Solving a minor problem
Because I’m surrounded by “technology” at work, and my role is to support others as they bump against the fence that keeps them in their respective cages (with regard to the wily computer) there’s the risk of forgetting how far we’ve all come at the office over the last two decades. To put things in perspective; twenty years ago the machine of choice was an Apple IIe or an IBM 5150.
Yesterday afternoon I received the notice (by email) that one of the web sites we “shelter” had decided to revamp their look. With the assistance of professional graphics art people and a firm of programmers, the trusty (flat) HTML was now ready to be retired, moved aside by the new kid on the block, PHP. The only bug in the juice was that nobody had checked to see if our servers were equipped for the new player.
The main server wasn’t; we’d not required PHP support until now, and with a server virtualization project on the worktable, we didn’t want to add it into the equation. As well, we had another web server that had exactly what they wanted, except that no FTP service for updates had been installed. We work on a need basis for everything. What to do, what to do?
It turns out that solutions are simple when one remains flexible. All of our servers are behind a firewall that makes site changes as simple as binding a new IP address to a card. Stop the service for the old site, transfer the code and the address to a different machine, rebind the address and start the service on the new machine. PHP problem; solved. Space on a disk; solved. Updates; we’ll transfer any code changes internally after the client places them in a safe area. Total downtime; about two minutes. As the site in question is a low-traffic client, they didn’t even notice. I sent email to all involved with the invitation to come and check out their new, shiny site.
Even a couple of years ago, such changes would have required spending time (and money). Today, just a wrinkle in the fabric, ironed out by the IT people. There; I’ve patted my own shoulder. Tomorrow will bring new issues, but today went rather well, in retrospect.
