[SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c machines, now that Solaris 8 won't run

[HarryReganharry.regan at usa.net]

Chris' comment strikes a nerve with me.  I'm an old dude-- I've been playing
with computers since 1967-- "Why, back in my day, we had to stoke the boilers
before we did a compile!"  At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I think the
way people are educated in technology these days is inadequate-- and a major
culprit is our buddy Microsoft.

As a mainframe assembler programmer, you had to have a deep understanding of
the physical limits of the machine, what its peripherals were, how to make
them function, and most important, how to restore the damned thing to
operating status when it blew up at 2 AM.

I get really stressed with new Microsoft Certified architects and programmers
who design applications that clearly have of understanding of a production
processing environment. "Dude! When it does that, just reboot it!"  Yeah, and
kill the other three apps running on the same server ("Oh! Should I only run
one app per server-- why, that would mean I'd have to run six hundred servers
to support the company...")  

Bottom line-- to do real effective admin support and real effective production
ops, you need to understand how the darn machine works at a hardware level,
you've got to understand how to systematically diagnose "strange behavior",
and you've got to understand exactly how to recover from a failure.  It's not
education and it's not certification.  It does take a logical mind, it's takes
a personality that let's you focus on a task, and it takes a basket full of
common sense.  Oh, and a love of carry-out Chinese food doen't hurt either...


___________________________________________________________________ 
---- Harry J. Regan
---- Phone: 202.310.2719 
---- FAX: 212.202.3923
---- harry.regan at usa.net 
---- hregan at lepus.com


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