As always, thanks joe for responding to my query which was only half heartededly posed. The other half was deadly serious. To be honest, I think that many of the experts who post on this group have lost site of what it's like to work in a small shop. WE DO EVERYTHING THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE FROM SOUP TO NUTS. We unload FedEx trucks and then go install Oracle 9i. We build PCs from scratch and then go backup servers over a VPN using DAT drives (because we cannot get an integrated solution to do it). How do you automate things like the following:
[1] Spending 30 minutes cleaning with alcohol and swabs the fuser roll of an HP 8100 printer so it prints without streaks? [2] Troubleshoot an HP Kayak XU800 that for months worked fine and now reboots at will? [3] Perform file maintenance on 8 major servers comprising 1 TB because Users will not clean off data and drives are maxxed? [4] Figure out why an Executive VP's Eudora email is consistently crashing? [5] Install and configure client supplied custom software on 10 new PCs for work with a high profile client? (Did I mention that some PCs are NT, some W2K and some XP and the software will only work on ... well ... guess which ones? We have to figure it out) [1] [6] Download patches for surveying program software that has to be installed on laptops that are in the field (ie: unaccessible) and waiting updates because TOPCON GPS Surveying instruments will not work until they see the patch? [7] Determine why a quarter million dollar Citrix farm routinely crashes ESRI arcGIS 9.0 taking with it the entire production of 20 Users and corrupting an Oracle database as a bonus? [8] Remotely trying to troubleshoot why a color printer in a remote site all of a sudden won't print? [9] Trying to figure out why, all of a sudden, an Adaptec snap server (running Linux under windows) now decides no one has permission to read it? [10] Oh! The custom Timesheet application that Accounting put in place now, all of a sudden, has lost all of the timesheets for this week. Where did they go? Fact is, I could go on like this for 10 more pages and not repeat a single item above, I swear that is not an exaggeration. Fact is, in the past 6 years, I have not come to work one single day and not faced a brand new problem that no one has ever seen before. No lie! You can't automate my life. You can't build scripts to do virtually any of this. Yes you could build scripts to do some, but it would not make a difference in the number of hours per week I work. Yes I could choose to work 40 hours per week and no one tells me to work 50, 60 or 70. But the work I don't get done today will be here tomorrow. I should be fixing problems right now, but I watch this list like a hawk because I know, something I read from one of the masters is going to save my life (read a__) some day and if I fail to see it then, shame on me. Well, your next question is going to be "How do you have time to write all this if you're so busy?" I take the time, just like you do. You can't tell me that you are less busy than me. I'm pretty sure you're not, but just answer me this. When you were in ops, did you have the breadth of problems that I describe above? If so, then sign me: YMYMYM because you "ARE" the master. If so, really help me out. Tell me how to automate the above ten items. Everything you and the others say is true, but unless you're living in my world, these solutions don't help me. But I still love you, ;-) [1] "YES, I know standardize." I would if I had the money, but 50% of the capital spending budget is going to buy a new airplane this year. Sorry, I can't "show you the money." RH ___________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of joe Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 9:03 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: speaking of AD books... 1. Purchase a copy of joe's book for self and everyone at work and everyone you know. To be serious though, in your shoes, my choice would be to work 70-80 hours a week and spend the extra 10-20 hours for a while trying to identify anything that could be automated or handled in some other safe way that requires less of my time and then work to get that done. Try to find some big hitters that if you get cleared out of the way gives you more time to find more things to automate to get out of the way. If you save say 2 minutes on something you do 20 times a day that is still 40 minutes saved. Also consider that when you automate things, they tend to be done in a more consistent manner so you run into less issues due to small mistakes in consistency that cause investigation time. The last ops position that I started back in 2001 when I did this I actually ended up working closer to probably 100 or more hours a week handling manually requests and issues globally as I was the only one on the brand new team that had any understanding on how to really fix things that were broken and things at that point were very broken. That went on for months but slowly adding the appropriate scripts the work load reduced as things took minutes instead of tens of minutes or seconds instead of minutes and the other guys were able to run the scripts to do things and were spinning up on how everything worked. If you do nothing manually that is recurring I would be extremely surprised. I haven't seen an ops job yet that didn't have a lot of time spent doing the same things over and over again. If however, that is the case, then the efficiencies have to be gained in producing tools to help you troubleshoot and make that go quicker. There is always something that can be done to make a group faster, better, and more efficient. The thing is to find it and figure out what it takes to get better and then do it. It might be the solution is buy something, but that usually doesn't go over well so keep in mind anything you can buy you can probably cobble together yourself if you need it bad enough and it will help you. It falls back to something I have said multiple times on list and other places. If you are too busy chopping down the trees to sharpen the axe you will just get further and further behind as your axe dulls. In every IT ops based job I have had, it was always a case of too much work and too few resources. Not once did I get hired into an ops group that had nothing to do or a bunch of free time to sit around. I expect that makes sense because there is no reason to hire someone if there is free time. So the goal is always to try and figure out how to do things in such a way that it can be done better and more efficiently. While you are figuring out how to automate you are learning how things work so you become more deadly with your troubleshooting-fu so when problems crop up outside of the normal requests and daily grind you are quicker (hopefully) at solving them. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rocky Habeeb Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 10:14 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: speaking of AD books... Dear people, I would appreciate it it you would prioritize the following for me; [A] [ ] Work 60 hours a week managing (with only one other person) 250 PCs in 4 states and 40 Servers. [B] [ ] Live at the only bookmark in my browser when at home "www.microsoft.com" looking for solutions, etc. [C] [ ] Read joe's (et al) new book. [D] [ ] Studying for my MCSA [E] [ ] Studying for my MCP [F] [ ] Studying for my MCSE [G] [ ] Securing my network [H] [ ] Reading the new book joe is going to write on BP's [Yes, please tell me how to rebuild a DC remotely from bare metal!!] [I] [ ] Reading Robbie's book(s) (note: please sub-prioritize those books) [J] [ ] Balanicing my checkbook ( hey .. I have to do something else at home, right?) [K] [ ] Patching my network [L] [ ] Learn to script [M] [ ] Watch College basketball on TV [N] [ ] Read all of Sakari's books [O] [ ] Read the AD list archives completely "Hey, I'm almost serious here." As Guido would say, "That's enough for today." RH List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
