How Screwed Am I?

[Atticus Forghon]

It's been awhile since I've been on these boards but this recent turn of events has led me back...to see how utterly screwed I am. I'll try and make this quick. I currently do IT work for my company, pretty basic day to day support stuff and web design. We have an external IT company that handles our server management as well as a back up for me. My boss is not happy with the hired IT company and wants me to take it all over. I won't be completely alone because the building has its own IT group that said they would be able to help me out some. I have no experience, other than a couple classes, in any kind of server environment. I will be completely in charge of both our servers! Crap. Luckily we will have to outsource our email hosting which I am told would have been the most difficult part of the job. However, the more I try and read up on what I will have to do and what the external IT company has been doing and I can't help but think I am completely F'ed. As great as this would look on my resume if I pull this off, I'm not sure how this is gonna go. Any people here done this sort of thing? Can I do this? I do have a degree in management information systems but little relevent real work experience in this area.

[Gili]

I think the key to this really, is not putting to much pressure on yourself. Speak with the boss on your end who is making this decision and at least make him realise that your gonna be a little swamped at least to begin with...and for him to not have his expectation to high.

I'm a (Net)Backup bod, tis my job have done it > 10 years now...so if your backups are done via NetBackup i can offer some advice as and when you need it.

Do you know what your actually expected to do/look after?

[Teanos]

What exactly do they do?

You said two servers, honestly that is not all that much, especially if you are not housing your own email/exchange server. I would have to assume that out of those two servers you are looking at properly a print server, file share server, and an app server in some shape or form.

Are you housing anything other then that?

The key is going to be finding out exactly what they do. Are they strictly doing server management (like, monitoring software for preventive failures, backup restores, etc.) Or are they also managing your company network, bandwidth, routing, phone system, etc.

There are things you can do to help suppliment inexperience. Depending on the type of servers you have, consider getting a support contract on them. There are also outside consulting companies that will do critical care type support, 2-4 hour turn around time, etc. They are a little pricy, but if you are going to be assuming the responsiblity of having to take a server who looses a hard drive, motherboard, power supply, or some other type of hardware and you don't really know what to do, where to get the parts, etc. It can be worth it.

But I would find out what exactly they do first. That will give you a better idea of what you are inheriting.

[Atticus Forghon]

I think the scariest thing about it is that I won't know exactly everything that our servers do until I get control of them...our external company won't even provide the login credentials for me to look at them and see what all is going on - which I can understand, why would they teach me everything they do? Then they would not be needed. But I do know this:

One server is hosting our email (won't be when I take control) and our shared drives for company documents and such as well as complete profile backups of all the PCs.

We just recently got our second server to primarily host our accounting software because our first server was already being stressed too hard.

With the removal of Exchange I'm starting to think we probably don't even need both but regardless, we have them. Like I said, I know there is more that these do such as function as a print server and probably some network functions as well as other things but I just won't know til it's my ass on the line. Our phone system is run through the building's servers and not ours. We are not currently using the buildings network but will be if we switch (it's a NASA network and much, much more reliable and faster than the DSL line we had to install). I have done my best to let my boss know my feelings about the situation but I fear that anyone not in the IT field can't truly understand what they are asking of me.

[Teanos]

Basically what your boss, or whoever has the contract with that company needs to do is get the contract and find out at what point in it it says that equipment YOU own (I'm assuming that is the case) is not YOUR property and you have NO access to it. I've never heard of that in my life, typically when you do outside managed networks you provide them with login credentials (never the admin password, jsut an admin account) so they can get to what they need to. You, as a company always retain control in case you terminate the contract, etc. Sounds to me like they have weaseled their way in to having full control of the equipment, which is a little scary because you never know what they have running on it. For all you know they could be running a napster like service off of your equipment, and your internet line.

Before you go any further I'd find that information out, talk to your boss, or his boss, or whatever boss and dig up the contract. If it turns out the way I am thinking that you are not to be restricted, force it on them. Threaten to sue them for breach of contract, get control of the domain/Super Admin account back, change the password and then setup an account for them to use for the remainder of the time that has access to what they need. But that goes back to what exactly they "manage."

As for the servers:

Server 1.) If Exchange or whatever Email system you are using is removed from the server, that will free up alot of room. It sounds like it may be a small business server though which has a scaled down version of Exchange. Thats not all that bad. Typical larger exchange servers are clustered, with SAN module storage, etc. You'd have more then just 1 server for that. If its just a standard POP3 setup, those are typically easy enough to remove or setup and administrate.

If its keeping copies of profiles it sounds like you use roaming profiles at work. That typically allows a user to log into any computer on your network and have access to their data. That can be a pretty big space hog, but not terrible to mange.

One of them will have to be a print server, unless you use direct TCP/IP printing or some other method. When you add a printer to a computer, do you enter it by IP address, or do you do a "Find in the directory" and type in a name?

Server 2.) The server to house the accounting software, sounds like a stand alone server. Could be a database server as well depending on your application. one question to ask is does your software use SQL and does it have a SQL install on it, and would you be responsible for the backups and/or database work?

That could be a huge problem if you have little to no understanding of SQL and it is in fact using SQL, or SQL Express.

Alot of it sounds like information gathering. Goodluck with that.

[Gili]

I'm probably jumping the gun a little here, but once your all settled, for the love of god...do a restore recovery from any backups your taking - to elsewhere...to prove it actually is recoverable. Is a lot nicer to do this when you have spare time and chilling rather when its actually died and you need to recover it NOW!!!!

[Teanos]

Gili - agreed.

[Atticus Forghon]

Thanks for the input guys, I hope you had a great holiday!

I will get the login credentials because, as you stated, it is our equipment so there is no reason they would deny me access. I remember them saying it was a problem because I could mess something up or something along those lines, but I realize now it doesn't really matter if they want me to have access or not - I should and will get it.

Both servers run in a Windows environment, I believe one is the most recent (2008?) Windows server and the other is 2003. I don't believe either utilizes SQL but I do have at least some experience using it so I suppose I wouldn't be completely F'ed if one did.

As far as our printers go - we usually connect them using ethernet cables and by gathering an IP address and other info. At that point, both our hired company and the buildings IT group had to do something with that information. I THINK the buildings IT guys handled most of this (making the jack active, adding the MAC address to our company network) and then from there our hired company would do something maybe...I dunno.

We do use roaming profiles and have our own domain. After talking with the local IT guys, they said we won't need to be on a domain any longer when we switch. How will moving from a domain effect things?

And thanks Gili, I will double and triple check the backups to make sure they are complete and function properly!