ITJuju.com

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I’ve supported anywhere from 2 people on a couple of machines to hundreds of workstations – from simple Windows desktops to high end UNIX workstations, clusters, servers and appliances and the 16,000+ users who use that equipment.

The management and support of a 120+ node network, covering 11 buildings that I single handily managed for nearly 4 years, was given to 3 people to do what I did.

This network included a number of different types of networks, e.g. DMZ, Ethernet SAN, Multicast and wireless.

From 2006 to 2008 I built and deployed a combined wired and wireless network (doesn’t matter how you connect to it – you get the same functionally, be it via a cable or over wireless) covering 7 buildings, with full blown big brother style security scanning of machines before their allowed to be use on the network.

I created nearly all the documentation used on the network, it explained the whole process to the users using the network. Which resulted in no complaints about what the network was doing on the users machines.

By comparison a leaflet was created by a line manager for distribution, within a month of being made available, a request was made for an explanation of why we were playing big brother and what personal information would we be looking for.

In the 2 years that I built, managed, maintained and supported the network, only one complaint, all because the person who created the leaflet, didn’t know or understand the strategy and positioning I developed and used to create the documentation.


Here’s the kicker, the network was actively used by 650+ users when the contract where I was working at finished. A couple of months later the network ran out of the 750 licenses that were available – it took the people who took over management of the network 2 days to figure out what was wrong as the network stopped working because of a lack of licenses.

Still don’t know how they missed it, as the main screen of the the servers controlling the network – at the very top of the page shows you the amount of licenses available and in use.

Then again the amount of licenses was bought because no one thought that the network would ever reach that amount of users. The wireless network that was being replaced (setup by a predecessor) could only handle 13 users at once and would stop working by 2 p.m. in the afternoon everyday – because the software controlling access to the network couldn’t handle more users.

Which resulted in around the same amount of support calls everyday at around the same time.

While we were testing the new network in the IT department the old network that was going to be replaced stopped misbehaving and actually started working the way it should have. A last ditch effort to keep it’s job if you will – there is more to this story, but won’t cover it here.

The place where I was working at would allow access to the internet via the wireless guest network, for people who were renting rooms in their buildings and who paid for internet access.

Which also included access for their guests as well – which could mean anyone and their dog could turn up and need to access the network.

My strategy and positioning took that into account, it also took into account paranoid users (who we already had dealings with) which would have complained bitterly about the perceived invasion of privacy.

On a different and somewhat funny note.

I’ve been in a server room that was 60°C (140°F) when I got there at about 10am, all because a power spike knocked out the cooling units at around 4 am. A week later the same thing happened again this time only one of the cooling units went off line.

The power to the server room was supposedly condition to prevent power spikes by equipment that was put in place. I learnt some interesting lessons that day including how not to setup a fire alarm system.


Just off the top of my head I’ve dealt with all of the following – I’ve made some deliberate mistakes below, if your good you’ll be able to spot them. I’ll be covering this in a future blog post on how not to get ripped off:


Cisco Catalyst Switches:

2900’s, 2950’s, 2960’s, 2970’s, 3750’s and 6500’s

Network Protocols:

802.1x, 802.1q (VLAN’s), 802.11a/b/g, DNS, DHCP, TFTP, SNMP, LDAP, NetBIOS, Multicast, ISCSI, NFS, FTP, SCP, SFTP, SSL, VPN, TCP/IP

Network types:

Data, DMZ, ISCSI storage, NFS storage, management, WAN

Firewalls:

Cisco Pix, Checkpoint firewall1, pf, M0n0wall

Office applications:

Microsoft Office 97, 2000, XP, 2003 (2004 on Mac) and 2007 (2008 on Mac)

Other office applications:

OpenOffice and NeoOffice

Desktop Operating Systems:

Microsoft Windows: 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and Vista

Microsoft Windows servers:

NT, Server 2000 and 2003

Microsoft Windows Cluster:

NT, 2003 (for Windows shares and Exchange)

Web Servers:

Apache, Tomcat, IIS

Unix operating systems:

Solaris, HPUX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Apple OS X

GNU/Linux based OS’s:

Fedora, CentOS, Knopix, Suse

Update software:

Windows Update Services/Software Update Services

Directories:

Windows NT4 Directory, 2003 Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Samba

Email systems:

Exchange 2003 + Outlook Web Access, MirraPoint Mail Appliance

Monitoring software:

BigBrother, Nagios, MRTG, MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager)

Print servers:

Windows 2000 and 2003, PCounter print charging system

VLE

WebCT, Wimba and MediaWiki

Antivirus software:

Trend Micro Office Scan, Trend Micro Server protect, Sophos Enterprise manager Sophos Antivirus, AVG, Norton

Wireless equipment:

Alcatel OmniAccess 6000 controls, Cisco Aironet 1200 Access points, Aruba AP65 Access points

Access control systems:

Bradford Networks Campus Manager Network Access Control Servers, Windows 2003 Active Directory via Windows Group Policies, OpenLDAP

Server Remote access:

HP ILO, Sun ALOM, Telnet, SSH, Hummingbird exceed

Console systems:

Cyclades consoles, Raritan Paragon and IP Reach

Remote access software:

Logmein, VNC, UltraVNC, On Command Remote Access, Microsoft RDP Hummingbird exceed, XWindows, Terminal services (Win 200 and 2003), Windows RAS VPN

Network management software:

Cisco network assistant, 3Com Network Supervisor, Putty – CLI management, Getif, Wireshark

Virtualization:

VMware (Server, Desktop, Fusion etc.), Xen

Backup software:

Lagato, Tivoli, NTbackup, xcopy

Desktop automation:

On Command CCM, Symantec Live State Delivery, AutoIT

NAS/SAN:

NetApp Filer, Microsoft Windows server NT, Server 2000 & 2003 based NAS’s

Languages (Dabbled with them, haven’t used them enough to consider myself a programer):

C, C++, Common Lisp, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Rebol, Bash

Databases:

Oricial, MySQL, SQLite

Copper:

Cat 5, 5e and Cat 6 copper networking

Fibre:

Single mode and multi mode SFP, LC, ST, SC, FC

Hardware:

Dell, HP, IBM, Super Micro, Sun, Toshiba laptops, Apple Mac’s

Printers:

HP Laserjets (110 + networked printers), HP Deskjets, Lexmark, Epson

Tape standards:

LTO3, LTO4, DDS3

Tape libraries:

Overland Neo and Arcvolt