Edit: What do I consider crazy now that I should give a second look to.
Originally posted June 19, 2012 on AIXchange
I was in a meeting when a consultant suggested we adopt a storage area network solution for our servers. I was part of a team that laughed the consultant out of the room.
“What an idiotic solution,” we thought. “You want us to put all of our storage together in one piece of hardware? What if that machine goes down? Our whole environment will go down with it, and who knows how long it would take to untangle that mess?
“You want us to pay how much? Please leave. You’re clearly insane.”
This meeting took place in the mid 1990s. At the time we had AS/400 and Novell Netware servers, along with Windows, Sun, SCO and AIX machines. Everything in the computer room had internal disks.
With SANs still in their infancy, we may have been wise to hesitate. But fast forward some 15 years. Our initial fears have long since been addressed. Most SANs have built-in redundancy, so if a disk or controller goes down, the SAN keeps running, and the data is perfectly preserved. SANs are so prevalent now we pretty much take them for granted. Probably every person reading this either currently uses a SAN or has used one at some point.
Shortly after that long-ago storage meeting, we were presented with another crazy idea. This guy, a new hire into our organization, wanted to move our core switches to Fast Ethernet, running at 100 full. At the time we were perfectly happy running on an FDDI ring.
“What about network collisions?” we wondered. “Why would we go with Ethernet?
Back then we were invested in FDDI. We put our budget and expertise into it. There was even an emotional investment. (Really, one coworker was so upset when we ultimately went with Ethernet, he left the company.)
Replacing most of our network interfaces and switches to accommodate Ethernet was expensive, but we realized that the times were changing, and we needed to change with them.
Of course, technology is full of stories like these. How many of you were DOS experts? Did you know your way around Windows 3.11, OS/2 or Netware? When was the last time you put your skills with line printers or reel to reel tapes to good use? What about configuring dot matrix printers or serial devices directly attached to AIX machines? I’m sure a few folks still do these things, but by and large much of this technology is gone. And by and large, we’ve smoothly adapted to what’s come after.
It’s human nature to fall into routines and resist change. But change is the nature of technology. It’s not all bad, either. Honestly, I believe one of the fun things about working in IT is being a part of this constant change, and seeing old assumptions crumble — even if those assumptions were sometimes my own.