VU Blog

OCT 2009 MAR

October 30th, 2009
  1. Gathered Help Desk data for Law School and assisted with data associations so the Law School could set up their own help desk application.
  2. The ITS DOA helpdesk web site was not compatible with IE8.  I got the Vandy templates and upgraded the site to work with IE8.
  3. RE-wrote a nagios check for the DNS database tablespace.
  4. Refreshed test DIP database for the DNS server. 
  5. Cruise Director for App Hosting Fall Festival.
  6. Wrote auto maintained query for Cardiology. 

Sept 2009 MAR

October 1st, 2009
  1. Researched and wrote scripts to purge logs and history from incontrol database.  These scripts are written and scheduled within the oracle database to purge these tables nightly up to a given number of days.
  2. Updated the code on the IP Request web site by NDE's request.
  3. Modified Service Desk Report for NOC Manager, Scott.
  4. Purged mysql log tables on Spectrum One-Click.  This was needed becasue of space issues.
  5. Added tablespace and flash recovery space to INCONTROL primary and standby databases.
  6. Upgrading BMC Service Desk on the test servers.  Testing still continues.  BMC is currently looking into upgrade bugs that we found.

Aug 2009 MAR

August 31st, 2009
  1. Corrected Service Desk Business Rule code to eliminate monitoring errors.  Also fixed code to allow IPAM clients to get notification on ticket creation.
  2. Worked with DNS admins on database issues to include creating export dmps, adding tablespace, adding flash recovery space and changing backup scripts.
  3. Researched and downloaded BMC Service Desk upgrade application.  Rebuilding test environment.
  4. Wrote SQL queries.
  5. Organized desk.

March 2009 MAR

March 24th, 2009
  1. Database Maintenance:  Increased processes for RHN's database. 
  2. Created auto_maintance list query for faculty.
  3. Corrected BMC Service Desk notifications that went to a list.  Lists have a limit to the number of emails that may be sent.  This limit stopped notifications from BMC Service Desk.  I worked with the List Admin and List owner too modifiy the limit.

Feb 2009 Mar

February 23rd, 2009
  1. Wrote Database queries for ITS Management to include vuspace, vumail, vsa data.
  2. DNS/DHCP IP Request Web Page modification.  Added and modified business rules in BMC Service Desk to fill in client ID if vanity addresses are used for IPAM requests.  Assisted Mark with verifying viewable data for Web Page.  Modified BMC Business Rules for DNS requests from IP Request web page.
  3. Worked with the DNS/DHCP project group to refresh test database, run scripts, check and compare data that was in question from DiamondIP support.  I worked with this group quite a bit this month.
  4. Assisted Windows team with BMC Service Desk queries to validate or dispute server outages for the past year.
  5. Worked with MIS staff to update them on my oracle duties.  Provided web sites that include documentation and outstanding tasks.
  6. Assisted ITS management and University DAR with approx 30 auto maintain queries.  This included research of validity and modification of approx 30 auto maintain queries for the list serv.
  7. Created new BMC Business Rules for the IDEV group.  These rules will be used for OSIS notifications.
  8. Restored corrupted MySQL databases.
  9. Assisted with accessing and transferring a Spectrum mysql db backup to Spectrum's tech support for ND&E.
  10. Many BMC Service Desk duties: A. Provided Law with spreadsheet of subjects and modified/added/deleted subjects.  B. Monitored logs after list server cleanup.  Updated BMC staff notifications that were left orphaned after list server cleanup.

Jan 2009 MAR

January 21st, 2009
  1. Applied Oracle's security patch CPUJAN2009 to RHN database.
  2. Moved system and datafiles to larger drive for VCMS database.
  3. Wrote draft App Hosting Oracle Database User Account Policy.
  4. Checked, Confirmed and sometimes locked db accounts and passwords on all of our oracle databases.
  5. Created User account speadsheet that lists who or what has access to each account and the difficulty level to change the passwords.
  6. Worked with Mark and DiamondIP tech support to run and check SQL code and upload dmp files to tech support.
  7. Documented how to upload files to DiamondIP.
  8. Verified that Oracle database backups are going to tape again this month.
  9. Created VMWARE Update Manager Database on the oracle test server.
  10. Completed the FEMA Information Security for Everyone and received a certificate.
  11. Applied Oracle's security patch CPUJAN2009 to Nettracker database.
  12. Added new functionality to the DHCP Viewable Subnets web page.  NDE is now able to update the subnet database from the Diamondip subnets at any time.  A cron job updates the subnet database once a day otherwise.

December 2008 MAR

December 17th, 2008
  • Completed and tested web page development for NDE to view and change subnets that are viewable by DiamondIP IP Request web page.
  • Modified IP Request web page to fix a bug with the network request type field.
  • The tape backup has not been backing up the Netid oracle backups directory.  While we are still working to find the problem, I add a cron script to backup the database to a 2nd location.  This export is going to tape nightly.
  • Wrote init.d scripts to automatically stop and start the many databases and listeners on the DiamondIP database server.  Dan will put these scripts in place as time allows.
  • Ran queries for list server audits as requested by Gary.
  • Wrote script for the ITSBAR, backup database to clean the database.  Also updated documentation for ITSBAR.  Kenon put these scripts in his code.  These scripts have saved him at least 6 hours in cleanup time for each time that he gathers new backup data.
  • Cleaned up the NETID Oracle backup directories.  This stopped the SNMP disk space at 80% Nagios alerts.
  • Tested and documented a dataguard failover process where the primary db server was unavailable.  The failover was quick and easy. 

NOV 2008 MAR

November 11th, 2008

1. Created query for DiamondIP to find inconsistant IP addresses between IPAM and DNS. This query will be run before and after Mark imports IPAM data to make sure the data is consistant.

2. Created query for Kenon to disable constraints, truncate tables and reenable everything on the ITSBAR backup database. Kenon will run this procedure monthly.

3. Cleaned up VCMS database. The clean up included the purge scripts from VCMS and Oracle DDL to shrink tables and indexes.

Number of Task data is purged : 14963

VPX_EVENT_ARG: 3768335 rows deleted

VPX_EVENT: 1505999 rows deleted

Number of Stats data is purged : 2726089

6274.922 secs to index VPXI_HIST_STAT: allocated 5GB of free space

8519.012 secs to index VPXII_HIST_STAT: allocated 4GB of free space

3949.399 secs to table VPX_HIST_STAT

12 tables and indexes where altered to shrink space altogether.

4. BMC Service Desk had a problem. Users would receive a fetch error. The forms folder was corrupted. Deleted the forms folder, IISRESET to fix the problem.

5. Created standby database for VCMS.

6. Upgraded VCMS database and application to 2.5. I worked with Kendra on this. This was the process:

1.       Export production

2.       Move export to test server
3.       Import into test server
4.       Upgrade test database
5.       Export test database6.       Export backup copy of production database
7.       Move export to production
8.       Import database into production – SERVICE DOWNTIME
9.       Upgrade application to point to upgraded database –SERVICE DOWNTIME
10.   Backup new database – no downtime

The whole process took about 17 hours. The database upgrade alone took 11 hours.

7. Upgraded RHN-db from 9.2.0.5 to 9.2.0.8. RHN now allows for any 9i version. RHN is not compatabile with 10G yet.

8. Patched RHN-db with the CPUOCT2008 security patch.

Oct 2008 MAR

October 24th, 2008

1.       Database support activities for Diamondip IPAM implementation

a.       Run NETID scripts for Mark

b.      Refresh DIP test database on a weekly basis

c.       Provided documentation for our DIP database environment

d.      Ran reports

2.       Moved VCMS database files, increased tablespace and flash recovery area

3.       Worked with IDEV DBA to help diagnose and report oracle bug – Alert_QT

4.       Collected data and ran script to find majordomo list owners that were no longer at Vanderbilt.  Cleaned up the non-existent owners.

5.       Worked with Scott H. on the Unified Communication video.

6.       Worked through VCMS upgrade issues. 

a.       Upgrade failed, restored database.

b.      Found scripts to truncate EVENTS, TASKS, HISTORY data.  Ran these on test server.

c.       Cleaned VCMS test database by reindexing and shrinking tables.

d.      Wrote plan to try the upgrade again.  This next plan will allow for more VCMS uptime.

7.  Dan patched the OS for DIP Primary database.  I shutdown the databases, relinked and restarted the oracle services.

8.  Audited backup services for the database servers.  RHN 5 is considered production and has been put on backup list.

Sept 2008 MAR

September 23rd, 2008
  1. Set up new DNS IP request web page to send notifications to BMC Service Desk and Create Tickets for DNS and IP.
  2. Set up Business Rules in BMC Service Desk to manage DNS, IP tickets.
  3. Worked on DNS Project.  Refreshed test database, executed SQL scripts on NETID database for Mark.
  4. Re-wrote DNS Policy.
  5. Added datafile to Nettracker database.
  6. Dan patched the OS for db-2 and jprod2.  I shutdown the services and database, relinked database, started and tested the services.
  7. An oracle bug was discovered on the diamondip test database that caused the SYSAUX table to fill up by way of the alert_qt table.  I worked with oracle tech support to get the patch and update a parameter.  The production database was updated with a parameter change.  I am currently testing the patch on the test server which will be complete by Sept 27.  I will know at that time if we should patch the production server.
  8. Dan applied OS patches to NETID's Oracle databases.  I switched the databases as needed, shut them down, relinked and started the services.
Next Page »

Sky3c Sponsored by Web Hosting