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Of
airports and break-downs
Rajasingham
Pratheepan, Civil Aviation Authority, Arabian Gulf
As
the head of technical support in one of the busiest international
airports in the Arabian Gulf, hardly a day passes by without
a technical challenge.
The prime nature of my job is to ensure
the smooth running of the airport and air
traffic systems and thus help other departments to be on time
in everything they do. Therefore a typical day’s activities
include supporting mission critical applications such as services
to air traffic control, radars and voice communication systems,
data servers and internet access.
We have a dedicated team of staff specialized
in various fields of science who support airport
operations. We also spend time in planning for future upgrades
and advancement of technologies.
Crash!
What comes to mind of the 12th of April was a report from
the finance department of a loss of services in a local area
network. Our initial survey indicated that the server was
not responding to any communication and close examination
revealed that the system hard disk had crashed and needed
replacement. We had a spare hard disk from the server manufacturer
and had it replaced within no time. However the
tricky part was in bringing the server back to the state it
was in before the crash by restoring the data
from the backup tapes.
It took about 3 hours to restore the data. To
everyone’s joy it went error-free and had
the finance system up and running in less than 4 hours from
the time of the hard disk crash. I’m sure everyone who worked
on that problem, including myself, had a satisfying day at
work.
" Studying science would always
bring in an element of surprise”
From my early school days, I had the feeling that studying
science would always bring in an element of surprise and thrill
to my life. Studying law or commerce on the other hand seemed
to involve a lot of reading, with less personal touch.
When I was introduced to computers,
I was overwhelmed and decided that my career
would be based on computer science largely due to the fact
that it opened up unlimited avenues
to express one’s own imagination and talent.
After working for over 15 years in this area of science, it
still continues to amaze me
and puts the thrill and satisfaction into the work I do.
Written by Rajasinghan Pratheepan – Edited by Kavitha
Arunagirinathan
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