Benny - Biggest Problem ....

[Paul L. Allen]

Sam Stave writes: 

> The documentation that I develop, expect and require
> is such that it covers all the bases in such a
> detailed manner as to provide instantly useful
> information to one who is tasked with supporting a
> service sight-unseen.

You have covered a lot of the deficiencies, but missed an important one
(perhaps not important in your circumstances but important in mine). 

You want documentation for the heavy-duty techies who set things up from
scratch, for the techies who are on first/second-line support, and for
the monkeys on the helldesk who do the grunt work and get paid peanuts.
But, for some of us, there are also the less-than-monkeys that are our
customers who want to see their services being monitored.  They pay for
monitoring services and want some assurance that they're working - they
also want to understand what they're looking at (even if they're incapable
of understanding these things).  These people need documentation written
for idiots that is clear and concise enough that they know if they cannot
understand it then they'll understand that they really are technical idiots
and they'll be too embarassed to ask for further details. 

Yes, I am in a cynical mood tonight.  But seriously, idiot-level "I have
s login so I can see what you're seeing for my servers, so how the **** do
I use it" documentation is needed.  I say this as somebody who was asked
why a customer's POP3 server was not responding - it was because he hadn't
started it.  NAGIOS reported that POP3 was not running on that server
(these people run their own servers, we just monitor them) but he didn't
believe it.  And didn't ask the guy responsible for the POP3 service if it
had been enabled.  Instead he insisted I check out what he should have been
capable of checking for himself. 

I wouldn't mind, but one of the UK's biggest leased-line providers seems
incapable of using traceroute for themselves, so when things go wrong with
this particular client I end up having to traceroute for them so they can
determine if they finally (after 4 hours!!!) managed to reconfigure their
router correctly.  I won't embarass them by mentioning them by name,
because COLT does not deserve that degree of approbation.  Whoops!
Actually, they do.  Recently, COLT upgraded the bandwidth for that client
by putting in another line and another router and it took them two whole
weeks to figure out how to get the two Cisco routers to do load-sharing.
Many evenings spent on out-of-hours messing around until they finally
figured it out.  Many evenings spent with me testing stuff COLT ought to
have been able to test for themselves and me telling them they screwed up
yet again. 

Many of us probably have similar tales from the Sub-simian Zone.  We have
moronic clients and they have moronic bandwidth providers.  They need
acelaphic-level documentation. 

BTW, did I mention that COLT are a bunch of freaking useless morons? 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support 



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