Blade Watch

I got asked by a friend today to write five ways to instantly reduce your oncall/support costs:

1. Clear down unnecessary disk space – learn whatkey layered applications/operating system components are eating your disk space, so you can script or understand the quickest way to resolve.
2. Check your monitoring configuration – it’s so easy for an alert to be generated due to poor configuration – let’s not forget a call may only last five minutes but cause a disruption/cost of hours.
3. Configuration of the server – even simple things like page file setting, location, firmware versions and driver packs can make a big difference between stability, performance and functionality.
4. Security patching/updates – installing the relevant updates and rebooting the server can make the difference between the application working and not. Operating systems are getting more resilient and reliable, but we should avoid getting in the situation where a server has been up for so long, no one knows if it will reboot ok.
5. Process – are we trapping what’s causing our calls, what aspects could be automated or scripted, what basic checks firstline can do before escalation? Do I really need to call a DataSynapse guy at 3am if one engine goes offline?

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