haha.. sadly, I do have a DC in my house..
But because my work isn't that far advanced yet and my manager isn't proactive.. I have to find hard solutions to simple things.
IE. I watch about 20 PCs come through my office for configuration a week. They're all the same hardware, etc. But since we don't have Microsoft VLK licensing, I can't easily create a ghost image. Along with that, my manager has managed to take 48 locations and set their network completely different each time. There are no set network drives, every location is different.
Oh the best part you ask? 1200+ users, no LDAP. WHAT? Yes.
I hired in back in August.. I was hired because I have a strong background in Microsoft products, new technologies mainly in companies, AD, networks, some cisco. But, I notice right away we all work in random workgroups, yet maybe 50% of our servers have AD installed but they are all their own tree, no forests. I've installed DNS on several servers because we're still using WINS (which isn't configured to replicate, it's basically local to each network) but my problem with DNS is that he decided that only select ports are going to be open. So whatever ports DNS uses (Don't know offhand) are blocked, which keeps me from doing recursive queries to my other DNS servers.
Oh it gets better..
70% of the time I have to know the IP address of any object on the network because the WINS won't pick up on it. IE (I need access to the server's network share.. ) So I need to figure out what the server's IP address is, which could have a range of 4-5 IPs, which some locations having 2 servers with the same share, one new, one outdated.
Printers you ask? Each PC has a local TCP/IP port created and attached directly to the external jetdirect box on it. I keep telling them to order the stupid things with internal JD cards and to use the servers for print servers, since most don't do anything except DHCP, yet we spend $7000 on a bare minimum server, but we also have these $110,000 AS400s and i5230 that can do DHCP.
So here I am.. working in a job that nothing is made easy. I put my two cents in, but since my manager defaulted into his position and there are only 3 network people to support 48 locations and +1200 users, I don't want to travel all across the country. Neither of the other two (network manager and network engineer) have ever worked on a NT/2k/2k3 domain. They're only familiar with Novell and Win98 domains.
So, all these stupid questions I ask on how to reinvent the wheel three times, are actually there because I know of better ways to do things, but I don't have that as an object.
But the job pays well and I get unlimited educational reimbursement, so I'll shut up now.
Riser
ps. Let me add in that 6 years ago the company only had roughly 13 locations, so 6 years, add 35 locations, and very limited documentation.
I also know that I could create a sysprep image that prompts for the windows key which I did do and found out that I needed to activate it through the internet, which that port is also blocked. I could just unblock the port on the !!software!! based firewall, but he's anal about it and doesn't believe it should be open because he doesn't like my idea of being more efficient.
Also, since we have various microsoft Office's, Basic, Standard, Pro, it's a pain to sit around installing office. I've been working with Wise Package Studio to repackage installs to MSI form but that isn't going all that smooth because I apparently hvae the version with the least amount of documentation and available support.
This also stems to my "needing a windows xp password crack/reset program" because all the passwords of local accounts on the PC were lost/changed and no one knew them. How else do you log into a PC with only 2 users accounts with unknown passwords? And I didn't have time to spare to play on the internet trying to download a program that would do it either...... there is some frustration there and I had to remain from typing words I really wanted to type..
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by riser on 04/12/05 09:31 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram