Networking

The Swing Of Things

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Jayson is getting the hang of everything, and we are able to bang out allot of work today. Now all I have to do is look through the several hundred resume’s I have for the full time position. I need things to quiet down enough for me to sit down and go over them all. I don’t want to jinx myself but things seemed a bit better today over Sunday through Tuesday’s multiple issues. Murphy’s law was in full effect this week.

More minor problems from today: A disk drive array we bought came with no drives installed even thought the notes said the work was done. We are short 6 drives. Getting an overnight replacement sent to us for tomorrow.

Also a network switch holding about 10 servers or so seemed to wig out and restart. Checking that out also, but all is fine now. Little stuff is fine, it is the downed circuits that freak me out. Those I cannot fix on my own.

Our new release manager is also getting his feet wet quick. They already have him scheduled to do a release later this week. We so needed someone to do that job! I am showing him the data center tomorrow. He should enjoy that.

Work Update

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Here is what has been going on at the time sucking void I call work. Kidding. It may be a time sucking void but I wouldn’t be doing anything else…

Fixing our monitoring system. It seems like I am always doing this, but I am spending time tweaking our monitoring system that listens to all our computer systems and pages us when something is wrong.

Keith just finished setting up the VPN link to our Kingston office. Now we have a dedicated link between our offices for just VOIP traffic. We can use an entire T-1 for voice calls. We hope to get 15-20 calls over it. We will test it this week.

We are busy building and configuring new servers. it feels like we are doing this daily. We deployed 2 new box’s this week. Something to QA stuff on, and a new data-warehouse machine.

My mail migration goes slowly since I am busy doing other things. This is not a problem except we are paying for pop accounts on our current provider still when I would like to offload these users to our own hosted mail system. That is the end result. Hopefully when done I will save a few hundred bucks a month on mail hosting.

Gus has been away on vacation and now CES. He returns Wednesday. The rest of our upper management return Monday. No joke it has been quieter without them in the office. it is not them, it is just there is like 10 less people in the office. Back to normal on monday.

Projects Updates

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Finally put into service our first Windows 2003 Active Directory server. I demoted an old 2000 box and transfered its roles to the new server.

Started redirecting call center users in NYC to our new mail server we are using for our Kingston office. The end goal is to have the entire call center on that mail system. Once I get all the alias’s and accounts done I can just delete the old mail accounts and tell everyone they have a new email address. It is a slow process since I need to edit everyones profile when they are not at work. I did about 10 people in 2 days. this rate it will take me a month to get everyone cut over.

We upgrade our Pix firewalls next tuesday to enable us to use a VPN tunnel to send large amounts of VOIP calls between offices. when I mean large amounts I mean more than the 2-3 we can now. Probably like 20 at a time on a dedicated internet T-1.

Other things going on are the guys in Kingston are working on Cisco Softphone setup’s to allow remote agents for our call center. Or to allow us to use the phones from outside the office on our laptops. Also in the works is the ability to move your phone number between desk phones if you need to.

Other Updates

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Today I ran through some test upgrades to see if a DB upgrade I am going to do tomorrow will work ok. My problem is that I have been unable to truly simulate the current environment so my tests failed. I am working to correct the problem tomorrow.

I am also trying to get a fix for some phone monitoring software we had installed last week. we got this software and it just doesn’t work. thankfully we haven’t paid for it yet.

I got install dates for my new voice T-1 that we are getting. I also got final pricing on new data circuits we need for our VOIP traffic.

Tomorrow will be a late night to run software upgrades at work.

The Cool Side Of Network Administration

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Today I played with, I mean setup some cool new tools for our network. Joe finally got up our Avocent Switchview IP. It allows us to securely view the console of remote machines hooked up to our KVM. It was cool and very helpful to look at the bios screen on a server as we rebooted it 150 miles away.

Another cool tool we are looking at deploying is Microsofts Operations Manger, or MOM. I don’t like the name. Any software called mom gets me worried. It also makes me think about Microsoft Bob. MOM is actually interesting. It is not as nice a network monitor as Whatsup Gold, but it is a good windows tool to keep tabs on the health of a windows server. Whatsup and Mom are complementary in what they do. I can even have MOM send SNMP traps to a system like Whatsup. Of course doing that is easier said than done.

Next up is an automated Symantec Ghost deployment scheme. To be able to click on a button and update a desktop computer image would be fantastic. I thought we should have a system like that when we reached 50 desktop users. We are well beyond that and we have nothing in place yet. Windows 2003 Server also has other options you can use to do remote deployment and software package updates. I have never tried anything with 2000 Server, but I hear that the 2003 implementation is much better. Now I just need to find the time to do a test.

Home At Last

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I finally made it home. I was in Kingston from Sunday to Wednesday night. I ran out of clean clothes and I was really low on the med’s so I came home. Keith is up there today (thursday) and friday. I go back next week again. I actually have 2 days in the office this week. It is weird. I haven’t worked a full day at the office since Monday the 11th. It is the 21 now. Wow.

I got a ride home from Kingston from one of our Integrators from Expanets. I know I used to hate that company but the tech guys we are working with are all awesome. Chad our Cisco expert fixed up all our switches and call manager. I learned allot of stuff from him, but would have liked to learn allot more.

Keith is working on the desktop security profile for Kingston while he is up there. I already did 99% of the desktop ghost image for the computers we are starting with. I figured out the problem with Ghost 7.5 and our Compaq (HP) Evo 510’s. I was able to modify the disk we use with the with our older Evo 310’s.

I also got the White (voice) patch panel done Wednesday. It looks good, or as good as we can get it with the time we have. Joe will do the blue cables next.

Wow, Crazy Stress Filled Week

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I have been really busy, and out of town most of this week. This will be quick since I am off to bed. I was in Kingston NY working on getting our new office ready Tuesday – Thursday. Things are coming together but still having some issues. The voice T-1’s all work. But the phone system needs some new hardware. My companies current phone system had problems tuesday night causing problems for hours. Dam windows NT 4.0. More issues on Wednesday, but not as bad. Now I have issues with requests for a redesign of how our call center is going to operate. I need to map out the changes tomorrow. I am so stressing, and tired right now. I hope I can get some sleep. Friday will be interesting. it always is when you are out for a few days. I have racked up allot of hours on the mobile phone this week.

The good news is the Cisco Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone system we put in actually works. Sounds great and everything. We are just having some issues with getting the wrong type of routers. All sorts of capacity issues now. We are having our integrator fix the problem.

More tomorrow, I hope.

Queue This

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So the more I work in the technology field, the more I realize what I don’t know. I learned about a totally new type of product last night. Now I need to become an expert in how it is tied into Windows 2000 Active Directory. The product is MSMQ or Microsoft something or other messaging queue. it is really interesting stuff, but I never dealt with it before. This is one of the many new projects I am learning about.

I am knee deep in setup stuff for our new Kingston office. I have the Active Directory model set. Now I have to build it. I ordered the first batch of 25 desktops today. They wont ship till August but we locked the price and model in. We are waiting on some better deals for flat panels before we order them.

Our cable guy’s finally called us back today. Joe is going to kingston on thursday to meet with them and make sure the plan is set and the work begins and finishes on time. I am still waiting for an install date on our long distance T-1’s. We keep getting the run around from our carrier. I am freaking out that the LEC verizon goes on strike in August. And yes, they will strike. both sides of that argument are no where near an agreement. That will get messy.

late night

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So here we are at work at 9 Pm. We are waiting until midnight to run our network upgrade. I am fed and waiting for the work to begin. We are trying to watch a movie soon. I am not sure if we will get to it.

So we never got to watch that movie. I ended up not being able to write a blog entry, and I am finally sitting down and able to do so two days later. Depending on how you look at our schedule we could say things were successful, or not. We got most of what we wanted to do completed. one big peace was not done, but I think we were a bit agressive with what we thought we could do in one night, so I am happy with our results. We had some problems allong the way, but we were able to pull through and get the project complete.

The whole thing took almost 6 hours. We (keith and i) started at midnight and didn’t leave our Data Center until almost 6-am. The rest of the team was at our office.

I was able to go home around 8AM. We waited until our call center opened and things were working normally.

The crazy thing was I didn’t go right home to sleep. I had 2 dunkin donuts on the train and went to get a hair cut. I grabbed a quick shower and then fell asleep till like 5:30PM. I was too tired after that to do anything. Hopefully my sleep cycle is not totally screwed up. Time will tell.

Busy at work

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I am tired and don’t want to write allot, but I have allot to talk about. So I will be brief.

Went to kingston today. Got there late, and didn’t leave till late. Was very productive with Dan & Joe. We got 2 POTS lines installed and our local Verizon voice T-1 installed.

AT&T had a massive outage out west that caused us all sorts of havoc while I was out. We had issues reaching sites on the west coast. Still no RFO (reason for outage). I am waiting on that.

Also I was just told that we hired 2 more developers that start on monday. I need to order computers and stuff for them. That will be fun since we are doing a late night (overnight) tomorrow.

And lastly the above mentioned overnight tomorrow. I need more sleep and we are doing an overnight install. that will be interesting. Because of the overnight I may not be doing any blog entries for a few days. if I do they may not post right away. It depends on how tired I am thursday and friday. More later…