Cycle of articles "NetRack Guards: guarding the client's IT infrastructure": the story of the person controlling the system
Flexibility and responsiveness - what do they mean for the service company and for the customers to whom it provides the equipment? Is it possible to apply the same standards to the work process, and who in this case assumes responsibility? Here, the main role is played by the people - the ones who will solve any client problem related to its equipment and access to the Network.
In the continuation of a series of articles about people who guard our infrastructure, we will talk about a person who keeps the equipment of his clients under constant control. Our hero is a person who is a link and optimizer of the workflow both in his department and in the whole company. Unlike the previous infrastructure guards, his working day is very different not only by the lack of clear schedules or detours, but also by the fact that this day is as unpredictable and varied as possible every time.
You already know that duty service never sleeps. But do not forget about another important service that monitors the operation of your network and infrastructure - technical support, whose employees are always and at any time ready to help their clients. Clients are different, and their problems are also so technical support can rightly be considered the most flexible and adaptable resource of our company.
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One of the offices of NetRack is located in close proximity to the StoreData data center , since the equipment of most customers is located in this data center, which is the base for the company. Behind a small corridor there is an office filled with equipment, in the center of which, between the five tables, there is a magnetic board with a large inscription: “THE BEST STEPS”.
Five minutes are left before the official start of the new shift of technical support. Next to one of the tables, a young man is swinging on a balance board imitating surfing on the waves. As his colleagues say, he can stay on it forever. By the way, he has long wanted to try to get on a real surf: he is generally interested in all kinds of sports and is close to the principles of a healthy and active lifestyle. The last thing he experienced was a wakeboard, and he also wants to climb Elbrus.
Sports sports, but above all - work. As soon as our hero sat at the computer, a red alarm flashed on one of the monitors: there was an emergency situation on one of the console laptops. While he reveals a detailed description, the red alarm disappears. "The console laptop from Wi-Fi was temporarily disconnected," he says to himself. Like any service, technical support has its own emergency and emergency situations. However, panic has no place in such situations. He is confident that "any accident will be regular if there are clear instructions and the staff know how to use them." Our hero emphasizes that you can not be afraid of the word "emergency." Each emergency situation in its own emergency. This can not be denied - you just need to calmly relate to this fact. With this approach, he does not doubt, everything will work stably.
This guy is the chief technical support officer at NetRack, Stepan Rebrov.
Having come to work and sat down at a table with two monitors, a wooden keyboard and a mouse (the latter is a gift from friends), Stepan first checks all the programs that somehow reflect the state of the systems, as well as customer requests. As a boss, he must constantly ensure that their requests are not ignored. A chat with colleagues from Rostov-on-Don dealing with the routing of requests from our clients is constantly open on the left monitor: they started working not so long ago, so for the time being they are consulting with him on certain issues.
Stepan faces a difficult task: to organize the work of his department so that customer assistance is provided accurately and on time. He must not only properly distribute the work among his employees, but at the same time teach them to be interchangeable.
Stepan is actively involved in various planned activities: upgrading the network core and trunk switches; adding new communication channels and upstream, etc. He is directly responsible for the physics of the whole process and compares it with a surgical operation, which requires jewelery accuracy and accuracy.
In addition to technical support, Stepan deals with the quality of service: rental and placement of physical and virtual servers, as well as communication channels. The time of ordering, providing and placing the server to the client; the speed of modernization of the equipment after the application by the client; convenience of remote maintenance - all of these are important points for providing quality service.
Depending on the type of work, Stepan has a different approach to their planning: the terms of some are determined in two weeks, and others - in two months or six months. The head of technical support, in the event of carrying out routine actions, draws up their plan together with the technical or general director and notifies the company's customers if the work could potentially affect the operation of their equipment.
After lunch (which, by the way, happens early - at 12 o'clock) Stepan returns to work. This is a permanent audit of current tasks and projects of the department, interaction with customers. There are also more global tasks: he just received a letter from the commercial department about the appearance of a new client who is going to rent equipment. The initial work in this case is assumed by the technical support staff: they allocate a place in the rack, prepare it for the equipment, create a task for the network operations department, stretch the crosses and check the ports.
It is important to note that the technical support service tries to do everything so that the client can transfer the maximum functions for servicing his equipment and fully entrusted it to the service. Our clients have the opportunity to manage everything remotely, which allows him not to waste his time on personal presence - there is technical support for this. For each action a specific person is responsible and in a specific sequence. The correctness of their execution is controlled by Stepan with the help of a product manager, in which employees prescribe each step they take. This allows him to clearly and in a timely manner, if necessary, to join the process.
It also happens that clients appear unexpectedly: sometimes it happens that Stepan learns about installing the equipment right at the time of its delivery. But such situations are not terrible, because his department can and is ready to quickly adapt to any tasks. While one of the engineers ordered optical lines, the second immediately checked whether it was possible to organize a place in a free rack into ten units at once and prepared everything necessary for placement.
There may be other surprises: there are times when a client planned to “drive in” to the data center for a long time, contracts have long been signed, the equipment is ready, engineers are ready for connection and testing, but on the day of arrival the customer decided to change the tariff from 1 Gbit / s to 10 Gbit / sec. Accordingly, in the shortest possible time Stepan and his team needed to set up another port and extend the new SCS.
Unlike other companies, NetRack doesn’t take long to process and control tickets, even if it’s an important service task. The first line of technical support works around the clock and is responsible for the correct distribution of tickets. At one time, Stepan compiled a special instruction for them with a detailed description of which department which task should be routed and who to contact in case of ambiguous situations. In fact, the standard scheme: determine the validity of the application; check with the client the necessary details in order to supply the request with all the necessary data and route it to the appropriate service. The reaction time for new tickets is from 10 to 12 minutes, and specialized specialists do not spend time on additional correspondence with customers and immediately solve their problem.
Often, Stepan uses the resources of the data center on-duty service with which he works. Most often this is the so-called remote hands. However, if it is necessary to perform any manipulations directly with the internal hardware or software of the equipment, if the client’s problem concerns administration or is in itself non-standard, then in this case the responsibility for himself immediately prefers to take technical support. For example, its employees can disassemble the server, check if there is free space in it and whether it is possible to install a new disk.
If Stepan has free time, he prefers not to waste it. For example, he tries to constantly replenish the knowledge base of employees: as he himself says, it is not even his duty, but a personal initiative, which ultimately helps the work process. It is noteworthy that he pays attention not only to the accuracy of text instructions - Stepan accompanies them with illustrations. As he himself says, it is easier for him to write once, than to tell everyone every day. He uses all the prepared materials in the process of training new employees.
In essence, Stepan’s task as the head of technical support is to ensure that the workflow in his company and client companies is as stable and simple as possible. Stepan adheres to two principles, which we discussed at the beginning of the article: optimization and automation. When he came to our company three and a half years ago, he first introduced a new accounting system. If earlier we could not find an adequate system, and we had to fill in everything in Excel tables, now Stepan and his colleagues can easily work with any information on the client and its equipment in the data center.
One of the important innovations, Stepan, considers the introduction of the Zabbix monitoring system. Before his arrival, we used the MRTG system, but with the influx of a large number of clients, it was not enough. Stepan, as the head of technical support, understood that the company would continue to grow and that it would need a stable and powerful system. The following selection criteria were defined: usability, scalability, visualization, distributed monitoring, customization, low-level detection and storage of statistics in a database. Many people think Zabbix is ​​cumbersome and time consuming to configure and maintain. In some ways they are right, but Stepan, having previously tested other systems, decided to dwell on it. The system is really complicated and is in constant modernization; besides, Stepan is always looking for new ways to expand its functions. Zabbix is ​​currently processing 19,044 data elements, and this number is constantly growing. This system monitors not only incoming and outgoing traffic, but also many other important parameters. Thus, a complete picture of the state of the entire system of the company is formed. In addition, thanks to this program, our customers can request personal access to monitor their equipment.
Another pleasant, though expected, bonus is how Zabbix helps the sales department directly with billing. Since the system already monitors incoming and outgoing traffic, it was not difficult to teach it to count the burst, which greatly simplifies the work of the commercial department.
As Stepan himself says, the range of his duties is limited only by his imagination. He prefers to treat his work as an exclusively creative process, because for the same implementation of IT systems it is necessary to analyze a lot of information: are there any problems that need to be fixed; determine which systems are required for this, and, accordingly, how to properly implement them.
We rarely think about what and who is behind the well-known term "technical support". Who are these people and what exactly do they do, except for answering our calls with questions or complaints. As Stepan himself says, his work, on the one hand, is exclusively technical: “Modern technologies help us eliminate the human factor in those places where a person can make a mistake. After all, people are not cars, there are no perfect people. But, probably, my most important task as a leader is to be able to “integrate” a person into the technological system and use his talents to the maximum. ” We can say with confidence that he succeeded, because for all the time, the response time and elimination of various incidents are only reduced, and the technical support service is often praised by customers. And this in our time is worth a lot.
In the continuation of a series of articles about people who guard our infrastructure, we will talk about a person who keeps the equipment of his clients under constant control. Our hero is a person who is a link and optimizer of the workflow both in his department and in the whole company. Unlike the previous infrastructure guards, his working day is very different not only by the lack of clear schedules or detours, but also by the fact that this day is as unpredictable and varied as possible every time.
You already know that duty service never sleeps. But do not forget about another important service that monitors the operation of your network and infrastructure - technical support, whose employees are always and at any time ready to help their clients. Clients are different, and their problems are also so technical support can rightly be considered the most flexible and adaptable resource of our company.
')
Morning check for trouble-free
One of the offices of NetRack is located in close proximity to the StoreData data center , since the equipment of most customers is located in this data center, which is the base for the company. Behind a small corridor there is an office filled with equipment, in the center of which, between the five tables, there is a magnetic board with a large inscription: “THE BEST STEPS”.
Five minutes are left before the official start of the new shift of technical support. Next to one of the tables, a young man is swinging on a balance board imitating surfing on the waves. As his colleagues say, he can stay on it forever. By the way, he has long wanted to try to get on a real surf: he is generally interested in all kinds of sports and is close to the principles of a healthy and active lifestyle. The last thing he experienced was a wakeboard, and he also wants to climb Elbrus.
Sports sports, but above all - work. As soon as our hero sat at the computer, a red alarm flashed on one of the monitors: there was an emergency situation on one of the console laptops. While he reveals a detailed description, the red alarm disappears. "The console laptop from Wi-Fi was temporarily disconnected," he says to himself. Like any service, technical support has its own emergency and emergency situations. However, panic has no place in such situations. He is confident that "any accident will be regular if there are clear instructions and the staff know how to use them." Our hero emphasizes that you can not be afraid of the word "emergency." Each emergency situation in its own emergency. This can not be denied - you just need to calmly relate to this fact. With this approach, he does not doubt, everything will work stably.
This guy is the chief technical support officer at NetRack, Stepan Rebrov.
Having come to work and sat down at a table with two monitors, a wooden keyboard and a mouse (the latter is a gift from friends), Stepan first checks all the programs that somehow reflect the state of the systems, as well as customer requests. As a boss, he must constantly ensure that their requests are not ignored. A chat with colleagues from Rostov-on-Don dealing with the routing of requests from our clients is constantly open on the left monitor: they started working not so long ago, so for the time being they are consulting with him on certain issues.
Stepan faces a difficult task: to organize the work of his department so that customer assistance is provided accurately and on time. He must not only properly distribute the work among his employees, but at the same time teach them to be interchangeable.
Stepan is actively involved in various planned activities: upgrading the network core and trunk switches; adding new communication channels and upstream, etc. He is directly responsible for the physics of the whole process and compares it with a surgical operation, which requires jewelery accuracy and accuracy.
In addition to technical support, Stepan deals with the quality of service: rental and placement of physical and virtual servers, as well as communication channels. The time of ordering, providing and placing the server to the client; the speed of modernization of the equipment after the application by the client; convenience of remote maintenance - all of these are important points for providing quality service.
Depending on the type of work, Stepan has a different approach to their planning: the terms of some are determined in two weeks, and others - in two months or six months. The head of technical support, in the event of carrying out routine actions, draws up their plan together with the technical or general director and notifies the company's customers if the work could potentially affect the operation of their equipment.
Create convenient conditions for any client at any time and in any rack
After lunch (which, by the way, happens early - at 12 o'clock) Stepan returns to work. This is a permanent audit of current tasks and projects of the department, interaction with customers. There are also more global tasks: he just received a letter from the commercial department about the appearance of a new client who is going to rent equipment. The initial work in this case is assumed by the technical support staff: they allocate a place in the rack, prepare it for the equipment, create a task for the network operations department, stretch the crosses and check the ports.
It is important to note that the technical support service tries to do everything so that the client can transfer the maximum functions for servicing his equipment and fully entrusted it to the service. Our clients have the opportunity to manage everything remotely, which allows him not to waste his time on personal presence - there is technical support for this. For each action a specific person is responsible and in a specific sequence. The correctness of their execution is controlled by Stepan with the help of a product manager, in which employees prescribe each step they take. This allows him to clearly and in a timely manner, if necessary, to join the process.
It also happens that clients appear unexpectedly: sometimes it happens that Stepan learns about installing the equipment right at the time of its delivery. But such situations are not terrible, because his department can and is ready to quickly adapt to any tasks. While one of the engineers ordered optical lines, the second immediately checked whether it was possible to organize a place in a free rack into ten units at once and prepared everything necessary for placement.
There may be other surprises: there are times when a client planned to “drive in” to the data center for a long time, contracts have long been signed, the equipment is ready, engineers are ready for connection and testing, but on the day of arrival the customer decided to change the tariff from 1 Gbit / s to 10 Gbit / sec. Accordingly, in the shortest possible time Stepan and his team needed to set up another port and extend the new SCS.
Ticket men
Unlike other companies, NetRack doesn’t take long to process and control tickets, even if it’s an important service task. The first line of technical support works around the clock and is responsible for the correct distribution of tickets. At one time, Stepan compiled a special instruction for them with a detailed description of which department which task should be routed and who to contact in case of ambiguous situations. In fact, the standard scheme: determine the validity of the application; check with the client the necessary details in order to supply the request with all the necessary data and route it to the appropriate service. The reaction time for new tickets is from 10 to 12 minutes, and specialized specialists do not spend time on additional correspondence with customers and immediately solve their problem.
Often, Stepan uses the resources of the data center on-duty service with which he works. Most often this is the so-called remote hands. However, if it is necessary to perform any manipulations directly with the internal hardware or software of the equipment, if the client’s problem concerns administration or is in itself non-standard, then in this case the responsibility for himself immediately prefers to take technical support. For example, its employees can disassemble the server, check if there is free space in it and whether it is possible to install a new disk.
When a physicist becomes a lyricist
If Stepan has free time, he prefers not to waste it. For example, he tries to constantly replenish the knowledge base of employees: as he himself says, it is not even his duty, but a personal initiative, which ultimately helps the work process. It is noteworthy that he pays attention not only to the accuracy of text instructions - Stepan accompanies them with illustrations. As he himself says, it is easier for him to write once, than to tell everyone every day. He uses all the prepared materials in the process of training new employees.
In essence, Stepan’s task as the head of technical support is to ensure that the workflow in his company and client companies is as stable and simple as possible. Stepan adheres to two principles, which we discussed at the beginning of the article: optimization and automation. When he came to our company three and a half years ago, he first introduced a new accounting system. If earlier we could not find an adequate system, and we had to fill in everything in Excel tables, now Stepan and his colleagues can easily work with any information on the client and its equipment in the data center.
One of the important innovations, Stepan, considers the introduction of the Zabbix monitoring system. Before his arrival, we used the MRTG system, but with the influx of a large number of clients, it was not enough. Stepan, as the head of technical support, understood that the company would continue to grow and that it would need a stable and powerful system. The following selection criteria were defined: usability, scalability, visualization, distributed monitoring, customization, low-level detection and storage of statistics in a database. Many people think Zabbix is ​​cumbersome and time consuming to configure and maintain. In some ways they are right, but Stepan, having previously tested other systems, decided to dwell on it. The system is really complicated and is in constant modernization; besides, Stepan is always looking for new ways to expand its functions. Zabbix is ​​currently processing 19,044 data elements, and this number is constantly growing. This system monitors not only incoming and outgoing traffic, but also many other important parameters. Thus, a complete picture of the state of the entire system of the company is formed. In addition, thanks to this program, our customers can request personal access to monitor their equipment.
Another pleasant, though expected, bonus is how Zabbix helps the sales department directly with billing. Since the system already monitors incoming and outgoing traffic, it was not difficult to teach it to count the burst, which greatly simplifies the work of the commercial department.
As Stepan himself says, the range of his duties is limited only by his imagination. He prefers to treat his work as an exclusively creative process, because for the same implementation of IT systems it is necessary to analyze a lot of information: are there any problems that need to be fixed; determine which systems are required for this, and, accordingly, how to properly implement them.
We rarely think about what and who is behind the well-known term "technical support". Who are these people and what exactly do they do, except for answering our calls with questions or complaints. As Stepan himself says, his work, on the one hand, is exclusively technical: “Modern technologies help us eliminate the human factor in those places where a person can make a mistake. After all, people are not cars, there are no perfect people. But, probably, my most important task as a leader is to be able to “integrate” a person into the technological system and use his talents to the maximum. ” We can say with confidence that he succeeded, because for all the time, the response time and elimination of various incidents are only reduced, and the technical support service is often praised by customers. And this in our time is worth a lot.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/312524/
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