Best Practices

[riser]

Ahh I did it.. I finaly did it.

Today, I finalized an appointment for my current IT deptment to visit my former work's IT department.

In past talks with my former IT department, they're interested in meeting my new coworkers because of what I've told them.

My goal is to cover a few basic things:

What is a Domain?
How does it work?
What are the benefits?
How a domain helps you manage users and printers.
Active Directory Structure/Infrastructure
Roaming Profiles/Mandatory Profiles
Change Management/Password Expiration
Group Policies

My goal is to show my CIO that we have all this technology and money invested and it's not set up properly. I'm hoping he likes what he sees and wants to know why we're not doing it. He has a strong background in programming and not in Networking.

I have a few people backing in my IT department to push forward with my direction over the current managers. (I'm the Network Analyst, he's the Network Manager)

The feeling around here is that he's holding the company back by not keeping up with current technology. While we run Win2k and 2k3 servers, they only dish out DHCP and host WINS. I don't believe a single location has all their users storing documents on the server, instead local to their computers with no backup.

I'm looking forward to this as it's a big opporunity to take a large company and large network.. and make it my own. My design, my thoughts, my structure and such.. But most of all.. my own problems! haha

It's not often you're presented with the opportunity to build your own network from an established company. Most of time, a structure is already in place. In this case, it's not. That's where I step in and hopefully things go as smooth as I've planned for the past year.

 

[Guest]

I wish you all the luck!
Still can beleive they manage to operate this sort of monstruous machine without any of the above. The day it will collapse it will be a hard one!

Hopefully they listen to you. They way you expose it its a not brainer its not even like you need to thorw much more hardware!

Anyhow the transition wont be easy and as you say it will be your own problems! but in the end, after countless overtiems hour, the feeling of well being the god of the network should be worth it

Asus P4P800DX, P4C 2.6ghz@3.25ghz, 2X512 OCZ PC4000 3-4-4-8, MSI 6800Ultra stock, 2X30gig Raid0

 

[riser]

I know it's going to be a lot of traveling.. each location. Need to put the server in, join the PCs to the domain, test it out, train and explain, and then leave... That'll be the hardest part.. even with consultants doing the work.

Now I wonder if I can get locations to invest in Video Conferencing.. it's about $1,500 if I remember.. that's for the camera, but you'll need an ISDN line or open channels on the T1, which is feasible at each location I think.

It's just going to be a hell of a lot of travel..

 

[jihiggs]

man i envy you, that sounds like a lot of fun. lot of work yes but as long as you have minions to do the ground work out on the floor it wont be bad. to me, thats the worst part. going around to each computer and installing and configuring new stuff. id much rather build a network.

go tell your alien brothers, that ronnie cordova says they're gay!!! <A HREF="http://sockbaby.com" target="_new"> sock baby </A>

 

[riser]

No minions for me.. It'll all fall on us to do everything ground up.. they never hire outside people to do anything. Maybe I could talk them into it, but then I'd still get stuck doing the training. With only 15-20 people at each location, probably could do it up with 2-3 days and leave to another location. Maybe 2 locations per week if the servers were preconfigured. That'd be nice.. but that'd get old and tiring.

This is the reason why I've stayed here... the potential to go from crap to something good is right here. As long as potential exists, I'll stick around. I left my last job because I would still be in the same position making .50 cents more than last year..

 

[riser]

To add to things.. with my little push.. they pushed back.

I now have 2 months to cover everything on AD, DNS, User profiles, printers, scripting, etc. everything that goes into a Domain..

Because the first week in November our group is flying out to Santa Monica, CA. and we each present our ideas to the CEO in a one on one meeting.

Time to get my sh!t together.

 

[riser]

Email conversation with my boss about demo'ing some indepth software. Similar to Microsoft SMS, this is Alteris, which is made by the same person, only designed to work on WANs instead of LANs like SMS.

Here is the following, and I'm sure you'll figure out who is speaking as I cut out company info, signatures, and header info.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have them come in and demo so everyone knows what it does/how it works if we already plan on purchasing it?
This will be more of an indepth course/demo and they're willing to cover all their modules indepth, moreso than the seminar I went to a few months ago.

Subject
Re: Alteris Seminar

Yes, you and Bill were out. They gave me the 10 cent presentation. I submitted for budget in 06.

Subject: Re: Alteris Seminar

I didn't know.. did you already cover the Alteris software or something else? I haven't heard anything about it getting covered, so bringing them in didn't sound like a bad idea.

Re: Alteris Seminar

Mike, I have already been through this with MHL.

Subject: Alteris Seminar

On September 16th (Friday), I arranged to have Alteris to come in and give a presentation from 11am to 1pm on their software. They will be providing lunch for their presentation.

The main features of this software:
Software Distribution, IT Asset Management, Remote Control, PC Backup, and Settings and Configuration Management.

Asset Management - Know anything about a PC on our network: Hardware specifications and software installed along with what version.
Software Distribution/Patch Management - Update computers that are running out of date software over night or specific times. Push out updates as needed, remove unnecessary software, install new applications without the need to be hands on with each PC.

Others will be covered as time permits and questions are answered. Additionally, other features of the software include: Client & Mobile Management & Server Management.
This presentation and software is geared towards managing computers, laptops, thin clients, and servers.


****

Now you might think .. ok, he's buying it. But wait, he doesn't even know how much it costs, never mentioned it to myself or Bill (the network engineer) and we both happened to be out on the same day? Hard to believe as I've only missed a few days this year, besides traveling, and this was never even mentioned to us that it was an option.

He's aiming to take credit for what I've researched back a few months ago.. figuring when I went, it was too expensive to consider, now he's budgeting for it? I wasn't consulted in our budgeting, nor was Bill. Hmm.. Interesting..

 

[Bob369]

We are getting alteris where i work. I havent got to mess with it any, they get picky about their new toys, but it seems really cool. Upload and download images from client machines, push out updates, push out software. Very cool, will definetly save a bunch of time visting each machine personally.

From what I have experienced around here it is semi-hard to configure properly, but then again all networks are different.

Also provides wake on lan feature that will push out software and updates at night by booting each client machine. When its done it shuts the machine back down.

Very cool piece of software/equipment.

My PC:
Abit AX8 Socket 939 VIA K8T890
AMD Athlon 64 3200 Winchester
Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro 256 Mb PCIe
WD Raptor 37 Gb SATA
Corsair 2x512 PC3200 DDR Dual-Channel Platnium Edition

 

[mpasternak]

sooo riser

looking to hire anyone else on this project

i'm an old network administrator. i went through this a few years back before the DSL / CABLE era.

we needed a database for our resumes that was national (11 branches accross north america). so i built a Lotus Domino WAN from the ground up, replications, all the works. travelled to all our branches building the servers and networks. all the fun stuff. finally when the internet was available for cheap enough, moved the hole thing over to highspeed replication instead of dialup. (shoulda seen the phone bills). I've since left the IT business officially. but i'm still building web based PHP / SQL applications for the company.

just finished creating an application that tracks contractors, pay, history, and all the fun stuff. creates documents and the like to properly relay the data of pay rates and who and where someone is working. the damn thing is huge.

 

[riser]

Just got out a meeting where I blind sided everyone with my thought on switching to AD and a Domain.. "what's a domain??"

So I have now 1 month to do up a powerpoint presentation and document it.. but I don't need to get technical on it.. I just need to present it to our CEO so he understands and gives the nod. I have to present to the CIO first now though.

But in my going to visit the former work, it was partially shot down to the point where only manager is going.. the exact person who says yes or no to my ideas.. when I wanted my CIO and Bill to go and say "now that's cool."

As far as Domino goes.. I was at a seminar on Blackberry Enterprise 4.0 in Cleveland yesterday. I met a guy who was telling me how to make roaming profiles and force local replicas with Domino Administrator.. so I brought that up in the meeting and my DA said you can't do that, then I proceeded to tell him you could using, what I was told, to be the "setup" or "desktop" policies.

Anyhow.. I got the ball rolling.. and I got the best feedback I could get.

And to touch things off.. when I was told, "get a presentation together, present it to me and let me know how it's going to work."

I turned to Bill and my manager and siad, ok, you guys are helping since you'll be working with it too.. manager didn't say anything, Bill was fairly happy about it, since he's pushing for it too.

The road is long, but it'll be good.

 

[mpasternak]

Hire me

i'll move, and i'm cheap

 

[riser]

We have locations in Canada ya know.. 4 of our IT members live remote and work remote.. haha

It's not like you even need to be updated to keep up with our system.. heh

 

[jihiggs]

got any locations in seattle? hehehe, if your around hit me up and we'll grab a beer.

go tell your alien brothers, that ronnie cordova says they're gay!!! <A HREF="http://sockbaby.com" target="_new"> sock baby </A>

 

[mpasternak]

I'm in Toronto. i've been thinking seriously of getting back into the systems business... .as long as it's not end user support i'm game. lol
i love designing systems and pitching thme to management. i just hate end user support. thats the reason i quit IT in the first place

 

[riser]

We have a couple locations actually.. I was in Everett for a week last year. We have another location in northern washington that we call Vancouver but it's still in the States. We have locations at most major places and some in the middle of no where.. they're taking over the country. haha

 

[jihiggs]

like i said, if your ever up here and find yourself sitting in a hotel bored, hit me up, well get a beer somewhere.

go tell your alien brothers, that ronnie cordova says they're gay!!! <A HREF="http://sockbaby.com" target="_new"> sock baby </A>