Monday, April 12

Rant

Just Once

Just once I want to buy something and have it actually work properly.  Just once.

I have two servers.  I have a range of portable IPs that can be assigned to whatever server I need them on and reassigned as required.

The two servers have been placed on different VLANs, so this doesn't work in any way whatsoever.

The suggestion from tech support is to get a new range of portable IPs specifically for the new server sitting alone on its own VLAN, so I can reassign them to itself when it's down... Or something.

Update: They have a solution, which is to physically move the server so that they can plug it into the same VLAN.  Yes, that will certainly work, but it makes my teeth itch.  But then, that's why I never went into network administration.  Servers are quite bad enough, thank you!

I don't really like the idea of moving rackmount servers around after they've been set up, but it's better than the Catch 22 that I was half expecting.  And unless they actually drop it, the worst that should happen is that I'll need to update the IP address in my terminal emulator.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:22 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 After years of working with people to set up vpns and ftp feeds, I can tell you now that 99% of people who work in "networking" haven't got the vaguest idea of what they are doing. No clue.

I do not consider myself a networking expert by any means, but damn - could some of these people please learn at least the rudiments of how this stuff works??? Please?

As you can see, I feel your pain.

Posted by: Teresa at Tuesday, April 13 2010 01:24 AM (ZCuP9)

2 Indeed.

I understand SoftLayer's position, though: They have a Standard Way of Doing Things.  Often, that's just an excuse to avoid work, but in their case they run tens of thousands of servers for thousands of customers, and they need a Standard Way of Doing Things.  Physically moving my server from one room in the datacenter to another was less effort and less likely to cause future problems than poking even a tiny tiny hole in the SWDT.

And they did it quickly, successfully, and free of charge, so I'm not about to complain.

Much. wink

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 13 2010 02:59 AM (PiXy!)

3 Die in a fire, spammer.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 13 2010 03:51 PM (PiXy!)

4 Hmmm.... you would think it would be good practice for them to put servers owned by the same people in the same room.  You know, just in case.   Of course that probably would mean some extra work for them on the front end.  Why do it up front when you can wait and do it later.  Heh. 

Posted by: Teresa at Wednesday, April 14 2010 12:51 AM (ZCuP9)

5

Teresa, on the contrary, it would make sense to separate them widely. Indeed, it would make sense to put them in different facilities.

That way, if there's some sort of physical outage (leaky roof, bomb attack, power outage) then it doesn't take out all of that client's computers.

It would only make sense to place them near each other if the client cared more about intercommunication than about reliability.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, April 14 2010 08:13 AM (+rSRq)

6 They have three datacentres - Dallas, Seattle and Washington - and are opening a fourth in San Jose next month, so if you need super-robustness you can easily request geographic distribution.  They have a free 10Gbit private network between the datacentres too.

Currently we're located in Dallas; I might be getting one server in San Jose; we'll see.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 14 2010 11:18 AM (PiXy!)

7 Ah - see - I wasn't thinking about one set being a final backup of the other.  Final backups should be off site entirely as you say.  I was looking at it from the point of view of all being primary servers.  Either all in use or one being able to immediately switch to the other. 

From my reading of the process above, the idea is to have something that is instantly convertible a running duplicate if you will.  It depends on how the servers are set up - possibly the service provider does have the ability to use their other sites as backup in case of emergency.  The extent of that may depend on how much one is willing to pay. 

Flat backups of servers being the cheapest thing to do.  Cold servers available for configuration in case of emergency being the second cheapest.  And hot servers ready to rumble being the fastest but also the most expensive.   It all depends on how important the data availability is.  I like my little blog, but hardly consider it to be worthy of a hot server set up and in all honest... not even quite worthy of a cold server set up - LOL.

Posted by: Teresa at Thursday, April 15 2010 05:49 AM (ZCuP9)

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