Re: [SAGE] Strategies for taking ownership of existing infrastructure?

[Martin Jackson <martin@guyver.demon.co.uk>]

Another suggestion I remember is to log a helpdesk ticket for
everything, and I mean everything! Every request, every issue you think
should be fixed, every little niggle/issue you come across from host x
keeps panicing on at 3:00am to labeling the internet router it'll help
you learn your networks pain points very quickly and help you remember
all the stuff that needs to be fixed.

-Martin
Martin Jackson wrote:

> Jesús, I'd suggest 3 books:
>
> The Practice of System and Network Administration, ISBN:0201702711
> Blueprints for High Availability, ISBN 0471430269
> Automating Unix and Linux Administration, ISBN 1590592123
>
> and one website
>
> http://www.infrastructures.org
>
> When I took control of the infrastructure at my current workplace, the 
> last sysadmin had walked out, there was minimal documentation (i.e. 
> the passwords) and not much else, and the was network problems like 
> you would not believe, at the time I used the www.infrastructures.org 
> checklist and it got me up and running I started a webpage about what 
> I was doing a few ago but never finished it 
> (http://www.guyver.demon.co.uk/projects/WideScaleLinuxDeployment.html) 
> your welcome to look at it but its wildly out of date now and a lot 
> has changed.
> I've read the above 3 books and wish I had those as well at the time 
> but I review them continually over and over again because there are 
> some serious nuggets of information that can be found in later reads.
>
> The best thing I suggest is auditting what you've got at the moment 
> and trying to find the dependencies between them and work on a 
> template for dragging the systems into some sort of standard or 
> imposing a new infrastructure template using new equipment and 
> transition all services to that if possible.
>
> Good luck
>
> -Martin Jackson
>
> Jesús Couto wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> The subject line sound awful (and its my first post :-/). Basically
>> I'm just asking for advice for the following situation:
>>
>> I'm now the primary sysadmin dealing with Unix systems, somewhere. As
>> such, I've find myself inheriting the current infrastructure... what
>> that means?
>>
>> It means I have to support process & applications I dont know about &
>> didnt install, and are not documented... basically, things "work", by
>> virtue of being more or less evolved and hammered till they do, but I
>> dont have a clear picture of ... well anything, and the way thing
>> works is very brittle. One machine uses one mail server, another uses
>> other that is not listed anywhere, DNS is not coherent either, with
>> each machine configured to use either a differen server or its own
>> /etc/hosts files... same for proxies, same for... everything. List of
>> things "wrong" here is enourmous, mainly in the "this thing doesnt
>> scale and sure it is not easy to transfer admin to anybody that was
>> not here where the working hacks where put in place".
>>
>> I guess people here have found themselves in the same situation... I'm
>> trying to organize my ideas at all levels (technical, practices &
>> procedures, organization, "office politics") about how to get to own
>> the place. So any tip or advice you can come up with is welcome.
>>
>> Thanks in advance... I'll try to work on putting whatever suggestions
>> you come up and my ideas in place...
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Jesús Couto F.
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>
>
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