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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume V, Issue 9 | September 2002 |
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The following describes a typical day’s schedule in the Data Facility’s 7x24 operation which supports a multitude of system platforms. The facility runs with three personnel shifts.
We present Kilgore Trout, a fictional BIS computer operator, working the full 24-hour schedule at the Bureau of Information Services’ (BIS) Operations Division. (While we present Trout as working alone, in actuality it takes several people to accomplish the multitude of tasks)
Arriving at 7:45 AM, the day starts with the 10-15 minute Passdown meeting, where colleagues from the previous shift report on events occurring during their watch. Thereafter, Trout checks the status of the IBM and Bull mainframe computers to ensure that they are properly set up to process the day’s work and to print any remaining output from the midnight to 8:00 AM shift. He checks the computer and auxiliary rooms for hardware problems. The 200+ servers in the computer room must also be visually checked – every 30 minutes!
About 08:15 AM, the first GoFiche! batch job, which processes and prints customer on-line fiche requests, is run. Trout quickly retrieves and packs all the requested tapes with their documentation, and transports them in a box to Shipping and Receiving. By 08:30 a courier will be delivering them to the microfiche contractor. Next, it is time to give the Bull and IBM printers their daily cleaning! This assures quality output and extends the printers’ life.
Meanwhile, Xerox high speed print (HSP) output1 must be distributed to Shipping and Receiving by 9:30, when the first of several agency couriers arrive. State Postal picks up more output about 30 minutes later. Trout collects and packs mainframe and server backup tapes destined for an offsite archive location. He faxes instructions to the Portland storage site regarding which tapes and documents are to be returned that day. Usually, the courier arrives late in the morning to exchange packages, and Trout puts the newly arrived tapes and documents in their places.
Midday, Trout checks the status of timesharing jobs running on the Bull system. If any jobs run too long, he alerts his supervisor, who may contact responsible programmers to ask why the jobs are running abnormally. It is important not to let one job dominate the system, as this makes other work process more slowly. Noontime also means running another batch of GoFiche!, reviewing the output queues on the two mainframes, and distributing more printed output.
At 13:30 (1:30 PM), Trout again forwards output for another pickup by customer couriers and State Postal. Afterwards, he changes tapes on some of the servers to prepare for the nightly backups. About 15:00, Trout runs one last GoFiche! job, and prepares for the next shift’s passdown meeting by printing production schedules, reviewing system logs, etc.
After the second shift ‘passdown’ at 3:45 pm, the fictional Trout starts a double shift, settling in for a night’s work by loading production schedules into the systems and checking the status of each system. He also logs into on-line systems, preparing to bring them down at the scheduled time so that resources are available for nightly batch processing, databases may be reorganized, and nightly incremental backups may begin. At 17:00, Customer Service Center staff leaves, and phone calls for assistance are forwarded to Operations where Trout is answering the phone. He assists customers directly, and places calls to someone who can help.
Over the next two hours, he brings down the on-line systems and starts the production job schedules. Seven or eight separate work schedules for various agencies and other miscellaneous jobs run concurrently. Trout starts server maintenance work, and several separate server backups start running. At 19:00, two more on-lines come down, and two more schedules start. Now up to ten production schedules are running simultaneously – and most of them produce output for the high speed printers (HSP). Trout has to load the paper, sort the output, shrink-wrap the reports by customer, and address everything for distribution through the state postal system to the agency customers.
At 21:15 hours (9:15 PM) the last on-line region comes down, and another production schedule starts. Just before midnight, Trout reviews accomplishments/problems/status etc. to relay to the incoming shift. Following third shift passdown, eyes bleary, fueled by massive vats of bitter coffee, he begins the mainframes’ daily maintenance as he launches into his third consecutive shift. Accounting files are brought up to date, and are backed up. Scratch tapes are pulled from the tape library for future use. Print queues that require special forms are checked, the forms loaded, and the reports printed.
Between 4:00-6:00 AM, Trout finishes server platform maintenance, and organizes HSP output to be taken to Shipping and Receiving. Just before 6:00 AM, it’s time to start up the customer on-line regions (e.g. initializing files on the MFASIS region to allow for the coming day’s data entry.) Any uncompleted production schedules must be evaluated and either suspended or allowed to continue through the day.
After 7:00 AM as the third shift comes to a close, the telephone rings more frequently as customers call for assistance. Sometimes they call with requests to create new HSP forms or revise old ones. Production Services can assist the customer in creating customized forms that can be printed on the high-speed laser printers at the same time they’re being filled out by the application. Preparing to turn responsibility over to the day shift, Trout finishes his Passdown reports which he emails to support staff and to customers who’ve requested them, since many agencies house their servers in the secure glass room. He also completes records that will be taken off-site for disaster recovery purposes with the daily backup tapes. Finally, a tired Trout makes one last sweep of the machine room to address any loose ends. It is 07:45 AM, and his long 24 hours is over!
1 Trout and his collegues will print and process over 2.5 million HSP pages each month!
Bruce Hanson (a.k.a. Kilgore Trout) is a Computer Operator with the Bureau of Information Services.
Other Kilgore Trouts are:
1st shift: Mike Violette, Assistant Operations Manager, Karen Withee, Roger Clark, Alan Churchill,Bruce Hanson, David Boucher, Dan Incze, Elaine Ferguson, Paulette McKee, Becky Marquis
2nd shift: Bill Hart, 2nd & 3rd shift Supervisor, Ron Clark, Pat Pierce, Leesa Lavigne, Deborah French
3rd Shift: Roger Gagnon, Norm Lemieux, Mark Hulbert, Temple Hill, David Schermerhorn
