Is there software that solves this already?

[pdwyer]

Been a while since I've been here... (sorry in advance for the loooong post)

So, I'm in a new job from this year, huge company hundreds of thousands of staff, lots of politics, split so far into small groups that you can't really solve anything properly as far as processes etc are concerned.

Doing Windows server "operations" in a ITIL sense is pretty tedious, managing thousands of cloned servers, lots of tickets, lots of breakfix and patch rollouts, not much usage of my brain.

There is one part of my job that sucks up hours every week from my team that shouldn't, it's repetitive and inefficient. It would be solvable with a mail enabled web app I guess but it would be quite a process tedious app or script to write. Surely there's something out there does this already? if not, this is wasting enough of my time to justify writing it myself but I wanted to know if anyone knew of something that does this "out of the box" so to speak.

Here is the problem I'd like to solve...

Often we need to do maintenance on servers, sometimes one of them, sometimes (like security patching) all 2500+ of them. The applications on these servers are 'owned' by different parts of the business all around Asia pacific. Sometimes even different legal entities (hundreds of different groups). In order to do something impactful on a server we go though change management approval but we are also required to get written approval from all owners agreeing to downtime in the form of email etc (bureaucratic redundancy I know, surely change approval in the change system should be enough but when some genius says "change approval does not constitute all stakeholder communications" then we do everything in double! ).

So, our team spends hours hand crafting individual emails to stake holders to get their approval telling them about impacts, sometime sent individually to lots of people, sometimes BCC spammed to everyone. So many involved and such a manual process that we don't check the replies we just assume "no news is good news" and if no one says "stop" we do the change. BUT, recently my boss sent out a CYA email to say "recently some app owners are upset about not being informed of down time and so all downtime must be agreed to in writing separate from the change system" some of these database server hold 20 apps with 50 stakeholders too. Boss laughs it off saying he sent it just to cover his ass but it's done at our expense so when the sh1t hits the fan next time he can show upper management his email to the team and say someone is his team hasn't followed "process".

The previous tedious task of app owner comms is now a lot more time consuming as we need to track replies match them to apps on server and make sure a server that's going down has all it's dependant apps signed off. (dark ages manual process methodologies managing modern server farms while unused modern systems exist at the firm )

The first way to handle this that pops into my passive aggressive mind is to send the comms, and keep sending reminders till the change date and then cancel it at the last minute due to lack of approval and business buy-in (60% of the time these emails are ignored). I'd never do any real work again other than manage these emails and it could all be blamed on my bosses CYA email!

My job is tedious enough without turning it into a 100% email coordination job though, so I'd like to fix this.

We have the inventory lists that have the app owner contact details and server role info that can be queried via ODBC (many to many relationship of servers to apps)

I have zero budget or resources to build anything but may be able to commandeer a little space on a web server. Before I build anything though (as I'm busy with all this crap already) is there anything that can track this? It's like a ticket system but the support group are initiating the ticket to the end user and not vice versa. We want the reply though so we need to be able to send followups and have the end user okay it or in cases suggest alternative dates.

Quitting my job is another option that I'm seriously considering as this job kinda sucks but solving this time sink might make life good enough to want to stay. It pays well after all.

Any thoughts or product recommendations?

Thanks

[GWarner]

Maybe what you need isn't a solution to the problem, but an elimination of the non-sense. You could do that by putting a disclamer in your contracts or terms of service that says your company reserves the right to take a server off line at any time it feels it's necessary to do routine maintenance and software updates.

With that you wouldn't need to get everyone's OK before you do anything, you could just do it when it needs doing or is convenient for your team to do it.

[buddymatkona]

Have a regular schedule for each clone to receive updates. If customers want a faster change, let them request a date.

[pdwyer]

In this case, our "customers" are internal. We are just a cost center (Server ops team) so the power to make policy decisions on pricing (cross charge) etc is done by a guy who does it for lots of team on the other side of the planet and has likely never heard of my boss let alone me

I guess we are kind of looking for an "approval tracking system" to run in parralell to the approval tracking system built into the change manangement system since we don't use that

"elimination of the non-sense" ... I wish I could. The shame game certainly didn't work though. writing it down has gotten some of the frustration off my chest though!

[buddymatkona]

I think a new layer of overhead complexity is the last thing you need at this point but maybe a suggested fix from your end would not be accepted. Guys at NASA used to say it is easier to solve problems before you light the fuse.

[pdwyer]

Actually, I was thinking along the lines of "screw everyone else, I'm not allowed to help them, I just want to save time for myself"