I'm sitting here in my housecoat on Christmas Day, sipping a cup of coffee, staring at a blank page, and wondering what to write.
Let's look at the past year. It's been ... "interesting," in the Chinese-curse sort of way. Things started off with a bang --literally-- early this past spring when one of our over-aged UPS systems finally decided to roll-over and die. I've been warning the administration for two years now that they needed to be replaced, and when UPS #1 died it dumped its load onto the equally aged UPS #2, which died within minutes and dumped the load to .... Well, you get the idea.
Yeah, that's right; I have no budget of my own. Everything has to go through the head-shed first, and I've come to the conclusion that the people over there think problems will go away if they just ignore them long enough. You'd think that spectacular UPS domino-effect we had earlier this year would catch their attention, but I guess not.
To be fair, the budget's been cranked-down until it squeaks for everyone for quite awhile now, and it's going to get even tighter. IT stuff, mostly being out-of-sight, naturally tends to be out-of-mind for those who aren't paid to worry about it, so we tend to gravitate to the bottom of the to-do pile. ....At least until something goes BOOM, anyway.
The UPS systems have been replaced ...crisis-management at its finest... but I still have yet to upgrade the entire server room to 64-bit hardware. Yeah; still on 32-bit, may the people of Microsoft rot in the ninth circle of Inferno, right next to the VMware guys who decided to terminate 32-bit support. I need to do some serious upgrade work on the SAN interfaces, and the network backbone is starting to smoke it's so overloaded. None of that will happen until at least June, though: I received notice last month that the procurement budget has been zeroed-out again.
Oh, well. In the meantime I'm soldiering on, looking for ways to make-do. One of things I'm looking at is telephony engines. You wouldn't believe how much this place pays each month for its Centrex (that's right; Centrex) phone system, and I'm pushing for an Asterisk-based Digium box to replace it. I calculate it'll pay for itself in five months, worst-case. I'm in the process of setting-up an Asterisk PBX in my house, so I can get a better feel as to its workings. Beats sitting around on my backside all weekend.
Second, I'm looking hard at farming-out our server systems to Expedient Colocation Services, who have taken-over the old Compuserve site roughly ten miles from the shop and four blocks from my house. They've really spiffed the old place up, and our CFO says she really likes the thought of a monthly 'subscription' expense instead of my usual 'I need boo-koo bucks' thing every several years. My primary worry here is I've only been able to locate a maximum of 100 Mbps to the site, and I have a feeling that won't be enough. Anyone have a better feel for this?
I need more coffee.