Office Work


 

Not much in here about what I do. I suppose I'll devote one page to it. I'm in the information technology business (who isn't?). Its fun because I can live in a rural area and still have the technological challenge of managing a 27 site, internationally distributed information delivery system (IDS). This challenge was immensly rewarding when we ran the IDS according to our own model, making our successess and mistakes. We were recently bought by a US only, military only, multi-mega-monolithic corporation that believes one IDS fits all. While I agree in principal in centralized IT services, there are subtle differences that should be recognized, especially when commercial, non-US, non-military customers are considered. I trust we can show the way.

 

  Here's my office. Note the important graphic on the screen measuring an important IDS characteristic. I have a radio for listening into the heartbeat of the IDS operation. My Home away from Home

  IDS Interconnection Strategy Strategic mapping of the IDS interconnectivity after the acquistion by the big company. Note that none of the dots are connected. (This is actually artwork generated by my daughter one day that she spent with me in the office. It stayed on the whiteboard for about one month so I could take the picture.)

  Here's part of the computer room. This is loooking past the IBM midrange machines and the Hitachi SANs and into the left half of the Compaq Intel servers. All the servers use the Hitachi SANs. Stringers in Place

  One SAN Unit The guts of one of the Hitachi SANs. This one still has a row of disks left unfilled. These machines have had exceptional reliability, serving both Compaq Novell and Windows based servers and IBM RS6000 servers.

  Should this picture be here? Probably not, as we are still trying to get the birds out of the wiring. But, the move from a 3Com 6012 switch to a Cisco 6509 was relatively recent and the wires have not been rerouted. Messy Comms Rack

  Routers Here's some more comms gear. These are routers for the two internet connections, private, worldwide WAN, and remote access. At the bottom, there are some imux'es or something like that that take many T1's and turn them into a Cisco High Speed Serial Interface (HSSI) for supahispeed communications.

  Gazing down past our development area, past the giant airconditioner, and into the spare parts area. The air conditioner blows cold air into the floors where it flows to holes in the floor under the racks such that it can circulate around the heat producing hearts of the information conduits located throughout the room. I go there in the summertime when the 1959 vintage building cooling system breaks down. Development Area

  Main Data Servers Here are 10 of the roughtly 20 Compaq servers that serve up valuable data to our worldwide enterprise. These things run very well and are well understood by our Network Systems team. They were happy that Compaq and HP will keep the Compaq brand servers.

  Finally, a shot of the IBM machines. From the right, the saavy IDS professional will spot an IBM R50 with SSA drives, an IBM Black Rack housing a pair of H70s, another IBM BR with a couple of M80s. Next to the BR's, astute power engineers will note the rack of UPSs running all that stuff. That rack weighs about 98,500 lbs due to the lead. Finally, on the left are the SAN devices.. IBM Midrange Machines

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