Gotta love tail wag the dog vendors like that.
We have a particularly inept one, (which we’re forced to use for certain government mandated stuff), who conduct a DR test every year or so, and each and every time they change the names, IPs, and locations of the DR servers, meaning every organisation which is a user of their ‘service’, has to make on average 30-40 firewall changes, route additions etc. They’re completely different every time, this year was no exception, rip up the rules and configurations I spent days creating and testing last year, and start again.
I now await said testing to commence, and weeks of misery for our staff as the vendor ballses it up, doesn’t allow network access correctly, or just plain forgets about our entire organisation in the whole equation, which they have done multiple times in the past.
Of course I’ve complained in the strongest possible terms, that this is terrible service, that its a waste of time and resources, at our expense, everytime they do it, etc etc, but the answer is, as always ‘tough shit, we have to use them, there’s no alternative, so make it happen’. The story is the same across the board in all the other orgaisations who have to use this service.
I don’t mind the extra work, but I really detest having to redo things over and over, especially when its due to the ineptitude of others.
P.S, feel your pain on the analogue line thing. We had a batch of postal franking machines which didn’t support digital lines. Not even VOIP, just any lines that were connected to a PBX. The vendor tells us that the reason is that the machines don’t support dialling an additional ‘9’ to get an outside line, the number of the control centre is hardcoded into them and apparently can’t be changed. A business device that can’t deal with being behind a PBX or be configured to dial one extra digit - WTF? We got the same response from them as you did - ‘You need to fix all your lines’ - yeah at 50 odd sites, no problem we’ll get right on that!
