A Planter or Trebuchet Ammunition…Top Ten Things You Want to Ask the Micorosft.com Operations Team

We were sitting around a the hulk of a cold, dead server one night; one of those old quad 700’s; trying to determine if we should turn it in a planter or use it as a projectile to launch from a Trebuchet  <a real Venus or Mars moment> when the discussion turned into what should this blog conjure up next. Should it be a place where you get used to logging into to get an answer to your specific questions, or a site to find out just what the heck we are up to, or maybe how our ASP.Net 2.0 deplolyment is going? Well, we want to give everyone an opportunity to chime in…it only takes a second so here goes…WHAT THE HECK DO YOU WANT TO ASK MICROSOFT.COM OPERATIONS?

 

Specific questions are always welcomed, but more importantly, what are the TOP 10 TOPICS YOU ARE INTERESTED IN? We know that scripting is high on your list, my stars, anyone with more than five servers to manage can benefit from scripting…and by the way, we cover scripting extensively in the Nov/Dec issue of TechNet Magazine…but what else really blows YOUR hair back?

 

We’ve got our ideas, and will be chewing the fat with you about them...things like What Does “Scalability” Actually Mean, or Security for Web Farms, or the Importance of a Crash Dump…but what better way to find out what interests you than to… <drum roll> actually ask you?

 

So we are. WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 10 TOPICS OF DISCUSSION? Let us know and we'll post the results and then try and crawl under the hood and give you some of our insights.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2005
  1. how to interact with the dev teams to transition projects into production? e.g. what are the critical lines of communication, required documentation, production acceptance procedures. What sort of metrics to use for SLA/OLA when MOM can't be used?

    2) how to manage pure infrastructure projects that don't touch the dev teams? How best to develop a custom MSF/MOF specifically for non-dev systems?

    3) how to deal with co-hosting applications? Is virtualisation the answer to my prayers?

    4) how to provide availability in the datacenters? what are the key considerations in business continuity?

    5) what are your hardware replacement cycles, and what's the oldest piece of kit (that isn't cannon-fodder)

    6) what representation does Operations have within the MS management structure?

    7) how big is your trebuchet, and can it propel a piano further than the Ark Royals steam catapult?

    8) does dogfooding work for you?

    9) what's your one 'must-have' software product that isn't produced by MS?

    10) how do I get a job with you? 8-)
  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2005
    oh, and whats your org structure?
  • Anonymous
    October 04, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 04, 2005
  1. How your load-balancing is achieved, both locally within a data centre (Network Load Balancing?) and globally, between data centres.

    2. How you manage the deployment of content to the web server farm.

    Mark