Network Managment
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Things have been getting a little crazy at work. When I first started things were slow enough that I could go by the time trusted remembering things and then dealing with them as they cropped up.
If things got a little heated I’d make a list and add the newest to the bottom.
As of late those two methods are not working. I have a personal goal of 100% follow through meaning no requests got forgotten. Dumped, re-prioritized, pushed aside, but not forgotten. This book really helps get that done for system administrators.
I’ve read a lot of time management books and most of them don’t spend a lot of time on the particular issues of the sysadmin. Prioritizing things is nice, except when your day is punctuated by a continuous stream of requests. So prioritization has to be constant. And if you are spending your time prioritizing, when’s the work getting done.
From the Jacket Review:
Time Management for System Administrators understands that an Sys Admin often has competing goals: the concurrent responsibilities of working on large projects and taking care of a user’s needs. That’s why it focuses on strategies that help you work through daily tasks, yet still allow you to handle critical situations that inevitably arise.
Among other skills, you’ll learn how to:
Manage interruptions
Eliminate timewasters
Keep an effective calendar
Develop routines for things that occur regularly
Use your brain only for what you’re currently working on
Prioritize based on customer expectations
Document and automate processes for faster execution
What’s more, the book doesn’t confine itself to just the work environment, either. It also offers tips on how to apply these time management tools toyour social life. It’s the first step to a more productive, happier you.
I haven’t applied the whole book so far, but last week was a particular hectic one with several emergencies and with this system I managed to deal with the emergencies and get a lot of things done as well.
CmdrChalupa Stamp of Approval:
Written by CmdrChalupa on February 14th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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GMail for your domain.
Wow, this would be a sweet thing to have. It would potentialy put a lot of little mail server companies behind the 8 ball.
Google is apparently thinking about (or about to beta) a product to let you provide their service as mail for your server/domain/service.
Nice if done properly and end sites don’t necessarily know it’s Google at fist look and can easily ban your users or prohibit them from registering with your email addresses.
Too many companies now have added gmail to the same list as yahoo, and hotmail accounts to the list of free accounts they won’t accept.
But I welcome the opportunity to shift my mail burdens of end users off to them. Provided of course I can still manage them and drop deadbeat users. The beta page shows a control panel and the same 2 gigs we’re used to. I welcome the spam filtering, etc, etc.
This is huge for some of us, but the general public won’t care.
Technorati Tags: GMail, IT, Free Mail, hosted, tech
Written by datapoohbah on February 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on IT and Network Managment and Web Development.
It started out innocently enough. A couple of users mailed in and said that conference rooms were not accepting meeting requests.
While exchange is generally a great product, and is truly bulletproof, the functionality for resource scheduling is a pile of disgusting crap so vile we shall not speak of it in polite company. Since no one’s polite here, I’ll drive on.
(more…)
Written by CmdrChalupa on February 1st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Network Managment and The Truth Hurts.
The Poohbah’s Endorse Cacti: The Complete RRDTool-based Graphing Solution
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool’s data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.
Screenshots | Features
I set this up the other day on our generic network administration Fedora Core 3 box and it took about 30 minutes from downloading to the first graph. Truly an excellent package. No programming necessary, everything can be run through the web gui. Full effectiveness does require a knowledge of what you are measuring and why.
Written by CmdrChalupa on January 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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Directory Express is almost there. I’ve stopped adding features and am cleaning the code. Here are some more screenshots of the phone itself. These pics were taken of the desktop Cisco ip communicator. It’s basically a 7970 color screen.
Here is the Main Menu showing that in addition to the ordinary directory options you can search by name, initials or Department.
Searching by name lets you specify a first or last name by text.
Searching by initials mean punch in the first initial and last initial by number. if you want to find the number of John Smith you would punch in 57 and submit. This kind of search is wicked fast with the least number of button pushes and in small organizations gets you to the right person quickly.
Searching by department rips through the Active Directory to find all departments listed, so this is a dynamic list of entries in the users AD department field. Choose one to see the list.
Written by CmdrChalupa on December 19th, 2005 with no comments.
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I recently received a magazine called ‘BizTech’. No it’s not really a magazine. It’s an Adverzine published by CDW.
There was an interesting article in this months Adverzine titled “Preparing for the Worst”
Now the image doesn’t show up so well here but in the Adverzine it’s a full friggin page.
This guy, who’ll remain nameless here on DataPoohbah, had is picture taken in front of his patch-panel for this article. (We’ve fuzzed him out so that he’ll remain somewhat protected, but damn dude, if they click through and figure out who you are, you should have known better.)
A patch-panel that is a complete and utter rats nest. If the worst struck his organization I don’t know how he’d ever figure out what’s connected to what. If he had a communications issues, they’d spend precious time tracing cables.
He should be embarrassed.
A properly patched network room/data center should look something like this:
Color coordinated, labeled and tagged patch cords. Velcro’d not wire tied so you can get them apart if need be, and in a hurry too.
Everything has it’s place and a place for everything. If the port isn’t live or need to be connected it’s not. If you need to connect it, you can find it. (what a concept).
Handy work provided by one CmdrChalupa!
It makes troubleshooting oh so much easier when you just do things right from the get go.
Written by datapoohbah on December 6th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on Commentary and IT and Network Managment and The Truth Hurts.
