John M. Worthington, Principal

One thing was certain, that Server Ops had had nothing to do with it: -- it was Network Ops's fault entirely. For Server Ops had been having its middleware upgraded by the vendor for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief.

The way Server Manager organized the upgrade was this: first she froze all changes, and then she had the vendor perform the upgrade, (the wrong way), beginning at the end: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work in Server Ops, which was painfully bearing it all -- no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.

But Network Ops had been finished with their upgrade earlier in the afternoon, and so, while the Customer was waiting on service availability, half talking to herself and half asleep, the Department of Silos had been having a grand game of upgrade with the infrastructure the Customer had been trying to use, and had been tearing it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the data center, all knots and tangles, with the Department of Silos running after its own tail in the middle.

`Oh, you wicked Department!' cried the Customer, catching up the Department of Silos, and giving it a little encouragement at the same time to make it understand that it was in disgrace. `Really, Server Manager ought to have taught you better manners! You OUGHT, Server Manager, you know you ought!' she added, looking reproachfully at Server Ops, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage -- and then she scrambled back into the Data Center, taking the Server and Network Ops and the infrastructure with her, and began triaging the Problem again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the Department of Silos, and sometimes to herself. The Department of Server Ops sat very demurely in their cubicles, pretending to watch the progress of the triage, and now and then putting out one e-mail and gently suggesting “try this”, as if it would be glad to help, if it might.

`Do you know what to-morrow is?' the Customer began. `You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the Data Center with me -- only the Department of Silos was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the Techs getting trained for ITIL -- and they want plenty of training, Silos! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Silos, we'll go and see the training to-morrow.' Here the Customer wound two or three turns of the Ethernet cabling round the Department of Silo's neck, just to see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the Ethernet hub rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again.

`Do you know, I was so angry, Silos,' the Customer went on as soon as they were comfortably settled again, `when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly contacting an Outsourcer, and putting you out into the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling! What have you got to say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me!' she went on, holding up one finger. `I'm going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you upgraded twice while Server Manager was not watching this morning. Now you can't deny it, Silos: I heard you! What that you say?' (pretending that the Silos was speaking.) `Her middleware went into your network infrastructure? Well, that's YOUR fault, for keeping your eyes open -- if you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened. Now don't make any more excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled the network cable away just as I had put down the switch port before her! What, you were looking for bandwidth, were you?

How do you know she wasn't looking for bandwidth too? Now for number three: you upgraded two infrastructure segments while I wasn't looking!

`That's three faults, Silos, and you've not been punished for any of them yet. You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week -- Suppose they had saved up all MY punishments!' she went on, talking more to herself than the Silos. `What WOULD they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison for a SOX violation, I suppose, when the day came. Or -- let me see -- suppose each punishment was to be going without service: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without all services at once! Well, I shouldn't mind THAT much! I'd far rather go without all of them than still be down because of one!

`Let's pretend that you're the CEO, Silos! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a dear!' And the Customer got the CEO, and set it up before the Silos as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn't succeed, principally, the Customer said, because the Silos wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Data Center, that it might see how sulky it was -- `and if you're not good directly,' she added, `I'll put you through into the Data Center. How would you like THAT?'

`Now, if you'll only attend, Silos, and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Data Center. First, there's the room you can see through the glass -- that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair -- all but the bit behind the mainframe. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they've an Incident: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our Incident smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too -- but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had an Incident. Well then, the documentation is something like our documentation, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room.

`How would you like to live in Data Center, Silos? I wonder if they'd give you coffee in there? Perhaps Data Center coffee isn't good to drink -- But oh, Silos! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little PEEP of the passage in Data Center, if you leave the door of our room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Silos! how nice it would be if we could only get through into the Data Center! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it!

In another moment the Customer was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Data Center room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was an Incident in the queue, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. `So I shall be as helpless here as I was in the old room,' thought the Customer: `more helpless, in fact, because there'll be no one here to send me e-mails about the Incident. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!'

Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was a different as possible.

`They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' the Customer thought to herself, as she noticed several of the Operators down in the storage room among the cabling: but in another moment, with a little `Oh!' of surprise, she was down on her hands and knees watching them. The Operators were walking about, two and two!

`Here are the CIO and the CEO,' the Customer said (in a whisper, for fear of frightening them), `and there are the Manufacturing VP and the Finance VP sitting in their offices -- I don't think they can hear me,' she went on, as she put her head closer down, `and I'm nearly sure they can't see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible -- '

She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the VP’s made, when they found themselves held hostage by a downed system: they were far too much astonished to cry out, but their eyes and mouths went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till their hands shook so with crying that they nearly dropped upon the floor.

`Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!' she cried out, quite forgetting that the VP’s couldn't hear her. `You make me laugh so that I can hardly look at you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open!

The Manufacturing VP immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and the Customer was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the VP of Finance were talking together in a frightened whisper -- so low, that the Customer could hardly hear what they said.

`The horror of that moment,' the Manufacturing VP went on, `I shall never, NEVER forget!'

`You will, though,' the Finance VP said, `if you don't make a memorandum of it.'

The Customer looked on with great interest as the Manufacturing VP took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him.

The poor VP look puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything; but the Customer was too strong for him, and at last he panted out, `My dear! I really MUST get a thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don't intend -- '

`What manner of things?' said the Finance VP, looking over the book (in which The Customer had put `THE CEO IS SLIDING DOWN THE POKER. HE BALANCES VERY BADLY') `That's not a memorandum of YOUR feelings!'

There was a book lying near the Customer on the table, and while she sat watching the Manufacturing VP (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read, ` -- for it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to herself.

It was like this.

She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. `Why, it's a Data Center book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again."

This was the poem that The Customer read.

`It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, `but it's RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) `Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY broke SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate -- '

`But oh!' thought the Customer, suddenly jumping up, `if I don't make haste I shall have to go back through the Data Center!

She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself back to work as the Outage had mysteriously disappeared and things were normal again…

- M.Proust