Alarm, Achtung, attention, whistle all to the server room



    Many are unaware of the nervous work of system administrators: constantly something fails, and users are freaking out without any measure. Every day you have to solve dozens, if not hundreds of tasks related to maintaining the health of servers, network infrastructure, a fleet of user computers, all kinds of equipment and electronics. Not to mention all sorts of simpler tasks like setting up software and maintaining office equipment. There is a lot of routine in our work, and we wanted to bring a little variety and fun to the workflow. No sooner said than done: after thinking a little, we built a special warning, control, control and rule system.

    In our company, everyday tasks - tasks - for system administrators are created in the internal information system. In our department there is a large TV, which displays a list of current unclosed tasks. Naturally, all tasks are classified according to the degree of importance and urgency.

    We wanted to make some pleasant diversity in the process of obtaining information about new tasks. To do this, we selected several types of events and wrote a small application that sends messages (triggers) to these Arduino Nano virtual COM ports. Now, depending on the received trigger, Arduino signals to us using one of the devices:

    • When a task appears that requires an urgent solution, a tambourine begins to knock. To do this, we attached a solenoid to it from the drive of the car door.



    • If a critical temperature increase is recorded on some server, then we will immediately know about it thanks to the loud call, which are used in the subway. It is simply impossible not to pay attention.
    • With an increase in the critical number of tasks, the rubber pig grunts in a psychedelic color. Here, a solenoid is also used, which actuates a lever that presses the animal.






    The code for programming this whole thing is quite simple, even a student can handle it:

    int metro = 13;
    int buben = 12;
    int pig = 11;
    int alarm = 10;
    int usbnumber = 0;
    void setup() {
      pinMode(metro, OUTPUT);
      pinMode(buben, OUTPUT);
      pinMode(pig, OUTPUT);
      pinMode(alarm, OUTPUT);
      Serial.begin(9600);
    }
    void loop() {
      if (Serial.available()) {
        usbnumber = Serial.read();
        if (usbnumber == 'm') {
          digitalWrite(metro, LOW);
        }
        if (usbnumber == 'b') {
          digitalWrite(buben, LOW);
        }
        if (usbnumber == 'a') {
          digitalWrite(alarm, LOW);
        }
        if (usbnumber == 'p') {
          digitalWrite(pig, LOW);
        }
        if (usbnumber == 'q') {
          digitalWrite(buben, HIGH);
        }
        Serial.print(usbnumber);
      }
    }
    


    In addition, especially for employees who personally come to our department for professional help, we made a device for relaxation - a control panel for the technical support department (you can see it in the first picture).

    Indicators:
    • The level of entropy in the department.
    • The average number of neurons in the head of department employees (units / mm3).

    Buttons and switches:
    • Turbo mode. When a particularly urgent task appears, the head of the department presses a button, and frequency and power overclocking are enabled for system administrators.
    • "Stop hardcore." It is used when causeless fun intervenes in the process and you need to stop it in order to resume working mood.
    • Friday mode. The ideological antipode "Turbo" with protection against accidental inclusion, so that by chance on Wednesday do not arrange Friday.
    • "Great random." He randomly selects an employee who will solve the task. Bound to the randadmin function in our internal information system.
    • "Have you tried rebooting?" Just a pleasure to press.
    • “You tried to turn it on / off.” Used in conjunction with "Have you tried rebooting?".
    • “Attention, the girl is in the office!” When the button is pressed, the light board under the ceiling "Attention, lady in the office!" Do not ask where the discrepancy came from. Our team is purely masculine, and we are used to clearly expressing our emotions when one or another interesting task appears. And in the head of the beautiful girls who come to us to set up their pink laptops and who have become random witnesses of the expression of these same emotions, pink ponies stop jumping and the rainbow fades over the meadow of life. In order to avoid this, we came up with a sign warning our colleagues about the appearance of a gentle creature whose fragile inner world could be broken. 
    • "The challenge is by." It is pressed in those cases when the task cannot be solved by us or does not belong to the technical support department at all.

    A remote control with buttons and indicators is a good thing, but quickly annoying. Therefore, in addition to the pleasure of tactile sensations, the remote gives you the opportunity to have fun in another way: it allows you to play the game "defuse the bomb." The timer displays a countdown of 60 seconds, and during this time you need to have time to choose the right combination of taps and switches that will stop the timer. If the sapper enthusiast does not have time in a minute, the sound of an explosion is heard from the speaker.

    We all kindly invite those who come to sit down at the remote control, share painful issues, and while we are solving our problems with sweat, stand, figuratively speaking, at the helm of a team of system administrators. And it’s nice for a person, you can take your hands and attention with something, and we don’t need to make sure that a bored guest does not unscrew something important from devices and accessories that are plentifully laid out over the department.

    In general terms, the scheme of our new offline notification system looks like this:



    The first visitors have already positively evaluated our creation. And now we get used to new unusual sounds accompanying the appearance of the next task.

    PS In the process of creating the system, not a single pig was injured. Happy system administrator day!

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