Goodbye and thanks for all the fish
+1
We had been using "Big Brother" for years. We had also switched to a new fangled, whiz-bang monitoring solution and it just-- wasn't-- working out. We finally decided to pull the plug and switch back to Xymon because it just friggin' works. Good luck, I guess... we'll be here when you need us again. :)
Erik D. Schminke | Associate Systems Programmer Hormel Foods Corporation | One Hormel Place | Austin, MN 55912 Phone: (507) 434-6817 edschminke at hormel.com | www.hormelfoods.com
I've seen similar scenarios over the last twenty years. But because our Big Brother (now Xymon) was so simple to run, we suggested it just continue to run in parallel while the new solution was completed, and our workflow and business processes were updated.
You can guess the rest.
-- Do things because you should, not just because you can.
John Thurston 907-465-8591 John.Thurston at alaska.gov Department of Administration State of Alaska
On 4/30/2019 4:24 AM, EDSchminke at Hormel.com wrote:
We had also switched to a new fangled, whiz-bang monitoring solution and it just-- wasn't-- working out. We finally decided to pull the plug and switch back to Xymon because it just friggin' works.
At EDS I was told to switch from Big Brother/Hobbit to CA Unicenter. The component of Unicenter that watches web pages was called CA-Wiley, and I just couldn't make it work the same as my bash scripts. Someone from the Integration team offered to help, so I sent the requirement doc to them. The Wiley XML script they came back with had a fatal flaw - a hard-wired date. I told them, "In six months that date becomes invalid, the test will fail and nobody will know why. It needs to be dynamically calculated." Nope, never got an answer on that one. Also, the Wiley display app would crash if people "clicked the buttons too fast" (known fault, admitted by CA) *and* it would then forget which tests were disabled...
My current employer is beginning to push SolarWinds. That requires a Java app to be installed on the clients, instead of a couple of scripts. Main reason for the change seems to be "it looks prettier, and management likes pretty things." We'll see how that works out.
Ralph Mitchell
On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 11:39 AM John Thurston <john.thurston at alaska.gov> wrote:
I've seen similar scenarios over the last twenty years. But because our Big Brother (now Xymon) was so simple to run, we suggested it just continue to run in parallel while the new solution was completed, and our workflow and business processes were updated.
You can guess the rest.
-- Do things because you should, not just because you can.
John Thurston 907-465-8591 John.Thurston at alaska.gov Department of Administration State of Alaska
On 4/30/2019 4:24 AM, EDSchminke at Hormel.com wrote:
We had also switched to a new fangled, whiz-bang monitoring solution and it just-- wasn't-- working out. We finally decided to pull the plug and switch back to Xymon because it just friggin' works.
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon
Indeed. A couple of years ago, I started a contract at a place which had no monitoring yet, because 'We have a monitoring project to spec and install the "latest and greatest whizz-bang tool" - it will be up and running "soon"'. I was designing and building loads of new systems from scratch (to provide paid-for, managed application services for this company's customers), and setting up the config management, so could embed the monitoring client for whatever tool they wanted, as part of the automated build process.
Fine, I said - I'll just set up Xymon *for now*, so we have *something* (I played it down, not wanting to put any noses out of joint) whilst awaiting the outcome of the project. I referred to it as the "Interim monitoring solution".
I finished my contract a year later. Another year after that, Xymon is still running and providing all the monitoring and alerting (and dug them out of many holes over the course of that time). The customers are told that there is a whizz-bang all-singing and dancing integrated monitoring and alerting system in place.
The other project is still in the pilot stage...
On 30/04/2019 16:38, John Thurston wrote:
I've seen similar scenarios over the last twenty years. But because our Big Brother (now Xymon) was so simple to run, we suggested it just continue to run in parallel while the new solution was completed, and our workflow and business processes were updated.
You can guess the rest.
-- Do things because you should, not just because you can.
John Thurston 907-465-8591 John.Thurston at alaska.gov Department of Administration State of Alaska
On 4/30/2019 4:24 AM, EDSchminke at Hormel.com wrote:
We had also switched to a new fangled, whiz-bang monitoring solution and it just-- wasn't-- working out. We finally decided to pull the plug and switch back to Xymon because it just friggin' works.
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com https://u10038195.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=EuHF9aeyxHUTTARmbmCb87tYldK3N...
Heh, maybe I should say ‘au revoir’ instead… ;-)
From: Xymon [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of Adrian Ball Sent: Wednesday, 1 May 2019 1:43 AM To: xymon at xymon.com Subject: Re: [Xymon] Goodbye and thanks for all the fish
Indeed. A couple of years ago, I started a contract at a place which had no monitoring yet, because ‘We have a monitoring project to spec and install the “latest and greatest whizz-bang tool” – it will be up and running "soon"’. I was designing and building loads of new systems from scratch (to provide paid-for, managed application services for this company's customers), and setting up the config management, so could embed the monitoring client for whatever tool they wanted, as part of the automated build process.
Fine, I said – I'll just set up Xymon for now, so we have something (I played it down, not wanting to put any noses out of joint) whilst awaiting the outcome of the project. I referred to it as the “Interim monitoring solution”.
I finished my contract a year later. Another year after that, Xymon is still running and providing all the monitoring and alerting (and dug them out of many holes over the course of that time). The customers are told that there is a whizz-bang all-singing and dancing integrated monitoring and alerting system in place.
The other project is still in the pilot stage…
On 30/04/2019 16:38, John Thurston wrote:
I've seen similar scenarios over the last twenty years. But because our Big Brother (now Xymon) was so simple to run, we suggested it just continue to run in parallel while the new solution was completed, and our workflow and business processes were updated.
You can guess the rest.
— Do things because you should, not just because you can.
John Thurston 907-465-8591 John.Thurston at alaska.gov<mailto:John.Thurston at alaska.gov> Department of Administration State of Alaska
On 4/30/2019 4:24 AM, EDSchminke at Hormel.com<mailto:EDSchminke at Hormel.com> wrote:
We had also switched to a new fangled, whiz-bang monitoring solution and it just-- wasn't-- working out. We finally decided to pull the plug and switch back to Xymon because it just friggin' works.
_____________________________________________ Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com<mailto:Xymon at xymon.com> http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon<https://u10038195.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=EuHF9aeyxHUTTARmbmCb87tYldK3NU72sPOQDHKA-2FDutRu83XoMw0KNtRJ-2BNXIdggTiabJql17Khfv3JKUzOkQ-3D-3D_FmobG8Uig9LluLwSQmbmsv2L2XI6eE5lmMF5BxLVPRWpu3kQULgCDe6Vk6wUOUTpCoB1nHjdil2MHXDBOLi2v40qsik2hxeMu2coeDqTu-2Bop5iJEPiKLtYuaZTPWqsGURIcefDc6euTvvDSiDb52W6zRkPHbcAVtw2LXD1L21k2CGkTXl48MEizjBf6qAcJbcvm8uQWAd4Uv8WJWpUamZg-3D-3D>
participants (5)
-
ade＠hp5.co.uk
-
EDSchminke＠Hormel.com
-
john.thurston＠alaska.gov
-
Phil.Crooker＠orix.com.au
-
ralphmitchell＠gmail.com