December 11, 2009
More Fun and Games
Last Monday Morning walked in on a ticket, go look at the "A" router. So I look, ugly red light. Call the ENO (don't ask what that stands for!), we poke, do a power cycle, yep, dead supervisor card. It was a refurb, installed about 3 weeks ago. Win some, lose some. They do an RMA.
Yesterday the replacement card arrives, I call ENO again, put the new card in. Disconnect all my LAN connections so any configuration mistakes will not shut the LAN down like it did last time. Hook up the two fibers that tie the two 6509 routers together. Hook up the incoming T3. Hook up the serial connection from the remote access to the console port. Power up. It goes green. Phil from the ENO comes in the serial connections. It asks for user name/password. And stops. He can't get in. By this time the support people in Texas are gone, so we try again today. After an hour there is no change in the situation.
I'm sure the bean counters think that we are saving money by cutting crews to the bone, centralizing support. But it is not cost effective when I am sitting here doing nothing because I cannot get support. The card should have been correctly configured to just slip in, power up, and have everyone happy. Instead, 22 hours later, it is effectively dead, useless.
We have two incoming T3's, two incoming routers. Redundency. A failure does not kill the site. Now I have no redundency. If the "B" side, router or T3, fails the site is down -- all 500 or so users.
Not to mention that I have other clients who need my services -- something about a dead 'phone at the Torrance Call Center. I really don't like telling my clients that they can pound sand.
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Anyhow, I plug into the console port, read and capture info, send to Florida. Seems that the VLANs are not defined -- whatever that means. I enter a line of gibberish and Sil says he now has access. I'm done and it's only 1:30 pm.
Posted by Paladin at December 11, 2009 11:11 AM