I’m not even called a “System Administrator” any more. Like “Computer Operator”, that term has fallen out of use in Australia.
These days, my job title is always some combination of the “devops”, “system”, “Cloud” and “engineer”. Never “Administrator”.No, but I am owed a beer for every project I show up to.
Before project that involved outfitting a survey ship headed for the Mediterranean, this conversation took place: (paraphrasing)
Me: At 10gig/s I don’t think the data processors will get the throughput they require.
Chief tech: I tallied up the data transfers, and the time available should suffice with 10g/s.
Me: Did you account for the fact that they duplicate the data and transfer a lot of it twice?
Chief tech: No. But I’ll tell them not to do that.
Some time goes by. Project starts, 1PB of data is collected, and processing is starting up, scheduled to complete everything shortly before they arrive back in the home port. Then my phone rings.
Project manager: Transfer speeds are too slow. Is there anything that can be done, or do we have to eat the daily fine for being too late?
Me: How much is the daily fine?
PM: (number) USD
Me: I’ll make the purchase req now for one tenth of the daily sum. That should increase the throuput.
PM: Hardware install involved?
Me: Yes. I’ll order, configure, and document everything for the chief tech to plug&play during their refuel stop.
PM: I owe you a beer for the next projects.
Long story short, it worked out. A Mellanox 2100 was installed by the crew, and it worked out of the box (Thank the gods, I was worried about the extensive VLAN and LACP setup in play). The processors had everything wrapped up and written to tape the day before arriving back home.
To the chief techs defense, he wasn’t that wrong. He’d made a reasonable estimate based on the numbers he had available. Unfortunately he didn’t have all the numbers, as well as give the processors some head room for fudge factor. This chief tech was mostly experienced in only providing raw data.
Thanks for this story, I enjoyed reading it.
I enjoyed reading this, hopefully you share more stories on Lemmy in the future.
I probably will when relevant
The salutation for System Administrator day is “Happy System Administrator Day! Hey, since I’ve got you here do you think you can <insert task here>”
The customary reply is “Thanks! I’ll add it to my list”
hehe 😆
The customary reply is “Thanks! I’ll add it to my list”
That’s a funny way to say “Have you opened a ticket?”
Never in my life did any workplace I worked at celebrate this. Even when I worked at an server hosting company.
I made a homemade cheesecake for my coworker’s birthday and nobody touched it.
So, no, my colleagues don’t celebrate System Administrator Appreciation Day.
We keep telling you Ivan, no one wanted to eat your vegan cheesecake! /s
In all seriousness, that’s sad …
Was it New York or Chicago style?
Carnegie deli-style with a shortbread crust.
They were fools! If we worked together I’d eat the cheesecake.
Ouch :(
HMU on telegram if you got verified Id.me let hit $100k upwards and split @pounddc1
Why am I thinking they got the System Administrator to bake the cake?
Because sysadmins are famously skilled
chefs?
Insert link to that hilarious sysadmin day song
