Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Migration Day - Semi-Post-script

I am a believer in Murphy's Law. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. It is how ready you are to deal with the wrong which determines the more able person.
Yesterday I was lazy and did not ended up jumping on my car to go to the office for the migration. Instead, I relied on my instinct to trust the three good people who were there. However, Murphy struck twice :
1) Power shutdown of the entire server farm for ISP - at the same downtime window for maintenance. We were told it was unplanned. It is still being debated. Bottom line - the guys stared dumbfounded on the shutdown screen and no amount of little emotional bank account and authority I had could get them to not do the maintenance. So much for the sleep and the contingency, and the original schedule. So we started later. At 8am in the morning.
2) Deployment error of an oracle named file - tnsnames - Bottom line, the deployment was on a corrupted file, and it triggered off a chain effect of people not being able to login to the other servers, even before we had migrated! What followed was a series of heated discussions on email to correct the problem, which required 3 more deployment emails.

And now I am back here. The whole troop is here - we are on time, perfectly executed for the first time. And still looking good. Hoping that after twice of Mr Murphy, Mrs Murphy may have enticed him away from us just this once.

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