Wednesday, October 4, 2006

CEC: Avoiding Expensive Performance Disappointments


Bob Sneed


The problem is probably due to what such problems are usually due to.


For the large part...beleives root cause analysis is a waste of time and money.


Recommends Patterns and Anti patterns books.


AntiPatterns (Stuff we know doesn't work)


Description

Symptom

Consequences

How to fix it


Collecting Data


No data


Configuraiton

Appdata

Irrelevant


Mountains of Data


"Climb Every Mountain" -- Irrational Change Control Enforcement


"Monkey in the Middle" -- Uncooperative party between customer and 'right answer'


"Dueling Engagement Models"


More than I can succinctly and usefully indicate


The customer is not always right! (but we knew that)


The customer should know what is going on but the customer dictating what they think the problem


Translations


Customer will not give us requested data


"We do not have a good relationship"


"The customer will not follow our advice"


no good trust relationship


"customer will not cooperate, we've doone all we can do!"


work on soft skills


Summary: work on the relationship


Technical Antipatterns


Problems on EOL

(more I can't condense quickly)







Data Collection


Start with business problem

Check for bogus problem

Check config

Check resource




Who the Heck was William Dawes?


See Harvard Business Review 12/2005


Bob made a slide using his kids to discuss bug processing/submission.


Pass the Ball or Carry it?


Refferal


when, how to whom


Collab


when how with whom


Experts look for two things:


patterns: things you have seen before


can be a slide or a white-paper


things you have not seen before


no substitute for expertise


Bob's take:


Lowest cost sollution -- apply expert early (and often but only for new issues)


Define solution pass to assistant


Think Doctor and Physicians Assistant


A problem that can be understood can be addressed by the PA


Get an expert negotiator to convince a customer that "thing" has to happen, the 400K$ in lab work is not required to debug a simple config problem on a 1M$ system.


Resources

opensloaris.org

blogs

"Communities"


Computer Measurement Group

www.cmg.org


Oracle:

oaktable.net

hotsos.com


Cool Tools: cooltools.sunsource.net


GCCFSS gcc for sparc

Cool Stack Pre-compiled and SPARC-Optimized binaries

And More!


Books:

Solaris Internals

Solaris Performance and Tools


"Soft Skills"


"Getting to Yes"

"Optimizing Oracle Performance" Chapters 1-3

More books, not writing them all down ... Work on relationship skills (just do it)


Final Thoughts


Play position, pass the ball

Improve Skills

Work with Communities

Stay informed

Participate

Know your limits


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