Interesting Questions

[Wallace Colyer]

> *B) 24 hour support; do you provide it and if so how?

>  Are beepers evil?

> Most system administrators want a life of some sort; how do you get one
> while keeping the users happy?


We provide 24 hour coverage for what are defined as critical services
which is constantly redefined.  

The coverage from the software staff is done like this:

We have six people in a beeper pool (not including myself)   Two people
from the pool cary beepers plus the system manager (me).  The operations
staff will first contact the primary beeper, then the secondary beeper
and finally the system manager.  

The primnary and secondary beepers rotate every week.  Each person is on
call for two weeks.  The first week they have the secondary beeper and
the second the primary.  They are resonsible for finding a replacement
if they are to be unavailable.

3 of the beeper cariers are considered Pricipal support people for our
Andrew File Servers.  It is required that one of them is on call at all
times.  We try to spread out the skills so that between the two people
on call almost everything is covered.  

In addition we have a bboard where detailed explanations of all actions
taken are recorded so that everyone  can learn how to solve problems.

-Wallace