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092 - And you thought YOU had integration issues
And you thought YOU had integration issues…
Darth Vader took two giant strides toward the immense view screen that
occupied the forward wall of the bridge of his flagship Imperial Star
Destroyer. "We have them now," he rumbled. Whirling on the technicians
cowering at their consoles, Vader snapped, "Tractor beam!"
"Yes, Lord Vader," replied one, bending attentively to his task. Then
he looked up hesitantly. Vader gestured dramatically at the screen,
indicating the fleeing spacecraft. "I want a tractor beam on that
ship," he declared. "Now!"
The technician busied himself with switches and dials." Where's that
tractor beam?" roared Vader, his voice dark with menace. The other
technicians turned frightened eyes on their peer. They knew what
happened when Darth Vader's instructions weren't executed instantly.
"The tractor beam seems to be down, sir," quavered the technician
"What do you mean down?" Vader inquired with a disturbing silkiness to
his voice.
"It's not accepting commands, sir," the technician explained. Another
technician leaned over and examined the console. "That's odd. The beam
itself is showing green," he pointed out. "Yes, I know," agreed the
first. "But I'm not getting any acknowledgment to my 'Engage'
command." He pressed a button several times to demonstrate." Maybe the network's
down again," suggested a third technician. "Oh, that could be,"
admitted the first technician. "The network might be down, Lord
Vader," he informed the large black figure trembling with rage.
"What network?" Vader asked ominously. The second technician jumped in.
"Since we've moved to a distributed architecture on the Imperial star
destroyers, everything is on a network. It was felt that the direct
connections were too unreliable." The third technician added. "The
tractor beam is on one of the peripherals sub networks, with the
printers and the scanners. It's not on the main weapons network." "Why
isn't the tractor beam on the weapons network?" asked Vader, now more
puzzled than angry. The technicians exchanged sheepish looks. It was
embarrassing to have to point out something so obvious to a superior.
The second technician cleared his throat. "Well, sir, the weapons
network is a higher priority. It makes more sense to put the less
commonly used systems on a separate sub network that has lower QOS."
"QOS?" Vader queried." Hang on a second," said the first technician.
"If the network is down, how come we're getting a green light for the
tractor beam?" The third technician brightened. "Ah! Maybe the console
is retrieving old MIB data and displaying that." "MIB?" rumbled Vader.
The first technician answered, "We use SNMP to monitor the network
elements. When the server queries the element, it stores its current
status. If the network goes down, it can't query the element anymore,
and all you have is the latest status in the MIB." He turned to the
other technicians, musing. "We really should have an indicator of when
the last successful query was, instead of just a green or red light."
"Good idea," said the third technician. "I'll call tech support."
"Say," said the second technician. "How about if we ping the tractor
beam? Let me bring up a telnet window."
"Telnet?" asked Vader, now obviously confused. "Ping?" The first
technician glanced briefly at Vader, a little annoyed at the
interruptions. Why couldn't this guy keep up with the service
bulletins? "The system runs Unix, but the consoles run NT 5000," he replied with
exaggerated patience. "You need a telnet window to ping the element."
He turned his attention back to the screen. "That's strange. It comes
back 'active'. Listen, when you get tech support tell them we can't
engage the tractor but we can ping it." "Right," said the third
technician. "I'm still on hold." "Here's a thought," said the second
technician. "What if we just call the guys down at tractor control and
have them engage the beam manually?"
Vader seemed to brighten up at this, and swiveled his head from one to
another." Good idea," said the first technician. He lifted his
communicator and tapped the switch several times. "Nothing," he said.
The second technician shook his head. Didn't we tell them we couldn't
do voice and data with that little bandwidth?"
Suddenly Vader noticed the view screen and let out a bellow of anger.
"They're gone!" he boomed. The third technician looked up smiling.
"Hey, I got tech support!"
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