[PLUG] Why are PSU network services...

Michael Robinson plug_1 at robinson-west.com
Wed Nov 18 06:26:52 UTC 2009


> I've had to have this discussion with people who've never managed,
> administered or troubleshot an enterprise network. This seems like this is
> the case with you Michael. It is not a complete apples to apples comparison
> but the ideas still work. Automobiles have been around for some 100 years,
> there have been plenty of advancements and innovations, yet they still
> require regular maintenance in order to run efficiently and not break down.
> If you apply your logic to autos, they should never break down and never
> require any upkeep whatsoever and they should never have any type of recalls
> or something found after they are brought to market that was missed during
> the engineering and prototyping phase. In reality, it just doesn't work like
> that.
> 
> Maybe you have an axe to grind with some of the professors, so be it, but
> that shouldn't become a blanket judgement about the intelligence of the IT
> staff at PSU.
> 
> Drew-

I never said that servers never break down.  Misdesign though 
which leads to an outage that leads to another service outage 
to fix the problem suggests a competence problem.  Automobiles 
don't break down as often as they did say 100 years ago.  The
reliability is much better.  A qualified electrician should be 
able to design the electrical system for a building so that 
servers can be set up properly.  Furthermore, when you are 
serving 1000s of people you need to think about or have 
secondary facilities.  With all the construction going on at 
PSU, there should be a secondary site for network services.  
As far as an ax to grind, if I were unprofessional and had an 
ax to grind I'd put their names in my posts.  Yes I have 
noticed that certain professors at PSU probably shouldn't 
be there.  Insofar as this affects the computer science program, 
it is indirectly a Linux issue.  Linux is an operating system 
that is maintained by people who understand computers.  If
PSU isn't turning out educated engineers, that is not good for 
Linux.  This problem with the design of the electrical system
should have been spotted and addressed a long time ago.

Concerning judgements, I have to make judgements because the
competence or lack thereof of the IT staff at PSU affects me.  
I am in a computer intensive major.  If I were an English 
major, maybe I would not care so much.

Why are all of PSU's network services including access to the 
Linux lab going to be affected?  Why is this outage going to
occur now instead of 4 months ago in the summer when most 
students were gone?  I have some real difficulty understanding
the planning.




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