This is it! One down, two more to go

As promised, we managed to complete the migration of 2 big web systems from another service provider to our Data centre on the 30-Nov! It was on schedule, not later by even a day.

Come next Saturday, 13-Dec, there will be another 3 web systems to cut-over, then follow by 31-Dec, the last 3. Hopefully, we would be able to roll-out the rest of the systems on time.

The last ones were difficult, because the out-going vendor was not easy to work with, some of the information was not even given to us, lucky enough, we have a group of competent people, that's the reason how we managed to roll-out the systems on time.

Maybe will be delayed

The project to migrate systems from another site to our data centre seems to be doing fine at one look. Over the course of 3 weeks, our team can finally get the UAT environment ready to be handled over to the application team tomorrow for they web applications deployment, but for the production environment, things hit some obstacles.

Firstly, for production environment, we haven't got the budget approved to purchase a no. of software and hardware, resulting in having to share, e.g. firewalls and network switches. Secondly, even with the hardware delivered, there are just sitting in the staging room, not able to be deployed, due to the fact that because there wasn't a budget to engage the vendor for professional services, we had to source in-house, and you know what? The in-house people (not from our team!) are not familiar with implementing them, so, the project got delayed.

I don't mean to be crapehanger person, but it seems that things aren't progressing as expected, there are just similar too many show stoppers. It's so discouraging sometimes, even if you want to be a good engineer or PM, there are things that you can't control, nothing works perfect.

I will be going on leaves next week, there's not much time for me with so much work to do, and with a team that heavily rely on me to carry out the work, I'm really worried.

Shellshock Bash vulnerability

For the last one week, life wasn't good, with the announcement of the Bash's flaws, everybody was busying checking their equipment whether they are subjected to the weakness. For the Unix folks, CVE-2014-6271 was the very first that they were told to apply the fix, but after the weekends, it was another one, CVE-2014-7169.

More vulnerabilities were detected, and more CVEs were released, it was really bad. Some vendors didn't even have the patch to address the issue yet for this >20 year old Bash thing.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/2240231709/Vendors-push-new-Bash-patches-as-more-flaws-emerge?track=NL-1820&ad=896324&asrc=EM_NLN_34719724&uid=976171&utm_medium=EM&utm_source=NLN&utm_campaign=20141001_Shellshock+alert%3A+Vendors+push+patches+as+more+Bash+flaws+emerge_mbacon

Project Win

Recently, the team just got another project. It's for a migration and new systems setup for a virtualised solution using MS Hyper-V. Servers will be windows 2012 Server R2. There will be a new network infrastructure, with F5 LTM2000S, MFE Firewall Ent S4016, Check Point SG4600 Appliance, IPS/IDS, etc.  It's going to be very interesting.

I reckon for the next 1 month, I will be busy with the project. Hopefully, I still can find time to attend some courses, to build up my knowledge. I wanted to sign-up for a network course, but it's kind of too expensive, so for now, not possible, maybe next time.

Outlook 2010 cache

I always have this slowness problem when opening my Outlook. So, a bit frustrated, I seek Mr Google for advice, the greatest "know-all" consultant immediate told me the answer.

What I did was to close Outlook, then delete the OST files from hard drive, C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook. This is for windows 7.

Re-launch Outlook, wow...not only it open fast after the one-time sync to local cache, it cleared away the space used by the old cache, thus, saved me disk space.

What's up?

I have signed up for two running events, one for a 16KM road run, and the other is a 12KM night trail run.

To prepare for both runs, I have actually embarked on a 12-week Marathon training program for beginners, www.medibank.com.au/bemagazine/post/marathon-12-week-beginner-running-guide . I have just completed the week 1 of the program, it has been tough, having clocked almost 25KM in all. Other than that, I have also bought a new pair of Solomon's XR Mission trail shoes and a pair of socks for trail run. I have only completed a 10.5KM trail run about 3 months back, it was raining on that day, the ground condition was muddy and bad, but it was a good experience.

Week 2 ahead, let's hope I can stick though the program and never give up!

Time to relax!

After the completion of the two projects, it's now time to relax a bit. But hey, wait, there's the audit! Although, for this time round I'm not the main OIC to follow up with things, it's still quite a tedious work for me, as I will still need to support the OIC to furnish information required by the auditor. There are plans for another system upgrade and one system migration project to do, but the dates are yet to be confirmed.

Meanwhile, I will plan for some short away from office trips. This Friday, I'm going to the Zoo, and end of the month, I'm planning for a staycation on a outer island. Cheers...

May Day!

It's May Day today, not May's Day, but 1st of May, aka  Labour Day.

People in this part of the world are worrying about their jobs and salaries, some say it's because of the local government's lenient immigration policy to allow inflow of foreign talents into the country, leading to locals not able to get jobs or even secure their jobs.

It was said that the recent years of higher than expected inflation and rising standard of living was due to the presence of many foreigners. Housing costs, necessities cost, cars prices increases, etc. are making locals becoming more pessimistic.

Are foreigners competing with locals on jobs and cause so much unhappiness? Or rather, will their presence make locals work harder and smarter, I don't know, really.

Time for break

Finally, both the newly upgraded systems have 'go-live'. But, its still not yet time to celebrate as there are issues pending to be resolved.

At least for now, there isn't need for us to stay over the night to watch over things. Now, to prepare documentations and take over stuffs.

We have done this many times, taking over the support of the systems from other teams, it would take at least 3 months. Meanwhile, time for me to relax after almost a year of high tension work, perhaps going on a short trip soon.

So many things to do till I forget...

I have been busy, super busy lately, till I have got no time to blog last month. Come next month, there are 3 newly upgraded systems to be rolled out to users.

App people are busying doing UAT and troubleshooting issues now, and at times when there's a problem, they will finger pointing at us. A couple of times, we had to defend ourselves, fighting back their claims. Welcome to the real IT world! It will be getting worst, more sleepless nights, many weekends to burn, schedules that looks fine on paper, but just isn't making sense to follow and frequently had to be amended. Projects timelines and milestones are always delayed.

The important thing now is to keep the team intact, make sure everyone is not over worked, over agitated, over de-moralised, and always in a uplifted spirit!

Fight on, guys and gals. 20 more days to go! Endure!

Happy new year 2014!

Happy new year!

It has been a quite a hectic last one year, so many things to do.

This month, and likely for the next 3-5 months, it's going to be the busiest time of the year.

Already in progress are 3 security audits, 3 system upgrade projects, 2 DR testing and endless ad-hoc support. Our engineers are basically the victims of cost cutting, 1 engineer got to do the work of 3, and that's not all, he has to be at 3 different places at the same time! How is it possible?

Sometimes, I think some of those directors and PMs do not have the visibility of the ground situation, they are just not aware that the engineers are working so hard, and tiring out too. When the bosses don't get what they want, they will just complain to the engineers' superior, this is causing so much unhappiness.

I don't want to do that kind of thing to my fellow peers and staff, you can really tell from their faces that they have lots of resentment against you, I hate seeing it, but what can I do? There's really this much of things I can help and feedback to management, but it's just not working.