Technology by Jacob Dybala

It’s been 2 weeks since my boss and I started working on a company that we purchased a year ago. The first days were a lot of fun – 3 servers, new rack, IP based KVM, robotic backup drive, NAS; you name it – we had it! Then you get hit by reality: we need to rebuild the *whole* IT structure from ground up. The other night we were there until 2:30am just redoing the network layout in the server room.There is nothing that is worth using in the current setup: 75 users in a workgroup (there is 1 Windows NT domain server and 2 ADS servers running different domains), all with public IP addresses (talk about bravery!), no patch management and as long as you can spell your name and last name you can log in! On your PC, of course (remember: this is a workgroup)!

At this point you kind of ask yourself how could anybody even come up with such a primitive network setup! Then come the network printers that all have passwords to change configuration (do you really have to do this?), 3 buildings connected with 1GB/s fiber connections that link into 1GB/s switches and use… 100MB/s media converters. Wow! Just allow scanning of network drives and other than the switched that link the building the rest of the computers are connected with… hubs

Most admins would ask themselves why make your life this miserable: since you have a Windows NT 4.0 domain or even better, ADS in place – USE IT! Then use a private IP range and utilize the switched you have instead of shoving as much as possible on hubs, and just then using switches!

Certain users log into our ERP system within 1 minute while other users take about 15-20 (honest!) minutes and on top of that they get kicked out every now and then!Most companies would question such network management, but then again that’s *most*!

Anyway, I’m going to end it here. my blood pressure goes up just by thinking about this. I can’t understand what caused this: not enough pay (not in this case!), incompitence, lack of will, lack of knowledge or maybe something else. I don’t care at this point! In just 2 weeks I was able to redo everything, set up a private network, connect with 3 VPNs, add the site to my ADS and setup Exchange. On Monday, we’re going back to work

It is 6:00am and I am still in bed. I went to sleep at 2:30am so you can imagine how I felt when my cell phone rang. Sometimes I wish cell phones were never invented but then my Palm Treo 600 would have to go as well I pick up the phone and find out that the system is down. I wonder why the old Novell NetWare box (3.11) running Classic by DCD (which is now owned by Epicor ) couldn’t wait another hour before it went down. Anyway, I get up, stop at Dunkin’ Donuts and I’m on my way to work. The system has gone down so many times that I do not even get worried anymore. It has become a routine (every 2-5 months). The only thing that I do not like is that that company in particular starts work 2 hours earlier than I do and they will call me if the system is down. That is how it is supposed to be, I guess. I am just tankful that the night shift does not call me to let me know that the server went down So I finally arrived at work, opened the server room and pressed "F1 to continue" as the computer asked me to do. My job is done!

PS: The mentioned system was officially retired in May of 2006 or serving us well for almost 14 years! According to the server logs, the system was first powered on on June 13th, 1992.