I searched a whole bunch of these for the word "fuck" and couldn't find a single instance. I find it hard to believe that nobody got a page from their girl/boy friend saying why don't you come over and fuck me or a message saying holy fuck a plane just hit the WTC.

If this could be done every 4 seconds for hundreds of thousands of data points you might be correct. Unfortunately I don't know of a system that could do this at any speed close to what is required. The speed required doesn't even allow for relational databases, because Oracle, SQL etc can't handle the inserts at the rate required. Here http://www.osisoft.com/software-support/what-is-pi/Architecture.aspx is a typical architecture for this sort of thing. There are multiple layers of firewalling between the control networks and corporate networks, but any company that were to go the air gap route would be bankrupt shortly. These are real-time systems and the markets can change very quickly.

I know all the comments are about to come flooding in that these systems should be air gapped from the Internet, but that isn't practical in today's environment. These systems need to be indirectly connected to the corporate networks, because the data is valuable to the companies. Much of this is due to deregulation. Since deregulation electric utilities no longer operate as islands with their own generation, transmission and customers. Since nobody liked monopolies in the energy industry, the pieces aren't necessarily owned by the same companies anymore. Energy is also bought and sold in a market environment with prices changing all the time and the information is exchanged over the Internet. If you want to see the current Megawatt Hour (MWh) prices in the midwest check out http://www.midwestiso.org/page/LMP+Contour+Map+(EOR). Needless to say air gapping isn't practical in today's environment.

I'm still waiting to see this in action. I know it's fairly easy to synch passwords between systems and even provide some parts of SSO, but I'm still waiting on the application that lets me long into Windows in the morning and never be presented with another login box for the rest of the day. I don't expect it to ever happen.

Even with a SAN you need to limit volumes sizes to whatever size you can restore within the acceptable restoration window. There are also those times where you just want to run a chkdsk and if the volume is too big, it takes too long.
That being said, I can't believe they didn't have any backup. Even if they skipped the pre-upgrade backup, they should have had one from last night/week/month. Any of those options would be better than nothing. I have to assume they were doing backup to disk on the same SAN they were upgrading, which is pretty dumb. I still can't understand why they didn't have a backup at another site somewhere else in the world. We do that sort of thing all the time where I work.

I'm from another state, but I happen to work for a gas and electric utility. There is a reason the charges are like they are. The public service commission of your state has made them do it this way. In my state we are NOT allowed to make any profit on the gas you use. The customer pays exactly what we pay. We are allowed a certain profit (a few %, I think our is 3) on our capital investment, items such as the pipe in the ground, wires in the air, or a new power plant etc. Often there are also additional line items for special things we are legally bound to do. For example a law may be passed that requires energy conservation programs for a period of time and we are allowed to charge our customers for that program. That creates another line item. Because the PSC or law requires these monies be tracked separately than normal income, you can see what happens to the bill.

Because it is a business requirement. These systems are on isolated networks with firewalls and such, but due to utility deregulation and going to an energy market based system there is a need to get data out of the control systems into marketing systems. Any company that doesn't do that will be at an economic disadvantage to their competitors.

I just reread my post. Sorry I cam accross as too harsh. I've been at this for about 15 years myself and I just get sick of people assuming something only takes a short period of time to setup, because you can knock out a proof of concept quickly. I've also run into plenty of situations over the years where the documentation wasn't done, because either the admin didn't do it or management didn't understand the importance and wanted something with a higher priority done. I've also seen proof of concept systems turn into production systems when a manager says it's good enough and not a critical system and not to worry. That's when you really need to worry.

What the hell are you smoking? I find answers like this to be way over simplified. Just setup a Debian box in an hour. Really? That is a bit naive. I have to ask you. Do you actually get your production servers setup in an hour? I don't know about you, but it takes me at least an hour or two to rack mount a new server, get it cabled, verify the redundant power is done correctly and get everything labeled properly. Then you have to get the OS loaded, app loaded etc. After all that, you need to be sure backups are setup and working properly, do some tests. After all this is HIPPA related and he needs to make sure it's working correctly, not to mention something like this will become a mission critical app in short period of time, because other people will come to rely on it . I could easily see after the release of something like this, other departments putting the use of the IM system into policy and procedures, because it's all logged. For example some manager says he will approve purchase requisitions over the IM system as it's all logged. I assume you've tested the log recovery from a backup and are confident you will be able to restore yesterday's log 7 years from now. And then document the whole thing. You do document things I hope. Even if you are the only admin, you need to document in case you are unavailable during an emergency. If you don't you aren't doing the job properly. I find a proper server takes more like 16-24 man hours.

I can see it now. People will start an achievment service that will help you accomplish you goal. They just get enough accounts and start moderating you +5 Funny to get tge comedian etc.

I tend to use the car analogy when presented with that situation. If I get pushback from management on being legal, I suggest they start using stolen vehicles for company use as that is cheaper as well. It's really no different as far as I'm concerned.