Oh sure, do it the easy way!
- TAGS:log, monitoring tool
- IT TOPICS:Data Center, Management, Servers, Storage
This IT shop has an ongoing problem with low server disk space, thanks to some poor design decisions -- and a log file that just won't stop getting bigger, says a consultant pilot fish on the scene.
"The problem was exacerbated by an issue with a hardware monitoring tool when it was used with a specific version of RAID software for the controller," fish says. "This resulted in a log file that would continue to grow and consume large amounts of disk space -- to the point that at least once a week we would get alerts on several servers for low disk space."
And there's a particular irony in the fact that the ever-growing log file isn't actually being used -- not even by the software that's generating it.
The solution is obvious: It's a known bug, and it's easily fixed by updating the RAID controller software to a later version.
The catch: The customer wants a guarantee that no other "known issues or undocumented features" will be introduced with the upgrade. Naturally, fish's company can't guarantee that.
So the customer won't agree to the upgrade, and the account managers won't agree to the cost of migrating the system to larger disks. Discussions are held on setting up scheduled tasks such as archiving and deleting the log file.
And that's where things stand until fish has an idea -- and acts on it.
"I quietly set the file to read only so the software could no longer update it," says fish. "I monitored it to confirm no issues occurred. Then I just waited until the noise about free disk space stopped..."
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