[2250] in SIPB-AFS-requests
Re: SIPB Network upgrade
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mhpower@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jan 26 03:03:58 1996
From: mhpower@MIT.EDU
To: mhbraun@MIT.EDU
Cc: star-maintainers@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 03:03:23 EST
>Note: regardless of when it is scheduled I will allow no more than 4 other
>people in the machine room. I will bar the door if I have to. It should be
>predecided who will be in 575a.
I think we need to be very careful not to let this type of policy lead
to problems with sipb's operations in the future. Three types of
problems seem potentially likely to me. First, there can be
operational problems when decisions are made in the machine room while
lacking information or reminders that could be provided by other
people, had they been allowed in. (This has already happened, although
to a minor extent.) Second, it's very easy for this type of policy to
be perceived as a desire to exclude any (currently) less clueful
people from learning what goes on in the machine room. It's not
primarily a question of whether they would be strictly excluded even
if they made a case for wanting to be in the machine room. It's more a
question of whether this makes these people feel unwanted. (Matt Braun
mentioned to me that he thought through the issue of whether anyone
would learn much from the network upgrade before deciding on the
4-person limit for the network upgrade. I believe his view is that it
was mostly a matter of cabling with just about no technical content
that could benefit new members or prospectives.)
Finally, I think it's important that decisions about who can be around
during sipb machine maintenance be left to sipb people who are active
in maintaining the machines (or to the whole sipb membership if
necessary). It's unlikely that sipb can have full control over these
decisions because it involves access to a space with critical Athena
servers, but I think sipb services will suffer if the decisions are
left entirely to the people responsible for Athena servers.
Personally, I think moving the sipb server machines into the office
would be better than a strict 4-person limit in the machine room,
although I think we can probably end up with some arrangement that's
better than either of those two.
Matt
