Chaos, Sorrow, and Finally, Sleep...

Zzzzzzzzzz.......

Published on April 24, 2005 By jfranzen In Life Journals

Well, it didn't kill me. I guess that means I'm stronger? This last episode was rather simple from a technical standpoint (aside from 12 composite shots that each had 9 layers. And each of the 9 layers came out to around 50 megs for the Maya binary size, which is only a little above average... But when you are rendering 9 times to get one shot, you REALLY want that shot to get approved on the first pass...). The only real problem we had this last episode was one of IT nightmares...

We've been using a few 3COM 3900 switches as our primary network infrastructure for years now. 6, to be exact. We first got them because they had a fiber optic gigabit network module you could add to the back. We used those modules as switch interconnects so our backbone speed was at 1 gig. And it worked all right. Until the primary switch, which had the fileserver and most of the production workstations attached, decided to have a meltdown Saturday night. And boy did it melt down. Not only did half of the ports on the switch just DIE, but it corrupted every routing table on every network device on the network. One of the MACs in the switch started claiming every IP address on the network. Needless to say, the net was completely hosed. Since I didn't even think it was possible for a switch to die in such a way, it took me an hour just to figure out what the heck happened... Then, another hour to try and get the network back online. Finally, I just gave up and made a completely new subnet for the network. Not fun. I'm just really lucky we'd already planned on upgrading all the switches to Extreme Networks Summit 400s, so we had a few lying around in boxes...

All said and done, we got back online with only a few hours lost. Which is the most important of my job. Zero downtime. Or as close to that as humanly possible. This also highlighted the fact that our policy of not upgrading hardware until we've run it into the ground just is not the soundest in the world. So, I have a little more leverage in pushing for future upgrades. Optimially, I'd like to have a 3 year manditory upgrade cycle, so we're not leaning on any one piece of gear past its expected lifespan. I guess, in the long run, this run did make us stronger after all. Now, I just need to get a few weeks straight of sleep and I'll be ready to start work on our Super Secret Summer Project. No, I won't tell you what it is.

Later,

J^2

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