On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Swerve wrote:
> My experience with another co. that used a pager system with someone
> sleeping is that it wasn't reliable. Sometimes the pager didn't work, other
> times they didn't wake up. Perhaps one of those vibrating pagers from the
> back of a naughty magazine might make the system more effective.
I'll agree on this one. I've had to 24/7 support over Easter weekends before
back in the days when I was a lowly 2nd level grunt. Most guys doing this get
really hacked off when they're woken up at 1am after a 16 hour shift because
somebody has forgotten their password, whatever. The only exception to this is
when you can actually measure revenue in at least the hundreds of $$$$ a
minute when downtime becomes worth getting half the technical managers out of
bed and driving across the countryside at 3am on a Sunday morning (ahh, those
were the days). :-)
> In all seriousness, i am not crazy about the 24/7 life. However, opensrs
> has customers globally, and this results in a Toronto Saturday being another
> Reseller's Friday, and a Toronto Sunday being another reseller's Monday.
Agreed. There have been times when I've thrown a mail out to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] at around 8am BST, and although mildly urgent, I wasn't too
bothered as long as I got a reply the same day - I don't expect it to arrive
before 8pm BST, but I definitely would like small problems to be resolved
before midnight BST (I work from home, I have no life, I'll sit here and wait.
:-) ).
> At this point in my business strategy, i don't need a 24/7 company to buy
> names from, but i can see that others may need this. (esp. those not in the
> Toronto time zone.)
I've never had an urgent problem with OpenSRS. If I did, then yeah, I'd want
immediate assitance, but I know the problem is likely to be at my end, so I'll
probably spend my time checking my own code (even trained software engineers
make mistakes from time to time) whilst waiting for the clock to tick around to
about 2pm GMT, by which time I expect that *somebody* will be answering the
phone at OpenSRS. If OpenSRS is down, then I know all the other RSPs are likely
to be having problems as well, so chances are a sizeable percentage of my
competitors (you lot) are going to be out of action as well. I can live with
that. It's when I'm the only guy in the world who can't get registrations done
through no fault of my own that I'm likely to start wielding axes at support
personnel. ;-)
> A sleeping employee with a pager doesn't sound tenacious enough for
> emergency protocol.
Indeed. You either need staff on full-time (expensive for you, and trust me
working on a late shift at a NOC is boring as hell so bad for your employees),
or you need at least 3 seperate guys armed to the teeth with pagers and mobile
phones. At one point, I remember having 2 cellular phones on different
networks, 3 pagers, and I was staying in a hotel around the corner from the NOC
in a hotel with a direct-dial number. Made my pockets heavy, but when they all
go off together, you *do* end up getting out of bed. <sigh>. :-)
--
Paul Robinson - Internet Services @ Akita - http://www.akita.co.uk
------------------------------------------------------------------
Sales:- T: 01869 337088 F: 01869 337488 E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Techs:- T: 0161 228 6388 F: 0161 228 6389 E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------------------------------------------
