History of travels ABBYY admins

A long time ago this blog was the first part of the annals of moving offices of ABBYY in Moscow. And today, on the day of the system administrator, we want to tell you the second part of this story, recorded from the words of the head of the information technology support department, Oleg Iglin. Probably, more funny stories will be about the first offices from this list, because the service of system administrators was only born then and the staff was young and not very experienced. But what they have always had to take away is the willingness to learn and perform feats :)

So, immediately after the kindergarten ABBYY went to the institute - our next office was a room connecting the two wings of the hostel of MGTU. Bauman. First of all, when arranging this room, administrators had to deal with network cables. The fact is that the ceilings in the rooms were fixed, and the cables had to be pulled along the floor. We all know what happens if the wire is lying on the floor, so in order to avoid trouble, we decided to cut niches along the walls in the parquet and put all the wires there. The niches were covered with plastic boxes and camouflaged over the carpet. It turned out quite well.

In this office, the company managed to grow from about 60 to about 100 people. And every time a new person came to work in the company, the system administrator ran to the store to buy him a computer for cash dollars :) But no, not everyone. In those days, sometimes several people worked in shifts at the same computer.
')



After some time, they began to equip another room in this building for work. The previous network was on a coaxial cable, and here we decided to use the familiar twisted pair. Therefore, to the existing server (I must say, not very quiet), several more Cisco switches were purchased. It is now virtually any IT person knows "tsiska", and then our administrators met with these devices for the first time. And I must say, they didn’t assume at all that the new switches, which would be located in the very center of the working room, or rather, the fans built into them, would make so much noise! As luck would have it, next to the equipment was a very valuable employee, who was disturbed by noise.

When the company again lacked space, preparations began for moving to the office at Savelovskaya. More precisely, it became an office after ABBYY entered there, and before that there was a workshop of the AeroElectroMash plant. At that time, the company already had about 60 computers and only two system administrators who were to create all the necessary infrastructure for them. It was summer and to help the admins and not spend too much money, they gathered two teams of students - one from Baumanka, the other from MIPT. Physical and Technical Sciences turned out to be experienced guys, and when they learned that the walls were made of reinforced concrete, and no one promised to punchers, they quickly refused to participate in this project. And in vain, because in the end most of the wires went through the ventilation holes.

Initially it was assumed that the server will be located on the edge of the space provided in a separate room. We began to count the number of wires that would be needed for work, and it turned out that if you place the server in the center of the office, you can buy Oku for the cost of the wires, and if it’s still at the edge, then nine. In general, of course, the server room was placed in the center of the room, and so that the noise of the servers and those “tsisok” did not interfere with work, they ordered a real server cabinet together with other equipment! For our admins it was something new, and we went to pick up the closet in a normal passenger car. When the guys evaluated the scale of the disaster and asked if this thing would fit into the car, they were told that they would probably fit in the Gazel. After much anguish, the server cabinet still got into the “nine”, but it had to be unpacked for that. It would seem that this epic should have ended, but, as is usually the case, I waited for a trick in the most unexpected place. All the wires that went into this cabinet did not crawl into the regular holes, and the cabinet door had to be left loosely closed. And next to him, of course, turned out to be the most valuable employee, who in the past office regularly reminded admins that routers are not at all silent devices ...




When the company ceased to be placed in the office at Savelovskaya, but it was not possible to agree on expansion, they began to prepare a move to the new premises at VDNKh. With each move there were more people and more things, so we developed a whole technique - a kind of packaging-unpacking rules, rules of signature for each box: where it comes from and where it should go.



Packaging took a few days. Schedules were drawn up for all employees - when and in what office to come. Some participated in the loading, others - in the unloading. Loaded, mostly on their own: they did not hire movers to the computer equipment. Their employees packed it up, picked it up, loaded it, set it up.





Everything was well thought out and went according to plan until, instead of four ordered wagons, one big wagon arrived. It turned out that driving this truck into the narrow courtyard of the office is not such an easy task and for her, it is necessary to block the Dmitrovskoe highway. Of course, there wasn’t enough interaction with police officers, and the equipment was safely delivered.


At the "VDNH" office lived for 5 years. But not because the company has ceased to grow at the same pace, but because we started with one building, but in the end we took as many as three.



Actually, moving from “VDNH” to the current office in Otradnoe probably turned out to be the “hottest” for administrators. In April of the year before last, the head of the IT service gathered the wisest and most experienced administrators and said that he needed to prepare for the move. In principle, everyone knew about the move, and some even saw the bare concrete walls of the new office. But when asked about the timing of the move, to which everyone expected to hear the previously planned “in September”, “we are moving tomorrow” unexpectedly sounded ...


The problem turned out to be that the lease agreement for the current premises ended literally in a couple of days, with its extension some problems arose, and the new premises were not completely adapted for the life of an IT company. The solution was proposed as follows: we transport all computers to one place, set up a network, send employees to work remotely. They began to make requirements for the premises - the area should allow to accommodate a park of more than 500 computers, a good air-conditioning system, the presence of at least one of our providers, etc. After not very long (move somewhere tomorrow!) Searches, several suitable premises were found, but doubts remained that the Internet was enough for such a crowd of employees. Fortunately, literally at the last moment, the issue of extending the lease terms for a few more months was successfully resolved, and such emergency measures did not have to be taken, although everyone was already set for heroic feats. As a result, the move was carried out in the normal mode in the autumn of the same year.

Preparation for the move to Otradnoe was very thorough. Previously, the old and the new office were connected in a single network to minimize downtime. An hourly schedule was drawn up for the entire period of the move for each unit. The works were carried out by as many as 6 brigade movers, the server was dragged by a special brigade made up of the most intelligent ones. The most difficult moment for them was the transportation of our large PowerWare 9305 uninterruptible power supply unit. When they saw him, a quiet sigh came from afar. it weighs more than 400 kg. Not without minor incidents. So, after the end of the move, several computers suddenly stopped loading. An autopsy revealed that memory bars had been pulled out. The intellectual level of movers has increased significantly!

In general, everything went according to plan. Of course, the admins had to work from early morning until late at night, and some even spent the night in the new office. I would also like to note the staff: many offered help and strongly supported the IT Service.

Congratulations to all system administrators on their professional holiday!

Dmitry Gritsan dimonline
with the support of the information technology service