Should I stay in this job for long ?

thomas130

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shodown

Sounds like they don't have good management in place. If you have that many machines and they are spread out that is no reason not to have active directory. I"m a former sys admin years ago and I was use to seeing some things done like this on side work outside the navy. This is usually due to management who don't understand the technology and only look at cost, or old people who stuck around, but have enough pull to keep things the way they are. Either way start looking. You won't have skills needed for a job elsewhere.

sambuca69

You want to stand out and make a splash?

Download the 2008 Server evaluation software, and do a demo with a few other PCs. Show them what *you* can do for them here.

If after seeing how it works, and they still insist on managing them individually, then yes leave, as you work with complete imbeciles.

thomas130

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thomas130

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Zartanasaurus

I don't normally say this often with respect to bosses, because it's way overused and cliche, but your director is a ******* moron.

At the very least, get yourself some cheap remote control software like Dameware so you don't have to walk to each individual machine to run a script or change a policy. In fact, I'm kind of questioning why you didn't do this with RDP.

Zartanasaurus

No wonder why print newspapers are going out of business.

thomas130

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tha_dub

I used to work in a place that had 500 xp desktops in a workgroup... Sure we screamed for a while we needed a domain but that was big bucks for 500 PC's so we got creative. We strapped a few spare PC's together and setup some linux servers. A cheap dirty simple way to roll things out is via script. Have every machine on login and bootup run a remote script from a file server. Then all you have to do is change the scripts in one place as required. Now this will require a little more effort than a few clicks in active directory but if you know batch commands reasonably well that would be a good start and VB scripting even better.

apena7

thomas130 wrote: »

The problem is that the guy in charge hates windows and prefers Linux and doesn’t want to pay the costs. Also the director doesn’t like virtuals

In my opinion, you won't be able to make any progress with this job. It's clear they are incompetent by deciding to replace their Macs for Vista without even as much as a plan to administer them. Also, if you offer any ideas for a Windows server, you'll most likely get shot down by the 'guy in charge.' After all, if he 'hates windows' then he probably he doesn't know how to administer AD -- which would put his job in jeopardy.

If you decide to stay and gain some Linux experience, then that's cool, but I wouldn't set high expectations for anything else.

drainey

Stay 6mo to 1yr to get some solid Linux experience to enhance your skills (and resume) and then bail. I worked at a job with a Unix admin that ran the email servers (Unix) and he had been around a long time and had a lot of pull (He also hated windows and spelled pc as pee c). Even though my boss on the pc side put together serveral well laid out presentations showing the advantages of exchange with outlook vs Unix mail servers with outlook (many of these advantages where inherent with exchange and desired by upper mgmt) the pull the unix admin had overrode my boss every time.

Your boss sounds like he has the same mentalilty when it comes to windows so he'll never consider a MS based AD solution and without his backing you'll never get the upper brass to consider it.

veritas_libertas

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

No wonder why print newspapers are going out of business.

Actually, I am not sure I would want to be working for a newspaper these days...

brad-

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Actually, I am not sure I would want to be working for a newspaper these days...

Ditto. Newspapers are dropping left and right unless they have political backing.

This probably doesnt need to be said...but before you even start putting out the vibe that you're unhappy you should know where you're going.

Rootstonian

And do you have to keep track of Windows Updates, Virus and Malware scanners on each workstation? Yeah, no thanks

Wait till they get zapped by a virus of Joe Shmoe surfs a site he shouldn't be and get a bug!

I imagine the printer setup is a nightmare too.

And you're probably really stuck if the got a Vista version that can't join a domain. Even if you could get 2 $5,000 servers in there (and that's probably really pushing it dependent on concurrent users), they'll never go for it budget-wise.

Like others are saying: take a year or so and suck-up any knowledge you can. Always looks good on a resume and someone asks why you left after only a year, tell them the truth (you growth was stagnated in that position; both intellectual and financial).

thomas130

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Zartanasaurus

thomas130 wrote: »

I told them they should turn off windows update

thomas130

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Zartanasaurus

thomas130 wrote: »

what I mean is they should have a server that get the updates and let the machine point to that server for update but we could test updates before releasing them to confirm they won't break the machines to effect any coporate app

Let's assume they tell you no to a WSUS server. Are you still going to recommend they turn off AU?

thomas130

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Zartanasaurus

thomas130 wrote: »

I'm not sure to be honest I just think it just sensible to keep all the machines the same at the end of the day say there was service pack release that **** something up it would be pain getting it off all the machines.

OTOH, imagine some idiot at your job introduced a worm to your network via a USB drive and fucks up a bunch of machines because they have unpatched vulnerabilities. Back in the day, worms used to be much more devastating because there were so many servers and workstations that weren't patched.

At my last job, we had an update that screwed up a terminal emulation software we were using. Partly our fault because we using an old version of the software. They had a newer version of the software that wasn't affected by the update. We got the new copy, installed and the problem went away. Not a huge crisis really. Depends on the app that you depend on that goes bad.

An application that stops working on a bunch of machines probably won't be as big of a deal is if a bunch of machines stop working and lose all their data. Plus, I'd wager that the risk and cost of updating without testing is way lower than the risk of flying with unpatched machines. And from the way you described your job, I doubt they're doing proper backups on data. A windows update isn't going to delete all the files on your computer.

I bet the linux guy at your job would love a bunch of your Windows PCs to get infected with a virus though.

That's just my $.02, others may differ.

mikedisd2

Language, people. This isn't YouTube.

Moderator needs to update their filters as well.

NightShade03

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Let's assume they tell you no to a WSUS server. Are you still going to recommend they turn off AU?

Thats how we run our network. We have AU turned off and a third party client which pushes out updates "when it feels like it"....so pretty much there is no patching going on and no WSUS server. It isn't the best setup in the world but I think patching aside not having a decent backbone for the network or domain, patching is the least of your problems....