A question about your IT shop....

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-09-26 08:57pm

The MS Blaster thread got me to thinking. Im curious about your experiences as an IT staff member.

Basically, what do you think your dept did well. What did you need improvement on.

My experience has been that most companies have trouble with tracking the inventory unless they have a very unmobile workforce. Our inventory left much to be desired. Sometimes departments would buy their own equipment and not notify us. That is a failure of policy.

One thing I think we did very well, was setting the expectation of the customer. By this I mean letting the user know what we can cover, when we can get it done, and what things simply wont be done cause there is no money.

We were also pretty good at finding cheap ways around some problems.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2003-09-26 09:25pm

We managed to patch up all our 20+ clients in a few days; the only issues were NT 4.5 problems with the Microsoft patch. But, our most miserly clients had to have their servers rebuilt, so serves them right. Most of our smaller clients were surprised at how easily the virus was cleaned, since the media had hyped it up the wazoo. Even the clients that was positively exposed to it had no issues with a 30min clean up. Those rebuilds tho... *shudder*

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2003-09-27 03:54am

The real problem was the fact that most businesses wait to see if MS patches are stable, as it is a well known fact that a patch from MS could fuck up your critical server moreso than if you left it unpatched!

Then along comes the nasty comp virus...

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-09-27 11:19am

We provide IT support to the unwashed masses

We spent about five days at full capacity, all lines screaming, with over a hundred calls queued, and we hit answer rates of about 15% (htat means that 85% of people who tried to contact us gave up).

At one point, the phone company decided to unplug us, as they noticed that some of the 400 or so lines into the building weren't working (this is about the first time wev'e hit capacity)

To illustrate, our normal call volume is around 10000 calls handled a day, and that's with only about 15-20 queued at any one time, and we answer 75% of all calls offered.

By the end of the first day, we had a fix down, so we could get a caller off the line in about three minutes, with solution in hand.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2003-09-28 01:34am

EmperorMing wrote:The real problem was the fact that most businesses wait to see if MS patches are stable, as it is a well known fact that a patch from MS could fuck up your critical server moreso than if you left it unpatched!

Then along comes the nasty comp virus...

Ironically, the we had alot of issues with the MS-issued fix on old NT servers, so they were WORSE off once they did the right thing and updated!

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-28 01:37am

Microsoft has even admitted to releasing buggy patches in the past.

When you compare the Microsoft update process to the patch process on a Linux distro such as Mandrake, the differences are stark. When I get a Mandrake patch, it's an RPM package which I can install automatically or download and install later. Because it's an RPM package, I can crack it open and see all of the files in it and know precisely what it's going to do, instead of crossing my fingers and praying like a guy preparing to install a Microsoft patch on his Windows box.

Also, the patches never require a reboot unless they're kernel upgrades, and you can fuck up most of the services on a Linux box without torching the whole OS, so even if something goes wrong, you can still get it booted up to a level where it's possible to undo the patch. Even a kernel upgrade can be swiftly undone (you can set up a machine to dual-boot between the old kernel and the new one until you're happy with the new one).

By contrast, it's entirely possible for a single patch or even a driver upgrade to totally hose a Windows box.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2003-09-28 02:42am

That's exactly what happened to two of our clients - the fix from MS (not the windowsupdate cab, the downloadable fix app) destroyed their NT servers. It changed the RAS setup in such a way as to refuse to make connections. Obvioulsy, they made their RAS service a bit *TOO* secure. In both cases, hours of investigation revealed no similar cases, and no fix - even removing all the network components and services and painstakingly reinstalling and configuring them didn't work.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-09-28 01:13pm

Darth Wong wrote: By contrast, it's entirely possible for a single patch or even a driver upgrade to totally hose a Windows box.

Hence the time I got a call from our Denver office. One of the users tried to install a wireless Logitech keyboard for his laptop and after the first reboot he got a BSOD and the laptop never able to boot again. At least we were able to recover the data.