What do you fine folks think?"

I think you're not a very well trained sysadmin.

There is no reason to not have various parts of the filesystem mounted from different disks or partitions on the same disk. If you do this, you can run part of the system on one filesystem, other parts on others as appropriate for their intended usage. This is commonly done on large servers for performance reasons, quite like the one you are asking about. It's also why SCSI ruled in the server world for so long since it made it easy to have multiple discs in a system.

So run most of your system on something stable, reliable and with good read performance, and the portions that are going to take a read/write beating on a separate partition/disc with the filesystem which has better read or write, whichever is needed, performance. If you segregate your filesystem like this correctly, an added benefit is that you can mount security critical portions of the filesystem readonly, making it more difficult for an attacker.

Red

Red

It's a 5 minute edit in a legacy mainframe system.

• Once.

A monthly charge is absurd, and I would advise bitching to a manager, and threatening to speak to the public utility commission and/or the FCC. You would be amazed how quickly that gets folks motivated.

Red

If Not. Any former active duty military on staff? As them to help orchestrate.

People first!

ORDERLY shutdown everything, then physically disco the UPSs. If staff is still on site and bugging out in their own vehicles, consider having them evac their own workstations. Your shit is already in the wind, this might save _some_ things you might otherwise miss.

The C-level officers and their secretaries PCs are important. They are not the same priority as joe shitbag in marketing. Prioritize. Printers, monitors, etc do NOT matter.

If you have one of those fancy document center (printer scanner fax wtf-ever) gizzies, and YOU HAVE TIME, rape the HD out of it. It has more juicy data than you would believe....

Servers. If you can grab em all, do so. Label EVERYTHING.

If not, grab the drives, as others have advised, and LABEL EVERYTHING. Package as well as you can. Ziplocking each drive is not a bad idea, and gives you the op to label the bag. Raid your shipping department for packing material, and when you run out, rape the padding in the office furniture.

Remember, people first!

Network infrastructure is less important than your corp data. All that being said, if you have time, now is a good time to dump the configs on the routers, firewalls, etc. to HARDCOPY to take with.

Same applies to the PBX.

Have fun....... and quit reading /. when you need to be saving your bacon!

Plan ahead next time, OK?

Red

I spent my first ~10 years as an active duty US Army Artillery officer, and my math background helped me not only to get job done, but to understand WHY things worked, and more importantly, why they might NOT be working.

I later transitioned to a Unix sysadmin gig, and then to information security, where I've been happily making a living for ~20 years.

The math helps. Let's you go toe-to-toe with the crypto geeks if nothing else. A BS degree carries a whole different type of cred than a BA as well. The social skills from the service help in understanding the hax0r mentality, and I'm pretty confident your wife's ed background and masters level degree would help in that area as well.

With the education and experience you describe your wife as having, she will not have any trouble stepping outside of the box, the first step is the hardest one. Get the resume in order, and start sending applications out.

Red

My assumption is that the degree is not so much to teach you something, as to "check a box" and get you through the glass ceiling....

That being said, I would go for the Business Informatics track rather than pure CS. You are more likely to learn new things which are useful in the future career you describe there.

All you have to do to earn cred with the t-shirt crowd is to format your CV in TeX, show up with a linux laptop for your interview, and build a RepRap.

Red

Given the yeast they evolved, "Saccharomyces cerevisiae", does this mean we get better, or more intelligent beer?

Red

I'm sure it was satirical. ;)

Actually, it was not.

It's a modified version of a time honored traditional technique I learned while serving in the US Army.

If an instructor caught you nodding off in a class, he would wake you up, put a tear gas grenade in your hand and pull the pin. Your primary mission at that point became catching another troop going to sleep so you could pass the grenade.

Amazing what a live grenade in your hand will do to to keep you alert and focused......

Red

No Technology required:

1. Announce anyone caught cheating WILL fail the course.

2. Post exactly ONE proctor at the rear of the room. His job is to catch the FIRST cheat.

3. The first cheat should be escorted from the room, and given the following choice: become the proctor and catch another cheat, or fail. If you catch a cheat, you may retake the test and the cheat becomes the proctor with the same choice.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I recommend you film for future entertainment value.

Red

RIM solved this problem. If you don't want your data on somebody else's server, set up your own BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) with YOUR security policies.

Taint cheap, but you gets what you pays for.......

The consumer blackberries connect to BESs operated by the carriers. My corporate owned one connects to OURS, and the company has all kinds of flexibility to impose policy, remote wipe, etc.

Red

Griffin Powermate. Been around a while, affordable.

http://store.griffintechnology.com/powermate-1

Let the net do your shopping to save $bucks.

Lots more out there, this has easy interface via USB.

Red