Oh the joys of working in a finacial instuition and dealing with auditors. There are so many different types of audits you have to go through, internal audits, external audits and even audits by the FDIC.
One of the areas that we were lacking was in the full system save of the AS/400 that runs the banking software. (Acutally I think they are now called i-series servers, by IBM). So last night was the scheduled monthly save, trying to meet auditors and just common sense. So I posted an email to staff to let them know and also posted a message on our online bank.
Thinking I had all the bases covered I decided to get started, but one more check of the email before I began the 2 and half hour process. Oh an email from the CEO of the bank, what she's upset the online banking pages will be down for 2 and half hours???? Why can't we do this off hours??? You mean there will acutally be a time where customers cannot access thier free service???
You have to understand, I work in a small bank, under $200 million in assests, we don't have several people that come in at all hours of the night or even could share the time.And this is also something that you can't do remotely or schedule as it has to be run from the system console. In fact, the system has to be in a restricted state in order to garuntee everything functions, this means even the TCP/IP subsystem has to be stopped. So you can't connect besides the console.
If I came in at 3:30 in the morning once a month, that would be one day out every month the computer department would not work a full day at the bank and lord help em if there's a problem cause I will be at home probablly taking a nap. Thats right, I am the computer department for the bank. Before I started here in September, everything was done by a consulting company. I do mean everything from needing a password reset to installing a new program to troubleshooting something was done by a consultant.
So I had to then prove through reports when the best time of day to run everything was and how long it would take. I mean for cryin' out loud its a simple backup that is very very important. If it doesn't happen there's a chance we don't have a good copy of the entire operating system, the bank program and the specific changes we have had made to it, along with the more important bank information. This means we are out of jobs as we can't service customers and let them have thier money. ARGH.... it is a simple backup, just let it happen and get done with it.