undomiel wrote: » Sounds like my job every few weeks! At least you're not struggling against horribly wrong documentation, that can sometimes be even worse. Have fun with it as it'll be good experience to have. A big one I'd look into is if you have credentials for their registrar. MX records mysteriously "disappearing" can be a real killer for having a good start.
ajs1976 wrote: » Make sure that the A-V is running and up to date. Check to make sure you are getting good backups.
tdean wrote: » well, 2 weeks into my job, replacing an outsourced IT company. I still have received absolutely no documentation regarding the network. all fsmo roles are on 1 server, i cant get into the vcenter server, i went through AD, and there are over 30 people listed in the enterprise admin group. there are OU's set up for one site, for the other site everyone is lumped into the "users" OU. the GPO's are a mess. it appears they used vb scripts to map printers for some people, not all. i cant get into the NAS, and have no idea if/when any MS updates were run or if there are any incompatibilities with critical apps etc... other than that, lookin good!!!
arwes wrote: » You might get some use from this.Network Documentation Made Easy with SYDI Your predicament reminded me to load this back up on my machine. Really nice tool, especially for free!
arwes wrote: » Yep, cmd prompt and just run cscript sydi-server.vbs. It then pops up prompts for which server you want to document & such. I'm going to try out the Exchange & SQL stuff he made later today and see how well it works.
arwes wrote: » Can't say that I have. I used my domain admin account earlier and had no problems with it.
arwes wrote: » I initially had to do this to get it to work on a couple of machines:Enable WMI for Remote Monitoring
RobertKaucher wrote: » Backups need to be your first priority. Make sure you get that handled ASAP. Then make sure nothing is going to die. If you are a single IT guy shop, this does not surprise me at all. I agree with Undomiel. Wrong documentation is worse than none and when you are alone, you rarely have time to keep things up-to-date. Just remember, if some one takes over after you they will probably be thinking a lot of the same things... One man's perfect organization is another man's total chaos.
tdean wrote: » oh, another funny thing is that none of the workstations or thin clients were given proper names. just left as whatever they were out of the box, so i have a mess of 300+ "things" in AD that have to be renamed and organized somehow. arwes, i still couldnt get that last server. i'll check out some other solutions on that site tomorrow. it worked famously on everything else though. great find.
Balantine wrote: » Turgon and Twodogs62 ring true to me. I walked into an 80K IT Director position with a fresh Associates. Ran into really weird I-quit-and-want-my-job-back politics plus complete lack of infrastructure and documentation. People running Windows 98... wireless routers in the ceiling... the month before I came in there was a fire in the server room because of no ventilation... second to last admin was fired because of too much pornography... financial IT audit failed in the month previous as well... no IT audit done for years, skewed old firewall and network plans floating around, few tools, no policies (HR either) processes or procedures, and lastly, no documentation on what was installed where (just 200 random productivity and OS installation media laying in a pile). I had to hack my way into my own servers my first day(s) on the job and then they expected me to support the entire PBX and rat's nests near the demarc too (newly and shoddily installed because the old one failed within the last year)...with no SLAs on any of the shared drives or in the 10 years worth of files cabineted away, all of which I read at home trying to get up to speed. The police department was on me in the first week asking why they couldn't upload reports (failing routers), and then I wound up accidentally answering the "Judge's phone" when it rang (undocumented party line inside the MDF...). "DUDE YOU ARE ON THE JUDGES LINE" - Oh, sorry for eavesdropping What I was trying to do, because I kept getting interrupted at my office, was call the last half-dozen contractors who might actually give a damn. Hostile? Yeah. Different culture AND long-time reports of insecurity... loads of Limewire traffic, etc. and slow network responsiveness. A nice way to start your first "serious job" you know. Based on that experience, others going through 1-6 months of 10-30% productivity would not surprise me in the least. I feel for ya. Learn lots.
