Re: [xymon] Managing who gets alerts - shifts and rotations

[Elizabeth Schwartz <betsy.schwartz (at) gmail.com>]

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Jerald Sheets <questy (at) gmail.com> wrote:
> Always did it by hand.  3 shifts, 22 people, multiple escalations and calling circles.  Never needed a tool.
> Just always considered it a part of standard admin work.

I disagree with this, vehemently. That which is complex, repetitive,
and error-prone should be *automated*. As senior professionals it is
our job to identify these sorts of operational vulnerabilities and
remedy them. After all, that's why we're using monitoring software in
the first place, instead of just sitting there reading log files all
day.

Reminds me of the T-shirt that says "Go Away or I Will Replace You
with a Very Small Shell Script". If I have a task that can be replaced
by a shell script, it's wasting my time and my employer's money for me
to keep doing it. And I have a long list of better things to do. And
if *all* of my tasks can be replaced by automation, well, I probably
should find a better job :-)

So, question is how best to automate this, not *whether* I should.

Thanks Betsy