Company's old IT admin quit, they need someone to assess the network. Any tips?

[Arkitech]

So I got a call from a small company yesterday who desperately needs help with their network. They had 60 employees and recently scaled back to 10, the it admin was bumped down to part time status and he recently quit to take a full time job offer (which is understandable). Anyway since his leaving the network has slowly been falling apart, every morning one of the users reboots the email and DB server (yeah I know) because they can't login. Also those same servers lock up and freeze during the day, so they often get rebooted twice in the same day. From my initial inspection it appears both are on server 2003, not sure which version of outlook server is being used however. Also the backup situation there is'nt good either.

So my question is, I'm scheduled to go out tomorrow morning and get an assessment of the situation to determine how much work will be needed. Can anyone tell me what to look at first? I'm fairly savvy when it comes to software and administration, but it's been sometime since I've work on MS server products. Also I've never been in a situation where I have to walk into an environment like this cold and try to figure out what's setup and what needs the most immediate attention. However I'm up for the challenge, I just want to get a few guidelines and a little advice so that I can make a proper assessment and then go from there.


Thanks for any advice.

 

[Zargon]

sounds like an awful job to take on.

especially with users futzing and constantly rebooting servers

 

[RebateMonger]

However I'm up for the challenge.

I'm really not trying to be insulting. But, no, you aren't up for the challenge.

They need someone with experience in Windows Server 2003 and, presumably, Exchange Server. There are lots of such people with both experience and certifications in such things.

Again, sorry.

 

[Arkitech]

I'm really not trying to be insulting. But, no, you aren't up for the challenge.

They need someone with experience in Windows Server 2003 and, presumably, Exchange Server. There are lots of such people with both experience and certifications in such things.

Again, sorry.

I'm not going in to fix anything, I'm just looking to get an idea of what they have installed in terms of software, drive space, error messages, etc.. Like I said I just want to get an assessment of what's going on.

 

[kstornado]

If you're just trying to assess how bad things are, I would make the person that called you in log into the server(s). You don't want them calling the next day asking what you did to break what seems like a fragile network.

I also think the first thing you'd want to find out is what is the status of their backups...

 

[Crusty]

Observe only, do not touch.

 

[Zargon]

If you're just trying to assess how bad things are, I would make the person that called you in log into the server(s). You don't want them calling the next day asking what you did to break what seems like a fragile network.

I also think the first thing you'd want to find out is what is the status of their backups...

solid plan

 

[mxnerd]

if you don't know what problems to look for, you are not up to the challange, and - there is no outlook server, only Exchange server.

If a server locks up serveral times a day, it probably does not have enough memory, especially if it has a SQL database & Exchange running. When the memory is running out, server 2003 starts to swap processes to hard disk, and it slows down the whole server and it looks like the server is completely locked up to end users.

 

[xSauronx]

Observe only, do not touch.

this. i wouldnt want to touch that with a 10 foot pole unless i was experienced and damn certain i could fix it.

 

[Agamar]

I have done this before with clients. They are probably running on Small Business Server, with Exchange built into the primary server which also acts as a Domain Controller, File Server, and possibly the SQL server. It will probably also be the backup server. These guys are right, you want to make sure that the backups are completing, and I would go so far as to say that before I would take them on as a client, they would have to purchase a license of Acronis or Symantec whole disk backup. That way in case things are really bad, you have an image of the entire server.

Anyway, if you do not know what Exchange server is, or how it works, you might not want to take this on. Exchange can get pretty hairy. I have been working with it for a long time now (since 5.5), and it can still challenge me from time to time.

If you feel like sinking a lot of time into it, and the customer doesn't mind paying you to learn, you could probably muddle through and get them running. Once you have enough time, you could start working on the smaller problems that you find in the event log. That is what I normallly do. You fix the big problems, then you go through each error in the event log and research them to make sure that they are either harmless or need to be fixed. Get a subscription to eventid.net. I use thier website because it saves me a few minutes each time looking up the event info.

 

[Arkitech]

thx for the feedback guys

think i better pass this one off to someone more experienced

again thx

 

[JackMDS]

thx for the feedback guys

think i better pass this one off to someone more experienced

again thx

Good call :thumbsup:. The remaining 10 employees do not provide further margin for more scale down.