Microland Digital Warriors

Microland Digital Warriors | 37 © MICROLAND LIMITED 2020. Internal Circulation Only 36 A practical lesson in using digital to change lives For several years, five of Manikandan’s colleagues at Microland didn’t have weekends free. “While the world was going to the movies and hanging around in coffee shops these guys were spending their weekends taking snapshots of customer servers before applying patches, just in case they needed to roll back the server to its previous build. Then, they had to reboot each server,” says Manikandan. “Try doing that for 200 servers each week.” So Manikandan used PowerShell scripts to automate taking snapshots and to bulk reboot the servers. It changed the lives of the five colleagues. “They got their weekends back,” says Manikandan. “I want to use digital to change lives.” He enjoyed working at the Microland office until COVID-19 arrived. In March 2020, he packed up to work from Salem, his home town in Tamil Nadu, India, safe from the pandemic. Now he misses the Microland office which, for him, was like college where everyone pitched in to help each other in an atmosphere of bonhomie. Back in Salem, he has now spent six months with his extended family—something he hasn’t done even when he was in college. His day begins at 5.30 am when he sets off to milk the cows on the family cattle farm, delivers the milk at the collection center for onward distribution, assists with work at home and then, just after noon, logs into his laptop and works until 10 pm. On weekends he spends time on the farm—his family is steeped in agriculture—and has little time left for anything else. “I used to dream of full time farming,” he says with a tinge of humor. “But this son-of-the-soil stuff is tough. It certainly isn’t meant for me!” He is —between rounds of milking cows and tending to the farm—skilling himself in DevOps and says that the pandemic has provided him the opportunity to learn new skills. But most of all he wishes to use his skills to change lives. More power to this Microlander! Manikandan V This Digital Warrior was involved in multiple automation initiatives involving several automation scripts and runbooks including bulk server snapshots and bulk reboots of servers. These in turn has helped expandMicroland’s automation script repository.”