IT Sysadmins - Vendor to run processes?

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

We sure as hell didn't pick this POS - we inherited this via acquisition.

IT's awesome solution today? Have some entry level IT dude in the North Carolina office do it.

well like the poster above said, this isn't their problem. at my company we install the accounting software and ensure that the hardware is all working, but past that any problems they encounter are up to them to resolve. if someone from that department came down to me and basically said they need me to figure out how to do their job, i'd tell them to go pound sand

[ericschand]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

We sure as hell didn't pick this POS - we inherited this via acquisition.

IT's awesome solution today? Have some entry level IT dude in the North Carolina office do it.

Ok, that ain't gonna help. Not ragging on you, just offering friendly, experienced advice.

I understand, now, how you got into this position. My above comments still stand; does Accounting come down and rack and stack "acquired" systems for you? Why not? Because you still need someone you can trust.

Can the entry level IT dude be trusted to know when it's done right, done wrong, all the ledgers and such are exactly accounted for? Does he even know if an error is thrown?

However, if it's Unix or Linux, there may be some scripting solutions for you. I'm not familiar with Windows enough to tell you what may and may not work. You can toss users, lock out users temporarily, and so on under Solaris and Linux.

To lockout users, in Solaris for example, "touch /etc/nologin".

There are many ways to force logout of users. All involve just scripting a "who" or "w" command, find the PID of their session, then kill -9 it. Yeah, be that drastic, just get them off the system. Google should turn up lots of scripts for you to look at for this step.

Your script would do the above two steps then go on to run the appropriate script to run through the file(s).

Then it would "rm /etc/nologin" when completed allowing users to log back in.

Have it drop some sort of output showing it's working, and then have it email this to you and Accounting every time it runs. I'm assuming the Accounting application emails it's own results.

Once you've got a working script, cron it to run at 10PM every night.

I'm guessing someone who is good at scripting would have it up and running within half a day or less, there's nothing scary about any of it.

I realize you are looking for someone to hire to do it for you, but the above, at least to me, is a better solution for a variety of reasons.

ers

[Shazam]

Cron or task scheduler can schedule it.

Killing processes or connections is fairly trivial.

You should ask the people at thedailywtf.com forums. After they tear you apart they might help you.

[sclitheroe]

The notion that you can script kicking users out of a database driven app forcefully presumes that doing so leaves the database and any in-flight transactions in a consistent state, that any temporary files or interim data or weird process-managed locks get cleaned up or are ignored, etc.

It's seldom as easy as a kill -9 (or equivalent) as is being suggested late in this thread, which is quite possibly why people are hesitant to try and script this in the first place.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

The notion that you can script kicking users out of a database driven app forcefully presumes that doing so leaves the database and any in-flight transactions in a consistent state, that any temporary files or interim data or weird process-managed locks get cleaned up or are ignored, etc.

It's seldom as easy as a kill -9 (or equivalent) as is being suggested late in this thread, which is quite possibly why people are hesitant to try and script this in the first place.

Presumably in the current process users are getting kicked out forcefully. Or perhaps the IT guy phones them all and asks nicely to stop working.

[ericschand]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

The notion that you can script kicking users out of a database driven app forcefully presumes that doing so leaves the database and any in-flight transactions in a consistent state, that any temporary files or interim data or weird process-managed locks get cleaned up or are ignored, etc.

It's seldom as easy as a kill -9 (or equivalent) as is being suggested late in this thread, which is quite possibly why people are hesitant to try and script this in the first place.

I completely agree, and you bring up valid points. As Shazam pointed out they are already doing this, kicking users off, so I'm assuming they have addressed those points. Hopefully the IT person doesn't currently wait for everyone to logout, because that's just making it worse. Now you're going to use my personal unpaid time to screw around at the last second? Or just leave, thinking, "It's ok, they'll just force me out, right?"

The problem, as I see it, isn't that the process needs to be done, or even what process. That's a different problem, and one he's looking for someone to be paid to do [his initial question]. This has a bigger delegation issue, and IT should never be delegated with such tasks.

Even if it's an acquisition, the Accounting Dept has to take on the accounting tasks. No matter how crappy it is. Sucks to be them. IT will take on IT tasks for the acquisition. Sucks to be them for IT related tasks.

I'm just hoping Hulse's-biggest-fan realizes what he's getting into here. When something goes wrong, everyone will abandon you, especially those who say, "Don't worry, you won't be responsible, I'll cover for you!"

ers

[JustAnotherGuy]

Automate the process. Set up a business procedure where nobody is logged into the system during that time. If somebody is logged in at the time have the process stop immediately. Have the Accounting department handle the consequences of the process not running. It is their system so they should manage it. Although I believe it is up to IT to make sure the technical solution is in place. If the scripting is 'too hard' hire somebody else to write it.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherGuy

Automate the process. Set up a business procedure where nobody is logged into the system during that time. If somebody is logged in at the time have the process stop immediately. Have the Accounting department handle the consequences of the process not running. It is their system so they should manage it. Although I believe it is up to IT to make sure the technical solution is in place. If the scripting is 'too hard' hire somebody else to write it.

This is the perfect solution in my eyes.

Often people expect their IT department to do more than is reasonable. They need to understand that the solution might not be exactly what they want, so they need to adapt the way they do things to that solution, or pay to find/make and implement a solution that does what they want. In this case, it seems the accounting people dont want to do either and have shuffled the responsibility to the IT dept.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Guys - you're preaching to the choir here. It's not what I would have chosen but that's not my call to make. I hate to transfer my problems to someone else, but that's the decision that was made for me.

Completely agree with all that's said with defining outage periods, automating it via script. Whether IT or accounting runs the process is not the issue given that very simple to do and any errors that arise are the responsibility of accounting to resolve regardless.

An automated process was one of 2 (other one being outsource) I pitched but with this system is up for replacement in the next 6-12 months (because that's always on time....) I suspect that's the reason why the path of least resistance (and work) was chosen.

Yeah, kind of a Dilbert moment.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

We sure as hell didn't pick this POS - we inherited this via acquisition.

IT's awesome solution today? Have some entry level IT dude in the North Carolina office do it.

No, you get some dude in India you pay $1 a night to do this remotely. Why can't you connect remotely and start it up from home or something?