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

Tags: backup drive, blood pressure, bravery, domain server, erp system, fiber connections, hubs, media converters, network layout, network management, network printers, passwords, patch management, private ip range, public ip addresses, s media, server room, switches, users log, workgroup