IMHO, being a good sys admin has nothing to do with a particular system. Being hardware/software agnostic is probably best, but understanding policy, procedure and best practices are a best bet overall. Getting an understanding and then more than an understanding of ITSFM or ITIL is in EVERY sys admin's best interest.
Rick From: David Lum [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:11 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: If you're monitoring your servers thoroughly.... "If you don't test for it - it's going to fail on you, and you won't know it." Exactly my point, shouldn't this stuff be monitored already? It shouldn't matter whether your patching or not, the stuff should be monitored in-between patching periods anyway. Kurt - The Practice of System and Network Administration.I've never heard of that (welcome to my OJT world). This changes the subject, but seems fitting. My last "real" training - after getting the little CNA cert in 1995 - was a couple of Windows NT courses at New Horizons, everything else has been self-taught - but I'm the kind that needs the formal stuff to fill in blanks I'm surely missing. My point is, not being college trained on Systems Administration I'm not surprised I didn't know about this book. Sure I have 13 years of administration under my belt, but I'd like be more informed about how to be more systematic about the things I do. This book looks like a good start. I'm fortysomething and perhaps should finally become a real System Administrator instead of wingin' it. What other books would you guys recommend? I think Server 2008 has enough changes that I should certainly attend some training on that, I get the feel my company will miss out on the advantages unless someone knows it real well and points it out.. Sorry to ramble, Dave Lum - Systems Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (971)-222-1025 "When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot's hands" From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 3:53 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: If you're monitoring your servers thoroughly.... Yeah, you do. Just because the DC reboots, is it serving requests through LDAP on all interfaces? Or did one of those patches break multi-homed LDAP? (True story - it happened.) Just because the GC reboots, it is serving requests through LDAP and is the NSPI interface initialized? (Without it, Exchange and older Outlook clients won't work.) Just because the exchange server reboots, did the IMAP service start? Is RPC/HTTP working? Is the store listening on port 6004? Can you open a mailbox? Can you authenticate? If a client can use it, you need to test it. I read this somewhere today (and copied it into my "think about pad"): Think differently about policy If...it isn't built into process you have to search for it it isn't auto-enforced ....it may as well not exist Systems verify and enforce policy I didn't write down the source (my bad). If you don't test for it - it's going to fail on you, and you won't know it. There is nothing worse than a client calling you to tell you that one of your systems are down and you didn't already know it. Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: David Lum [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 5:26 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: If you're monitoring your servers thoroughly.... .do you need to really check anything after patching and rebooting? I would think if you're already monitoring all the services, shares, disk space, event logs, data stores, etc then patch and reboot wouldn't require much testing per se. For DC's you could even automate a DCDIAG on every restart and have the results shot out, right? This is a rose colored glasses look, but wondered if anyone actually pulls this one off. Dave Lum - Systems Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (971)-222-1025 "When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot's hands" ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
