coming, b) has none of the information or equipment you need from them or c) tells you to rack your equipment in a rack that is only 26 inches deep. We found out C the hard way on Monday morning when we went to rack a fibre switch. Cue us sitting around while the IT team expanded the rack with their DNS server still in it. Their reasoning was "oh we had short stuff in it before so we must have made it smaller". I will now add a tape measurer to my bag of tricks 
pr0digal fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 06:28
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Deuce posted:People are using water cooling in enterprise-level stuff!? Considering that these boxes tend to clock in around the $Texas range (I think IBM did a thing where you could get a down-spec'd z9 for something like $100k several years ago), you can be assured that the water-loops in these boxes are pretty much bulletproof. IBM has made some lovely moves in the past, but their hardware has consistently been top-shelf. My current crop of low-end systems (S824s) have yet to have a single hardware failure in the 2 years they've been in service.
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Dec 15, 2016 17:37
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Deuce posted:People are using water cooling in enterprise-level stuff!? Regarding fountains, it would certainly suck if you had a room water leak, since most raised floor computer rooms also have subfloor leak detectors which can and will EPO the room if a sufficient number of them are tripped. A lot of large systems (I personally know about the IBM Q) are also sensitive to flow, so if they're not sensing an adequate volume of water being pumped through, they will shut down to avoid a thermal event. AlexDeGruven posted:My current crop of low-end systems (S824s) have yet to have a single hardware failure in the 2 years they've been in service.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:32
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Ticket came in.. Escalated from a subsidiaries helpdesk, for a service that they manage, that was broken by them. 
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Dec 15, 2016 22:06
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Aunt Beth posted:Water is making a comeback. On big enterprise systems compute density has gotten so great that air cooling alone can't cut it unless you install jet engines as blowers. A lot of newer computer rooms have central water for a mix of natively water cooled devices like mainframes and supercomputers (the IBM BlueGene/Q must have room water). Older air cooled systems like rack-mount x86 servers or blade centers that can't be retrofitted for water, or that would never be designed around water because it wouldn't be cost effective to do so, can also be put into racks with rear door heat exchangers hooked into the room water to mitigate all the hot air being blown out of the backs of the servers. I assume they still do the thing where you buy a fully loaded system, and as you pay them more they just tell the unit to unlock more capacity? I always thought that was awesome.
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Dec 15, 2016 22:23
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ffs two of my support people are bitching that I wrote and refer them regularly to a knowledgebase article with extremely basic questions they should be asking clients (eg. When did the problem start, has anything changed, is it just failing for one person etc). "gee thanks iajanus this is soooooo helpful" (laugh to each other and wander away) They don't seem to grasp that the reason I wrote it and the GM approved it was because the idiots never ask the obvious questions and tend to spend 10 times as long trying to fix things because they never establish the basic facts or try simple fixes to things  If they displayed even the most basic troubleshooting ability I wouldn't be forced to treat them as if they had none. e: they also get annoyed when they ask me questions like "what does this random error message mean" with absolutely no context and I ask them a bunch of questions to establish what the gently caress I'm looking at. Yes, guys, I know every single Windows dialog box off the top of my head, silly me.
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Dec 16, 2016 04:43
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iajanus posted:I know every single Windows dialog box off the top of my head, silly me.
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Dec 16, 2016 07:19
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Is it too much to ask for mobile workers to keep hold of a power bank and car charger for mobile phones? Goddamn stop complaining to me that your phone doesn't stay charged for more than a day, I can't help that batteries get sapped in no-signal bumfuck nowhere even with all the power saver options in the world enabled. Conveniently they always ask for an iPhone replacement.
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Dec 16, 2016 10:06
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iajanus posted:ffs two of my support people are bitching that I wrote and refer them regularly to a knowledgebase article with extremely basic questions they should be asking clients (eg. When did the problem start, has anything changed, is it just failing for one person etc). You can always tell them that it's because they aren't asking those questions. If they literally report to you that's some pretty loving rude behavior.
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Dec 16, 2016 12:42
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guppy posted:You can always tell them that it's because they aren't asking those questions. Really? That's status quo where I work. If you go to a supervisor for help, you'd better have done your research first or we'll just laugh and tell you to search the knowledge base first. If it's consistently happening it goes on that person's quarterly review too. If they can't figure out after repeated experiences that they don't get help unless they have the answers to x, y and z, they probably won't be very good at troubleshooting anyway.
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Dec 16, 2016 13:43
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There's also a heavy XY Problem factor to that. I had a fantastic boss that was willing to answer questions if all pre-req questions were researched. If I had a question I would start with problem X and talk it through with him as we approached solution Y to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and we had great communication. I worked alongside an engineer who would approach him with questions about solution Y thinking it would make him look better prepared. My boss would dig and tug about problem X and they would butt heads constantly, because engineer only wanted to talk about Y. Most of the time Y was the correct solution but their communication lacked because of this.
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Dec 16, 2016 14:20
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RFC2324 posted:I assume they still do the thing where you buy a fully loaded system, and as you pay them more they just tell the unit to unlock more capacity?
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Dec 16, 2016 19:38
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Some of the most difficult, persistent problems I've encountered solved themselves after gathering all the details and logically arranging them.
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Dec 16, 2016 20:05
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Same with programming and explaining the problem to a rubber ducky
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Dec 16, 2016 21:09
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Turambar posted:Same with programming and explaining the problem to a rubber ducky  He was the best problem solver and programmer we ever had. Sadly, my son ripped his head off last night while taking a bath. 
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Dec 16, 2016 23:13
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I explain all of my programming issues to a special meeting of the Gatewatch, because I can't go five minutes without thinking about MTG.
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Dec 16, 2016 23:53
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From the gif thread, seems like it'd fit in here better. Speaking of which, why the gently caress does the Xerox Colorqube piece of poo poo we have at work insist on presenting only Letter to Windows and thus scaling all pages printed on A4 (the only paper size we use) down to completely gently caress up any label printing requirements and also anything that needs proper alignment otherwise? IT won't even touch the issue.
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Dec 17, 2016 00:18
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Geemer posted:From the gif thread, seems like it'd fit in here better. I don't know the answer to that, but you reminded me of something else. At $previousJob, I wrote a python script that pulled inventory data, loaded up ReportLab, and generated a label sheet with barcodes. I got it all set up on my workstation, looked great, tweaked some alignment stuff so that it worked with our label sheets and was ready to set it up on the register computer. First print on the register computer was totally messed up, nothing lined up correctly. Banged my head against it for a bit until I realized the cause. My workstation was printing from Edge, while the register computer was printing from Adobe Reader.
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Dec 17, 2016 00:36
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Geemer posted:From the gif thread, seems like it'd fit in here better. That's just about got to be a driver issue. The on-board firmware isn't smart enough to gently caress that up. Upgrading the firmware might help though. And if it's in the 88xx series, upgrade the firmware anyway because some of those models might put 50v on a 3.3v circuit and burn out a motor. Yes, the loving thing shipped with that kind of bug in the firmware. Just don't get a Colorqube, and I'm saying that as a Xerox certified (lol) tech with a couple of years taking them apart and putting them back together. The Phaser series of color lasers are very reliable for a busy workgroup. Just don't mind the fine spray of magenta toner on the wall behind them.
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Dec 17, 2016 01:31
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mllaneza posted:That's just about got to be a driver issue. The on-board firmware isn't smart enough to gently caress that up. Upgrading the firmware might help though. And if it's in the 88xx series, upgrade the firmware anyway because some of those models might put 50v on a 3.3v circuit and burn out a motor. Yes, the loving thing shipped with that kind of bug in the firmware. Cool, thanks for confirming that the entire range is hot poo poo. Too bad I don't have any power over it since I'm just a lab tech. The weird thing is that the big Xerox MFC we've got in the upstairs office area uses the exact same drivers. And even though it also tells Windows that it's only got Letter, it's still capable of printing A4 without wonky scaling. Oh well, I can always hope the upcoming acquisition means our new overlords will have a heart attack when they see we're actually still using Cat 3 cable (and sometimes just Cat 2) to somehow push 10Mbit network connections and will grace us with a new infrastructure and printers that are at least functional. One can dream.
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Dec 17, 2016 02:08
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