Baselining a legacy platform: A leaders first steps

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A 25-node Unix platform serving so many critical and diverse workloads without clear separation is a significant risk and a prime area for leadership. Here’s a structured approach to developing a baseline review:

Phase 1: Information Gathering & Initial Assessment (First Few Weeks)

Initial Stakeholder Meetings (Crucial First Step):

• Your Manager: Understand their expectations for your review, any known pain points, and their priorities for the platform.
• Team Members: Introduce yourself, understand their roles, responsibilities, and their perspectives on the platform’s strengths, weaknesses, and challenges.
• Application Owners (Hadoop, Cassandra, Web App, Unknown App): Schedule meetings to understand
• Application Purpose and Criticality: What does each application do? How business-critical is it? What are the SLAs or performance expectations
• Resource Consumption: Get a rough idea of CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network usage for each application.
• Current Issues and Pain Points: What are the biggest operational headaches, performance bottlenecks, or stability concerns for each application?