Wowsers. Okay, I started working for the Department of Computing and Information Science in October of 2003. At that time, I started as a student employee and had my office in Nichols 118, where Diesel currently lives. At that time, I shared my office with four machines in my office, Kirin, Saru, Kuma, and Printserv. Kirin is the department's backup server. Saru was my workstation and one time application depot and firewall for the Linux lab—when Nichols 128 had need for such things. Kuma was the Unix print server. And Printserv is the Windows print server. Kate Adams became my office mate and a fifth machine moved in, Scorpion, which was her workstation.
After working for the department about two months, Tim Bower, the bossman, got offered a position as Assistant Professor in Salina, which he subsequently took. Seeing an opening for a real job I believed I was qualified for, I applied. This was an internal search for temporary position. They offered me the job and I took it. I then moved into Tim's old office, Nichols 116, and took Saru with me.
In Nichols 116, I no longer had a human office mate, but I shared the office with Achird, Zaurak, Oracle, Remote, and Saru. Achird was Tim's old workstation, which was used frequently by a professor via SSH. Zaurak was the recently (at that point) retired web server, but was removed very shortly thereafter. Oracle is the (since rebuilt) Oracle RDBMS server. Remote is the Microsoft Windows RDP server that acted as Tim's other workstation.
I don't hold to using servers as workstations, as was the wont of the previous administration, so I rearranged the office so that Remote was no longer a workstation. Oracle was in bad shape, so I replaced Oracle with Oracle2, which was a worse machine, but worked better than Oracle. Oracle was briefly put on sabbatical, but both remained in my office. Achird stayed in my office for a few months before I grew tired of it's presence and banished it to the Tower of Not So Much Power in our server room (which is growing to Biblical proportions). Saru, I'm sorry to say, needed a face lift and became Aldebaran, the prototype Gentoo Linux workstation in our department.
Back in my old abode, Cole moved in. He, briefly, shared space with Kate until the summer when we wished her a fond farewell as she moved on to bigger and better things. (Or perhaps more mundane, but better paying and closer to her real interests, according to her description...) Anyway, during this time, another machine was added to his brood, Seer. Seer is the Nagios and MRTG machine used to monitor our network and computer systems.
In April, the search for the permanent holder of the office of Systems Coordinator was begun. The search ended with two interviews, one with myself and one with another. An epic contest ensued and the two of us battled for days on end. In the end, my foe was vanquished and I smote his ruin upon the quad. Er...maybe the staff just decided that even though I might have been a little less qualified it was better not to change administrations again. Whatever happened, I was given the honor of staying with the department.
Since then, I rebuilt both Oracle and Oracle2 to make them a super-combo. That is, the computer formerly known as Oracle is now Catera. The computer formerly known as Oracle2 is now Cougar. These two machines together form the ultimate duo: Oracle Server and Oracle Client. Cougar keeps Catera happily hidden so we no longer have to compromise the quality of our Oracle server in order to keep from compromising security—which had formerly been the bane of our Oracle servers.
In addition to this, I created the initial framework (which Cole has since rewritten) which makes our fleet of Gentoo lab computers possible. In order to prove the concept, Saru, aka Aldebaran, had it's identity altered again to become, DUM-dum-DUM-dum-DUMMMMM, Silverado. I was tired of star names, really tired, really, really, really, really, really....really tired. Therefore, I decreed that henceforth, all CIS managed Linux servers and workstations shall have American automobile names.
Recently, Cole also built another machine, Montecarlo, to replace Kuma, who's age was really beginning to show. Ultra 5's are well beyond their prime. Kuma is an Ultra 5 and due for banishment with Achird, Zaurak, and dozens (literally!) of others.
Anyway, all of this to say, "Holy crap! We have a lot of servers in our offices!" I mentioned before that I don't hold to using servers as workstations. Well, I don't hold to keeping servers in offices at all. They belong in the server laboratory with all of their parallelepiped brethren. I have had the goal, since my start in October last year to get all these freaking servers out of our offices. Today, I have finally, mostly succeeded.
There was a mass migration of servers from offices into the server room. This migration was made possible due to the retirement of several unnecessary servers during the last week. Sarin, Hadar, Izar, and Clinton were all assassinated in the last week freeing up spots to move machines out of offices. Cougar, Catera, Kirin, Remote, Montecarlo, and Seer were all moved into our server laboratory today and yesterday. Awesome!
The mass migration is incomplete because Printserv has not been moved. Unfortunately, it is tethered to the wall in such a way as to make it's migration infeasible. However, it is also in a sorry state, very sorry. We worry for it's health and are afraid it may succumb to something akin to Alzheimer's disease soon. As printing is considered fairly important, we are going to replace Printserv with a brand spankin' new 1U rackmount when it arrives in another couple weeks. When that happens, Printserv will be unceremoniously nixed and tossed with extreme prejudice onto the Tower.
Once that is done, there will be no more servers in the office of any of the systems staff. As of this time, no more servers will be built within the confines of our offices. I will not encourage the breaking of the policy that servers belong in the server room. Humans and their own faithful workstations only belong in offices. Of course, this policy should not be difficult to enforce when I have another policy that states all new servers must be rackmount units. We don't have any racks in our offices, so a rackmount is really not very appropriate in our offices.
For one of my longest blogs ever, I wanted to say, "W00T! Victory is mine!" I am going to spend the evening doing the happy dance of joy rather than sleeping tonight...hmm...maybe I'll just dream about doing the happy dance instead. Cheers.
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