Episode 2

The builders came, and it looks like they will finish the workroom in the next week or so, finally. Wow, actual workspace!

Met with The Boss today to discuss the vision for how we use computers. Unfortunately it was less of a vision and more of an eMigrane. Sought some advice on how we move forward with this from above.

Fought with a laptop to get it to reinstall Office 2003. It complained it wasn't installed for the current user. Upgraded to Office 2007 which then gave out of memory errors. It's officially screwed up. User will not be happy.

Season II

So lots has changed since over a year ago, which really is obvious, apart from one thing: the workroom still resembles and air raid shelter. IT repair facilities minus any storage, or data points. Great. News is that this will be finished on Thursday. Although it was meant to be finished in 2009 so we shall see.

Current concerns are that we have a website and other web space that is working but partially butchered to make it work, meaning upgrading it is going to be a bitch. I also want to virtualize our CMS so that we can work on that too, making it better for remote access users. This needs peace and quiet, and time, and planning.

A vision meeting is planned for Wednesday where we will all get together with management and have a session to work out what we are going to do in the next 12 months. It really is worrying that our management does not lead us, or innovate in any way.

Backup needs an overhaul to make sure its working properly. New Wiki needs amending and adding to.

Day Two Hundred 'n' Fifty

It's all going off.

The Citrix geeks have finished their work. However after they restored 3 virtual machines back on to a freshly rebuilt server yesterday afternoon, I found that when you try and manage this server that NO virtual machines are available. I emailed the geeks and they will have to instruct me how to restore these machines from backup. Rubbish.

The kiddy file server's RAID has lost 700 kids' work. The RAID volume their work was on shows up as a set of spare drives. This will all have to be restored from a backup. Rubbish.

All our 58 G5 Macs are imaged, and The New Guy has (finally) finished setting up a whole room.

Our second server rack arrived today and by some sheer delightful fluke this new version fits through doors and wheels really nicely. It's in the new server room, although this room is missing:

1) a light

2) doors

3) flooring

4) any form of power supply

Space has been cleared in the current server room so that we can push out existing rack, although this is taller than the new one so we might have to de-rack all the servers and tilt this to get it through. Rubbish.

Some data cabling installers came in with a view to cabling our new office. They were concerned that this is an IT office with only 4 data outlets. They were also told to re-use the cables that were in those rooms pre-refurb. The same rooms where I was told to CUT the cables as it was all being stripped out. They also looked at the plans and asked when we were moving our data cabinets to the new server room. Once I got up off the floor, and after a few phone calls, they concluded that they would merge our two data cabinets together in the same room and put it all in a 42u floor standing rack. Just have to get the benching and sink taken out....one day....soon. I have a meeting about this next week.

Picked up 25 new computers and flat screens from the University yesterday which will allow us to upgrade a lot of our 1.7GHz PCs with 3.0GHz machines. Only issue here is storage and the fact we have NONE for the machines which we pull out, added to storage of 22 eMacs and 34 iMacs.

Data cabling was removed from network cabinets today in the old science block which is being demolished, so we have lots of patch panels spare now. I also removed the cabling from the librarian and careers officer's areas as these rooms are being made in to a corridor next week! This all had to be pulled back through the fake ceiling giving me lovely plaster board dandruff.

The fire alarm has stopped going off. Turns out the builders demolished some changing rooms before disconnecting the fire system, which really badly broke it.

Anyway, the new domain works, as does everything that connects to it. AND we can publish apps via the web, which as The Other Tech said is "like proper IT!"

Day Two Hundred 'n' Forty Five

Today the fire bell went off, again. It seems to take an entire week to test. This coupled with a big drill/digger thing smashing up foundations of the old building led to an interesting working environment.

The new guy was set the task of adding 35 computers to our DHCP list, inventory and workgroup manager list. Come 4:30 he hadn't completed this task as he said he "had a couple of distractions" which usually means listening to LOUD drum 'n' bass and texting. He also decided to implement his own computer naming convention. We usually use . He had decided to use PowerMac or iMac, or eMac instead of just "mac". Apart from this being completely different to any machine he had ever set up, I explained that we would have to know which machine type we were trying to work on. This temporary loss of sanity was not corrected.

The Other Tech started work on our new image for our G5 macs which is preparing overnight, as well as sorting wireless on the other site for the temporary classrooms.

The Citrix installers didn't turn up - don't know why.

Upgraded our email system to the latest version, which has some handy updated features.

The data wiring people turned up today to cable our old office back up. After we'd been told to strip the old cabling, they'd been told to re-use it! This led on to them planning to re-wire the few rooms in this block from scratch....then they asked when our data cabinets were being moved. I had no idea that this was planned, so they made some phone calls and I panicked a bit (this would involve moving a LOT of fibre cable, and our Internet feed). They concluded that our two wall-mont racks will be merged in to a single 42u floor standing rack in it's current location (semi-phew). I don't know when this work will take place. but for it to start someone else has to remove some built in benching and a sink! The lack of communication is immense.

Day Two Hundred 'n' Forty Two

Half an IT room is semi updated - screens are in as are new keys and mice. Some screens still have their packing on as The New Guy didn't seem to get the "unpack everything" command.

Gigabit switches are installed in the other IT room ready for Power Macs tomorrow. iMacs from here are in stores. Screens are being unpacked by The New Guy.

New Cat 5e cable feeds from our comms room in to our new server room went in today. They need trunking in, and putting through the wall, but it's installed in the main cabinet.

Citrix people seem to be getting on ok, although they found that one of our servers ISN'T 2008 compatible even though they said it was. They have suggested running this machine as a VM on itself, or on one of the new Citrix App servers. Not ideal but it will work.

Took delivery of a new BTO XServe server too. It's staying sealed until we have some space, and a working network! The one it's replacing could host our video streaming but we shall have to see.

The Other Tech worked on installing wireless on the other site for the temporary classrooms. It should broadcast to most of the city!

Day Two Hundred 'n' Forty One

The big fat upgrade started today. We have two new HP DL360 G5 servers with 16GB RAM each. The Ubergeeks are working on this - they work in silence, in power suites.

Screens are in two of the ICT rooms, ready for their G5 towers. 22 eMacs have been put in the scrap heap, and we moved some desks around, and cut some network cables from the building that's going to be demolished. It really doesn't sound like much work, but it really was.

Day 235.5

Epic week ahead - job list:

-Usual day job

-Write up current domain configuration and PDC / BDC config

-Write up new domain plan including hostnames and IPs of new servers

-Collect software to be installed on new domain controller(s)

-Move out of temporary ICT office in to ICT classroom, temporarily

-Move all ICT equipment out of staff room, install in to temporary staff room

-Disconnect all network ports in building to be demolished

-Move all science ICT equipment to old site to store pending room refurb

-Move all english ICT equipment out of rooms pending science refurb, and move to mobile classrooms, pending delivery!

-Remove two plasma screens from staff room / entrance

-Disconnect network points from careers office, move ICT to storage

-Disconnect network points from library office, move ICT to storage

-Move obsolete kit from staff room storage, to somewhere else

-Appraise someone

-Meet with management

-Meet with contractors

-Take delivery of 56 new computers

-Store 56 new computers.....somewhere....