Shark Tank: We'll all be doing this

10.02.2006
Daylight saving time won't kick in until April, and it's pretty routine for most IT shops. But not for this pilot fish in Indiana, which will start observing DST for the first time in 2006.

"Needless to say, we poor Hoosiers in IT have never had to deal with this," fish says. "And while most will gloss over the problem with a 'we'll handle the fallout when it comes up' attitude, our organization has decided to take a more proactive approach."

First step is knowing how to change the time on the servers. That's helpful, but in fish's recently rebuilt server room, individual consoles have been eliminated to save space. "We now have eight Web consoles to control 800 servers," sighs fish. "Use Telnet and remote console? Not enough warm bodies."

And what about the applications? fish wonders. Do they get screwed up with missing time, or with overlapping hours? Do any have to be shut down to avoid problems?

And scheduled batch processes -- do they run twice or not at all? Do they have to be scheduled so they avoid running between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. the other 363 days a year, or does fish's IT shop need special schedules that run just two days a year?

"We were told, 'You'll just have to check with every vendor to see how the applications are handled elsewhere,' " fish grumbles. "So we're in the process of running a Y2k-style check of every system and every application.