What does your normal work day consist of?

Agent6376

I'm interested to know what some of you system/network admins do on a daily basis. I've been living a somewhat sheltered IT life working for the Squad and I want to move out of it when the time is right. I'm not asking for anyone to write a huge blog or anything, but I think it would be cool to see a typical day in the life of some of the techexams members.

I'm not saying that you only can be a sysadmin or netadmin either. If you ran into something crazy and found the answer to a difficult situation, or if you want to give insight to what your job consists of-I personally would like to read up on it.

For instance: As a Geek Squad "Special Agent", I provide your typical break/fix solutions to clients in home and in office. Duties include setup of new PCs, SOHO networking, virus and spyware removal, one on one trainings with clients on pretty much any topic they choose (Macs, Vista, XP, Office, Digial Imaging, Email, etc), server deploys, small business (>20 users) administration.

The most complicated scenario I work with is Server2003 with very basic uses, some VPN, DNS, DHCP, and AD-but remember on a very small scale.

Thanks to anyone who participates

L0gicB0mb508

I can give you a rough explanation of my last position as a systems admin, but I can't really talk about it in detail as far as the technology that is used due to security concerns:

site had well over 4000 users

general server administration (user accounts, server performance, file sharing)
disaster recovery (back ups to hard disk due to environment)
anti-virus control for entire site (clearing incidents, reporting problems to correct people)
email administration for entire site (mailbox moves, queues, general performance)
firewall/gateway administration
update/patch management for entire site
customer phone support when needed (email problems, file shares, policy, etc)
Occasionally reinstall/rescue customer servers

I did that stuff in no particular order everyday.

Agent6376

That sounds pretty flipping sweet. I'm sure it can get tiring after awhile as all things, but man what a challenge at least!

Psoasman

I work as a IT Tech in a casino and I handle computer installs, upgrades, maintenance, phone system, TV's, etc.
I love my job, we have a nice workbench to play with computers and VMs to experiment with.

mikedisd2

I read alot of Dilbert on the web. Only 300 out the 800 pages left.
Damn this current job market!!

RobertKaucher

I have a daily routine that I follow:
* Check backup job from previous night.
* Record status on documentation (Success/Fail)
* Swap backup tape.
* Verify status of servers using MOM 2005.
* Check the IT Requests page (3 stage workflow on a SharePoint site)
* Then I build my to-do list for the day.
I accomplish what I can.
* I ensure the barcoding PCs for labor tracking are running and then go home.

My to-do list might consist of a number of projects. Right now I am building a VMWare ESXi server and a backup server. I am also working on networking the PCs attached to two MAZAK systems.

-Sleeper Deputy of Counter Intelligence Kaucher, Agent 6038, Precinct 494

Agent6376

RobertKaucher wrote: »

-Sleeper Deputy of Counter Intelligence Kaucher, Agent 6038, Precinct 494

Wow, I definitely didn't expect to see that last line. Glad to see a DCI (sleeper or not) that knows administration. In my area that's unheard of completely. How did you manage to break out of retail IT and get into your current position?

undomiel

Been in the new job for about a month now. Average day involves getting up and checking the backup logs from last night for various clients. Contact a client and have them reseat or turn on the backup drive that failed. Monitor the Exchange 2003 -> 2007 transition and do some more work on it. Help out the help desk on a support call that is over their head. Zoom out to another client's site and get their sole DC back up and running. Head back home and putter around waiting for the next incident.

It's not too action packed around here but it seems to come in waves. There are some pretty big projects in the works for later on down the road if the clients approve though.

Forsaken_GA

On the surface my job is pretty easy -

I come in, I do tickets, I handle alerts, and I go home.

In reality... very rarely are two days alike. Some days I'm sitting and doing custom compiles for customers all day long. Some days I'm doing forensics to find a hole and plug it. Some days I'm doing hardware builds and/or replacements. Somedays I'm running cable. Some days I'm provisioning switches and doing optimization on the network. Some days I'm banging my head with having to upgrade servers running ancient installs to current. Other days I'm migrating customers from their old host to a server with us. Not a day goes by that I don't learn something new.

Agent6376

My typical day is 3 or 4 service calls. Yesterday was a slow day with lots of driving.

First client wanted more capacity than her full 60gb laptop drive so I had her purchase a new 500gb drive and Acronis True Image. Hooked up the new drive via USB, booted off of the Acronis CD, and cloned the disk over to the new drive. Swapped the drive into the laptop and it fired up like a champ.

My other client was about an hour away from the first. I've been out there many times and I act as their administrator. The company has a microscope that has an analog video out (composite) and they wanted to enhance the quality of the display as much as possible. We found a composite to HDMI scaler from Gefen and decided to give it a shot. I hooked it up to a new monitor they bought and had one of the lab technicians assist me with adjusting the display on the microscope. Lo and behold! It didn't really do much. The image was better, but not anywhere near where they want it. I told them that it was the best that we were going to get using composite video to output to a 24" monitor. Besides that, I reconnected a wireless printer to the network and checked out some of the slides they were going to present to another company. Talk about cool stuff

RobertKaucher

Agent6376 wrote: »

Wow, I definitely didn't expect to see that last line. Glad to see a DCI (sleeper or not) that knows administration. In my area that's unheard of completely. How did you manage to break out of retail IT and get into your current position?

Well, one thing I learned was that our precinct was much more technically skilled than others in our area and mentoring was huge. I was personally responsible for getting two agents certified and one of their brothers (MCTS and MCP).

One thing I did was to really leverage my experience with the Geek Squad. Geek Squad agents get to see more weird sh!t in a week than most admins do in years. This gave me troubleshooting skills forged in fire. I received several awards for top revenue per hour in my district when I was a Double Agent. When I was promoted to DCI the precinct was in disarray. There had not been a DCI in months and they were severely understaffed. I instituted a Lean/Six Sigma for services plan and within two months our turn time was down to 1.5 days and we had an 80% customer satisfaction rating. It’s hard for those who deal with angry people to be given a good approval rating. But we managed. We hit or exceeded budget most of the time, with our old PC being 67% of the total. If PC Sales had ever hit their services budget we would have been close to 200% most of the time.

1. I showed I had the technical skills and knowledge.
2. I showed I knew how businesses work
3. I demonstrated a desire to excel and advance in my career

I also did part time netadmin work for a small business where I designed their AD with Small Business Server 2003. They just payed me gas mileage.

Your time at the Geek Squad will look like what you make of it. You have to leverage it as best you can. Talk about the skills you have developed that will be transferable to an admin position.

dynamik

At the moment, looking for a new job

vCole

*Check to make sure the CDP agent is backing up at all 3 sites.
*Check both IT Ticketing systems and work on tickets.
*Respond to "hair fires" as I like to call them. (People running around and crazy thinking the world if going to end )
*Work on open issues, and projects. (lots, and lots of projects...)

the_Grinch

Currently, dealing with a network deployment (this weekend), an ERP deployment (getting pushed back by the day), and a building move (also being pushed back by the day). Day consists of the following:

*Lots of Excel work (manually entering numbers, verifying data already in)
*Support (hardware, software the full scope)
*VOIP Support (I am the point of contact to our hosted VOIP system)
*Meetings (meeting with consultants on a weekly basis at this point)

Was hoping for more, but once the deployments get done my role will be better defined. I also should be doing less support since we have a company that is suppose to be dealing with it now.

RobertKaucher

FadeToBright wrote: »

*Check to make sure the CDP agent is backing up at all 3 sites.
*Check both IT Ticketing systems and work on tickets.
*Respond to "hair fires" as I like to call them. (People running around and crazy thinking the world if going to end )
*Work on open issues, and projects. (lots, and lots of projects...)

I would say easily 25% of my day is taken up by "hair fires." I have assimilated this phrase into my vocabulary, btw... Thanks, Fade.

"Omg, I cannot print!" "I have told you 5 times, you have to reset the default printer back to the real printer after you print the report in the old legacy application as a PDF."

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. In IT, teach a man to fish and he will call you every day asking "How do you load that worm thing on the hook thing again?"

I take credit for the above saying...