It’s not often that an IT professional hears, “There’s a fire in your server room!”
For Paul C., the manager of information systems, the unfortunate catastrophe set off a swift disaster recovery project that would turn out to be a medley of urgent tasks in the short term and rebuilding a foundation for the long-term.
Paul C. had his hands full with a to-do list that ranged from re-establishing the client that relied on the damaged systems within 48 hours all the way to designing and shifting to virtual servers with a lower replacement cost.
Paul C.’s story, entry #255, is just one of countless tales of IT heroism that is posted on Dell Inc. and Intel Corp.’s online petition site for a National IT Day. Since launching on Jan. 19, the petition, which hopes to get recognition for the work that IT pros do to support a business’s IT infrastructure, has so far garnered 3,539 signatures.
In the meantime, stories of IT heroism continue to flood in. Jeremy H., entry #188, battled and won against a legacy server determined to not go out quietly before a planned file and mail server upgrade. “The day after we purchased the hardware for the new mail server, the old server must have gotten ‘jealous’ and decided that enough was enough,” writes the IT manager.
The challenge to save the company from extended downtime started on a Friday afternoon, but “23 solid hours later and a bare-metal recovery of Exchange 2003, the system was back up.”
Entry #220, Sean K., wants all the unspoken IT heroes at his health care company to be recognized for the nights, weekends and lunch hours that are given up at a moment’s notice to resolve an IT problem.
“Our stress levels would scare off even the most seasoned executive,” writes the infrastructure support analyst. “Creating reports, SQL queries on the fly. Ad hoc changes in code” are all in day’s work for Sean K. and his team of “friendly little computer geeks.”
Follow Kathleen Lau on Twitter: @KathleenLau
