So this morning, on my way to work, I get an urgent phone call that something is wrong with the network – people can’t get to the file server, or get out to the Net, nada.
So naturally, I do what any average person would do. Whip out my BlueTooth ear piece and connect it so I can have my hands free. Then I grab my laptop – someone else was driving – and connect to the Net via BlueTooth connection to the phone I’m talking on.
Once the net is up, I connect to my office VPN and check the status of the servers.
Servers seem ok, communicating nicely with each other and the world.
My guy on the other end of the phone is not a sysadmin, but is savvy enough to check some of the more advanced diagnosis problems, and it seems that the internal network computers are just not talking to the servers.
So I decide I’ll restart the server that hands out network access numbers (for the techies: DHCP server) and see if that does anything good for the universe.
No dice.
By now, I’ve pretty much arrived at the office and begin the point-to-point diagnosis of where it seems the failure is. I see that the servers, on their own switch, seem to be happily chattering away, but anything connected to that switch is not happy.
Power cycle the switch.
Nope. Not yet. So I power cycle the other switches that are connected to that switch, effectively disconnecting anyone connected to anything anywhere.
Still no effect.
Finally, I decide tht I’m going to swap a cable – a simple, 12″ cable – that connects one switch to the other.
Voila!
So everything works, power cycle the switches again, and all is well. What a great start to an even greater day.
This leads me to the following revelation: I am a hero.
Not a super-hero, just a hero. Batman was a hero thanks to his gadgets and capability to use them. I have some of that under my (non-utility) belt.
So there.