depsite the way i might sometimes come across, i do assume i am a dumb ass and i don't know everything and when i do work the first thing i ask myself is whether i did it wrong.
take the other day as an example. i was given an ESX server to install which was in a remote datacenter. i did the install but i couldn't see the HBAs when it was done. not being a wiz at a esx command line shit, i figured it was probably me that did something wrong so to check it decided to go back to the comfort of something i know well, and i installed windows 2008 on the server. it took 6 hours because i was doing it all remotely. after a few more hours of running utilities and diags i figured it might not be me that was doing something wrong. after talking with the hardware guys it turned out that it had not one, but TWO faulty HBA cards in it and all this after i had been told it was a working server.
the other day i was on a server and its array battery was complaining that it needed to be replaced. i asked them who i needed to call to get it replaced and was told that they don't. eh?. yes, when the batteries die we made the decision not to replace them?. er...ok. why?..i asked. its too expensive.
oh, ok. well RAID controllers are expensive and fault tolerance on hard disks wastes disks space and is expensive so you might as well not bother with those either.
today i got handed a list of servers to check but i couldn't get onto the iLO's of any of them. i must have tried all of them which was about 20 servers, and i couldn't get onto a single one. maybe it was me and i was using the wrong name, or i might be on a network that doesn't have access or maybe i am just being an idiot. turns out i am not the idiot. they are.
i told my team leader i couldn't get to any of them and he said it might be because the names were not in DNS. i thought he might still think i didn't have their secret 2000 line hosts file on my pc, but i do now and told him. he told me it might not be in that file and might not be in DNS either. er....ok. are we supposed to remember the IP address for the iLO of every server?. i don't think i have the mental capacity to do that.
i also need access to virtual center to check some virtual machines. i put in a request to get added to the group 2 weeks ago. they still haven't added me. i called the people and they said they would do it but they haven't. i have sent emails, and followup requests but nothing is happening. i think i have chased them up on it 7 or 8 times and yet the call is still in the queue and not moving or being resolved. am not sure what else i can do. i could try and find the people that deal with it and stand at their desk and say, "stop surfing the web and add me to the fucking group so i can do my fucking job, you cocksucker", but i don't think that is very proffessional.
they have multiple domains for production, staging and development servers. one of the domains has the letters DEV at the end of its name. you would think that this might be the development domain. you would be wrong. the domain with DEV in is actually the UAT/Staging domain. the actual DEV domain has what is a seemingly random string of characters and numbers in it and the prod domain is labelled by geogaphic location. other domains are just given the same name and have a number added from 1 to 9 at the end. i don't know what they do. i am too scared to ask.
also not only is there a domain boundary that seperates servers there is a physical network boundary, so you not only have to use the right account to get to a server, you have to do it from the right network to access that server. it means you end up having to remote desktop into various utilty machines that are shared on each network and from there you can then remote to the server you need. its complete madness. there are indigenous tribes of people living in the jungles of south america untouched by modernity that could design a better network infrastructure than this.
i think they are doing this to deliberately confuse me. thats the only explanation i can think of. its a big conspiracy against me to confuse me and make me go mad.
god, its so frustrating. the tiniest task is such an ordeal.
PS: i didn't get that job i went to see on friday. not dissappointed despite my current situation. different skills sets required. i don't do solaris, or reuters or sybase or netapp storage. they also wanted windows server and citrix which i do know a bit about but no idea why they called me in to be honest. i suspect they were desperate as they are looking for a particular combination of skills and they are struggling to find them.
today i have mostly been listening to ....macabees - no kind words
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