Production Servers Upgraded
[January 4, 2002]
The DALNET staff have completed most of the work for the Production Server upgrade.
Overall, the process went fairly well although we did come up a bit later than anticipated on the
morning of Saturday, December 22. There are still a few more steps including making some changes
to the system memory. The Test server will be restored to service shortly.
This upgrade process required a lot of careful planning and long hours of work on the part of our
technical staff, Martin Austin, George Marck, and Negib Sherif. Rather than review the server
upgrade steps previously posted, this article describes some of the processes that occurred.
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We established a process for planning a detailed technical project plan with a timeline,
critical steps, and individuals responsible for each step. We sought member input on the options
for the timeline. We spent a great deal of time here to make sure our plan was thorough.
This planning paid off as we were able to meet our timetable for brining the Production Server back online.
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We identified creative solutions to minimize downtime for our member libraries. While
we accomplished this fairly well, we hope to identify technologies that will further
reduce downtime for any future equipment upgrades.
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We made use of scripts to further automate the process. Some of these scripts can be used again
to further automate the processes and workflow. We plan to make greater use of scripting in the future.
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We did some cross training so that the technical staff learned some new skills and processes.
This reflects one of our goals of being a learning organization. It also affords us additional
backup capability, so that we can maintain higher levels of service even when some of our IT staff
are out of the office.
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We corrected problems with Production Server directory structure, freed up space in the root
directory, made better use of disk space so we can better accommodate future growth and ensure
more reliable server performance for our members.
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Once all the work is complete, our next steps will be to evaluate how this process worked,
assess what we learned, what worked well, and where we want to improve.
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