e3000 customers at the 3000 Solutions Symposium had a rich array of training seminars to choose from, taught by a faculty of some of the most knowledgeable and experienced MPE/iX professionals.

Aside from the up to the minute briefings on new capabilities for the e3000, the attendees — who filled the rooms of the Sunnyvale Wyndham to capacity — could hear from instructors with decades of e3000 experience. Duane Percox of Quintessential School Systems led a session on Application Architecture, drawing on success in creating applications for the K-12 school market, one where the e3000 is a leader in California.

Rich Corn, founder of RAC Consulting, led a packed session on using sockets for communication on the e3000. Corn’s tutorial, like many here, included a hands-on lab, as attendees crowded into a room stocked with PCs to test the concepts they’d heard about just moments earlier.

The training covered a wide level of skills, too. In addition to highly technical talks on IMAGE programming, using DEBUG and Posix utilities, the Symposium included sessions designed to help attendees implement efficient system management strategies. Scott Hirsh of Automated Computing Environments filled two hours with first-hand advice on HP 3000 System Management Best Practices.

Automation is essential to the HP 3000 manager’s well being, he said, teaching the attendees how to “be your own best friend” through the use of scripting and scheduling tools.

“If you can script it or put it in a job, you should,” he said. “And then you should schedule it. You should not be doing this stuff by hand. If you can automate a task you should, however you do that. You should manage by exception to cut your workload down.”

One example of management by exception is HP’s Predictive Support, Hirsh said. “You can have your own predictive support,” he said. “Scheduling routine backups, not an Excel spreadsheet. Archive old files automatically. Have scripts or jobs that check disk space. Log users off at a particular time with MPEX or Qedit. Automate the things you find yourself doing routinely, at the same time of the day or week. They should be scheduled. The easiest way to get started with this is to sit down and think what it is you do every day, and can you find a way to avoid doing it by hand.”

Hirsh, who writes the “Worst Practices” column in the 3000 NewsWire, also taught a method for a Road to a Well Managed System. Steps included straightening out account structure (Hirsh gave specific examples of how to organize it); getting metrics in place to keep track of what you’re doing; establishing documentation standards for in-line programming; taking file inventory to ensure everything on the e3000 belongs there; performing a security audit; and reviewing a configuration for capacity issues.