formal crap training

Apr 13 2008

How many Solaris engineers does it take to configure bonding ?

Dear Chhandomay fun thing you mention Formal Training.

Let me tell you about the bigger picture. Bort documented how it was implemented for further references. We were indeed force fed a Solaris storage solution we didn't want to.. the main reason why we didn't want it because we are an All Linux shop and we didn't want the hassle of having to master another operating system. So we agreed on integrating the Solaris box if we didn't have to manage it and if it were just another black box managed by a 3rd party supplier , one with inhouse Solaris Experience, and that's where the story starts.

By the time the first Solaris/Storage expert came to deliver the box and had configured it according our "we need bonding" requirement we had noticed sever packet loss on those interfaces. Not unlike something we had seen before with a misconfigured bonding in Linux.

We mailed back and forth with the supplier a couple of times in order to figure out the correct configuration , none of their internal staff (you know Formally Trained Solaris people) could help us .. it seemed as if they had never heard about network bonding. So our supplier decided to escalate it internally and found a guy abroad that was supposed to get the thing up and running.

Almost a week after our complaints about packetloss they showed up. The next guy had more solaris experience.. however he still needed about 3 hours and the documentation next to him to get the thing working.

So Bort blogged about it .. as seemingly none of those formally educated Solaris People in the Belux know about it... and the non formally trained Linux people just happen to think it's a no brainer.

So how many Solaris Engineers does it take to configure bonding ? Well.. 3-4 .. not counting the Accountmanagers that need to be standing next to the machine watching over the shoulders of the techpeople.