Operation Servers Migration

It was one heck of a weekend for us in the Operations department. We were involved in a servers migration operation at one government agency under MOSTI somewhere in Dengkil, Selangor. The operation started from Friday afternoon and went on non-stop till Saturday evening.


Our mission was to transfer all the servers, switches, UPS, hubs and all related peripherals from the old building to the new building and make sure everything is up and running smoothly within 12 hours. Meaning by the time the users wake up and open their website everything is running all right, their e-mails is working okay like nothing ever happened.


The distance between the old and the new building is just about 500 metres apart. But since those servers, UPS and switches weighs between 10 to 40 kilos each, 500 metres is a looooong way to go. That Cisco switch above weighs over 30 kilos and worth as much as the new Perodua Viva.
There were like 12 of us there including The Boss who showed and stayed until around 5 in the morning. Frankly, we could do it all without him being there anyway but his presence highlights the importance of this operation's success.


Dinner was provided for but we had to wait like until half past midnight before we could eat. Everybody was generally ravished and nasi goreng cina never tasted so nice before.


By 1 a.m a lot of people was sleepy already including me. For a guy who regularly sleeps around 10 p.m, staying awake past midnight is pure torture to me. My superior, Abang Din was among the first to fall asleep. No pillow? no problem man! CAT 6 cables also can do ma!


We had to follow a certain procedure for the migration. It's like we transfer 3 servers, make sure they're up and running okay, transfer another 3 servers, make sure they're up and running too before we proceed with the next phase.


Around 2 in the morning we couldn't make the TM leased line to connect so we had to like stop everything and fix that damn thing first. Turned out, there's something wrong with the fiber patch. Those darned little yellow cable made us wait for like 2 hours for nothing!

Everything else went smoothly after that minor glitch. Most of us were dead sleepy by 4 a.m. En. Mazlan, our manager passed out and had to be revived by CPR. Okay just kidding. Actually he's getting some massage from Adwien to help him pass gas stay refreshed.

Getting the servers up and stuff was mainly the job of our engineers (i.e not me) so the rest of us just hang around and wait (or sleep in any room available). I had to wait at the old building and couldn't find any decent place to sleep so I walked a bit around the building to stay awake while waiting for them to finish.


At 5 a.m those corridors sure look extra creepy to me. And there was some eerily strong wind blowing from time to time enough to make the hair at the back of my neck stood up!


Fortunately nothing spooky/mysterious happened although the place was like situated right in the middle of nowhere with thick undergrowth all around you. I managed to get like 20 minutes of sleep before sunrise and around 7 a.m everybody headed out for breakfast.

After breakfast, I had nothing much to do so I headed back home for some much needed sleep and rest (Thank God!). My family (Linda & Adam) missed me very much already, it's like I've been away for a week or something :)

By 3 p.m Saturday I was back in Dengkil to join the rest of my colleagues to fix up minor stuff here and there. Overall, the operation was a resounding success. Everything was up and running smoothly within the allocated migration time frame thanks to every body's hard work and commitment.

Yet after all that hard work, we still didn't get our mileage claim, %&*\@#