Software for a One-Man IT Department? 84
skywalker107 asks: "I am a one man IT department for a small Company (~100 PCs 4 Servers). I know that the bigger companies use alot of admin tools for inventory, documentation and management. Right now all of my information is spread out over documents, spreadsheets, and diagrams. The software I have tried has been poor at best and only covers one of the areas I need. What do the other small IT departments use to bring this information together and help manage the madness? Is shareware/freeware a good route? Does the open source movement have anything to fit a small scale setting?"
Wiki (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
Wiki: the horror story. (Score:5, Interesting)
Our group used a wiki extensively for posting meeting notes, keeping priority lists, documenting open issues, posting reference data etc. The Wiki was good for us because it was simple, easy to learn, and we could adapt it to a wide variety of uses without having to go through a major requirements analysis and software selection. If we thought we might be able to track, say, outstanding customer issues by giving them a wiki page, we'd try it and see if it worked. By in large the simplicity and flexibility of using a wiki instead of a aresenal of special purpose software was a win for us. Until a certain manager got wind of what we were doing. In fact, we invited him to use our wiki to track what we were up to, instead of buttonholing an engineer and giving him the third degree every time he felt a twinge of anxiety on some issue or another.
The problem is that this manager likes to edit things. At first, it started with his changing fonts around and putting cute little animated gif icons of flames for items he thought were "hot". Then it proceeded to wholesale reorganization of the wiki, in the process breaking about half the document links. Finally he began to use the wiki as his private "brain dump" area, and started to demand that everyone know everything that was in it, which was impossible because he works 80 hours a week, and any time he got a hankering to edit something at a night or on a weekend, he'd satisfy it by spending a few hours shuffling wiki's content around.
Pretty quickly, everyone gave looking the wiki on a regular basis; they only went there when he browbeat them into it. This left him perplexed. He complained that we "advocated" using a wiki (which we never did, we just used it because it was convenient), and then we dropped it. When we point out that a system that changes too rapidly is useless for documentation and tracking, he's completely unable to see how what he's doing might pose a problem for other people. From his perspective, he's just making things "better organized". The more time you spend organizing, the better organized you'll be, right? Sure. And if you spend most of your time in a rush, it must mean you're punctual.
Eventually, what we did was set up a CRM system. Since this is a database application, and we've "neglected" to give him admin privileges, he can't alter the framework of the information at least. He does pelt us with regular "trouble tickets" in which he suggests all kinds of feature enhancements we should add to the CRM "if we have time". We quietly close them and continue taking care of the customers.
Re:Wiki: the horror story. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's really a people problem though - someone needed to throttle that dude.
Something every wiki should do is be able to send out nightly change reports (a la Confluence - it does this, not sure if others do). That way everyone can see nightly changes if they want. Many now are also allowing you to subscribe via RSS to updates etc - this also helps mightily.
Combine that feature with search, and you can update documentation easily, but you also solve the "where did it go?" and "what changed?" problems that updating documentation quickly causes.
Unless someone is changing things 80 hours a week, of course
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
Wikis are terrible when you don't know what you want to know. I recently started playing Galactic Civilizations 2. They have very little information in the manual (but excellent video tutorials in-game) about exactly how to play the game. I looked around and found this [wikicities.com] wiki. And, while it's a great database
Re:Wiki (Score:2)
-Jar.
What exactly are you trying to manage? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think if you can decide what it is you want to manage, you'll be better able to find tools that you need. Yes, plural; because what's a kick-butt asset management tool may suck at making sure all your servers are patched.
Re:What exactly are you trying to manage? (Score:4, Insightful)
Another questions that needs to be answered is: "what's your budget?" - both for the purchase of said tools and the training needed to use these tools.
A common pain in some business outfits is a mismatch between requirements and the budget needed to match these requirements. I hope you don't have a PHB ....
What OS[es]? Plus, my answers (Score:2)
We use Linux on all desktops except upper management and admin staff.
I used MySQLCC and phpMyEdit to create a simple, web-based inventory app.
Documentation is plain text, HTML, or simple diagrams in xcircuit or xfig (converted to JPEGs where necessary for public perusal), all available on the intranet. Mostly public, some dirs require a web login
Re:What OS[es]? Plus, my answers (Score:2)
The one thing I *don't* have is a graphical net explorer that wlil also show me the net in real time in a format that shows the network structure with traffic, etc. 3M has a tool, but it is only so-so (last time I tried it) and rather slow on the older Windows laptop I have available. I'd love to have a good FOSS app for this, preferably for use under Linux, but Windows is aceptable.
I use etherape [sourceforge.net] in combination with iptraf [seul.org] for this. Both are open-source Linux apps. Etherape uses Gtk/Gnome widgets; iptr
Similar Situation (Score:5, Informative)
Layton Technology (Score:4, Informative)
Check out the HelpBox and AuditWizard offerings from Layton Technology [laytontechnology.com].
Not free, but very affordable, and very knowledgable and helpful helpdesk staff. My company's using it, and I'm quite happy with it.
Re:Consider an access database (Score:2, Funny)
So, I sat down with an Access textbook and laboriously designed an Access dB we could use as a trouble ticket system. It was ugly, kludgy, and needed to be compacted nearly every week, but it did the job.
When I presented my solution, I stressed repeatedly that it was strictly temporary, until we managed to get some money to spend on a professional solu
Why on earth is that "flamebait?" (Score:2)
At a former company, we built our asset management system into our LDAP database and put a pretty web interface on it. If you wanted to know where anything was in the company, be it a telephone, a server or a secretary, voila, go to the "directory." Duh, right?
Certai
A non-Wiki post (Score:5, Informative)
My suggestion is to try something like Plone. Set up document types for inventory and any specialized documentation you may need. You can set up simple workflows for processes if you want to get fancy (e.g. track computer order status). You can easily attach documents like spreadsheets as well.
I think you should look at one decent open source package you can customize a little (in Plone's case with no programming) which would encompass as much as you want to manage in one place.
Excellent Suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
I ended up writing a plone product for tracking the inventory of our machines. I used archetypes to create a PCInventory and PCInventoryFolder products. Together I get a top level view of where the machines are, the important hardware stats, etc. in a table, and each row links to the more detailed view of the individual hardware. And the web forms dovetail nicely with the old paper forms we used before.
Other nice things Plone gave me was integration (via LDAP) with our Active Directory, so no need to keep two sets of passwords, a nice product for discussion boards, and it was easy to change the look of the site to match the official company website.
Re:A non-Wiki post (Score:2)
Re:A non-Wiki post (Score:1)
Too easy (Score:1, Funny)
MediaWiki (Score:5, Insightful)
I kinda like MediaWiki as a searchable documentation dump -- to at least capture things and have a decent format.
Benefits:
Trouble ticket system (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Trouble ticket system (Score:3, Informative)
it's called liberum [liberum.org]. we use it here (we have a larger IT department and support about 5000 faculty, staff, and students in addition to about 200+ public use machines) and love it. it's small and simple to use. we've got over 12,000 tickets logged since it was first implemented nearly 3 years ago and the datab
Re:Trouble ticket system (Score:1)
I will offer that the organization should be prepared for it before hand. Introducing a helpdesk system to users who have grown accustomed to calling or dropping by for help is a big deal. Wh
Hire an intern... (Score:2, Offtopic)
One-Man IT dept and still have time for slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
But in all seriousness, you need to say (like the other posts have mentioned) what you are trying to manage. This is way too open ended of a question. I wish the editors would pick up on these rediculously open ended questions and ask the submitter to provide more details before posting.
Sysadmins on Slashdot (Score:2)
Oh, and I'm looking for some project work, for those of you who need some assistance from a veteran.
Use WebGUI (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.webgui.org/ [webgui.org]
It has versioning and workflow so you can set up complex processes. You can store your documents on it and access them from anywhere. You can set up privileges to allow other users to publish/download anything you want. It can handle incident tracking so you can keep track of support requests. It integrates with Active Directory or any other LDAP store so you can use your same user accounts/passwords. And it
Essential tool for a one-man dept. (Score:1, Troll)
Scripts (Score:2, Interesting)
OCS Inventory (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure what other information you want to 'manage,' but for hardware/software inventory, OCS takes the cake.
http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:OCS Inventory (Score:1)
Re:OCS Inventory (Score:1)
Sounds like... (Score:1)
With 100 PCs and 4 servers it sounds like you might need an installation of one or two of the two-legged kind of software.
Re:Sounds like... [Correction] (Score:1)
Not open source/free, but pretty cheap (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not open source/free, but pretty cheap (Score:2)
Thanks for the tip!
Here's what we use (Score:5, Informative)
The combination of these things keeps everything in line. In particular, I'll point out that each part works together in such a way that there is only one place to check documentation (the wiki), one place to check for a work queue (the issue tracker) and one place to check for state information and discussion (the mailing list). That makes it easy to deal with, easy to delegate etc.
Also, you'll note that on a day-to-day basis, unless something breaks, there is no work required. That's huge. If the status quo requires any work at all, you'll eventually hit a scaling limit. The only thing that should require work is either a migration, an upgrade, or an expansion. And of those, upgrades should be easy to (nagios, yum and version control help there)
Re:Here's what we use (Score:1)
Answers to questions (Score:2)
Re:Answers to questions (Score:2)
Sounds Like (Score:2, Informative)
I am on a similar situation... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I am on a similar situation... (Score:2)
There's a excellent point here.
With your the sole geek in an organization, you have to eliminate as much of the support B.S. as possible. One thing I would suggest is that you lock down your desktops, both in terms of software installed, and security, so that you can drastically reduce the potential for user initiated destruction/aggravation.
Have a sit down with managemen
(!docco=job security) == overrated (Score:1, Flamebait)
If that's all you currently posses of value, I'd fire you. Seriously, if all you know is passwords, topology, and a little bit of notes you're not very important. Passwords are easy enough to remove/fix with physical access to the box, nmap and htping will tell me all I need to know about the abstract topology, and a fluke will reveal the physical topology. Then all I'm short is a warm body to figure out a better way to do things than you.
So in short, All I'd be out is a few grand for the fluke because
EZ Audit (Score:2)
Don't spend a lot of time on software (Score:2)
I suggest: (1) You learn how to track and manage priorities using a simple manual system, e.g. one file for things that are on my plate for right now, but I'm sure when I sit down to do something on something else in the same file will interrupt me; a chronological tickler file; everyth
nagios (Score:2)
Re:nagios (Score:1)
Re:nagios (Score:2)
Ah, and one thing to mention too is that with nagios it is fairly easy to set or unset monitoring windows. Since most of our stuff is not super critical, we turn off nagios warnings between 1am and 6am. If a system goes down then and is still down when 6:00am rolls around, then we start get emails or pages and we still have an hour before our more crazy users start rolling in.
We also segregate machines and alerts by importance. Domain controller
Simple tools are better. (Score:2)
Distributed tools are better. (Score:1)
I completely disagree about using PC-specific tools. I agree that tools should be simple, but if you use fat-client-based, opaque documents to store your information, you will not be able to easily grow your department (even temporarily), you will not be able to take vacations and hand off tasks to other people, you will not be able to deal with things remotely, and you'll have all the versioning problems that you normally get when you have unstructured data in big blobs.
There are great free/open tools out
Re:Distributed tools are better. (Score:2)
I think you'll have better luck getting a temp. employee to go into the "Systems Administration Documents" folder and open an appropriately named text file or pdf then bringing them up to speed on cvs. Anyone who has any business touching the systems
Free software that works (Score:1)
L(W)AMP is all you need (Score:2, Informative)
HW & SW inventory: Winventory ( http://winventory.sourceforge.net./ [winventory...eforge.net]
Trouble ticketing: Eventum (http://eventum.mysql.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page [mysql.org]). The Anonymous Reporting Form is a time saver.
Cacti (http://www.cacti.net./ [www.cacti.net] Graphs all parameters on your servers and routers.
Documentation: TikiWiki (http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php [tikiwiki.org]). It has articles, FAQs and LDAP integration.
FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/inde [sourceforge.net]
Software Stack (Score:3, Informative)
I work 60-70% of my time as a member of the core consulting team here and the rest of the time on "IT" administration and management around the local office. I should note though that I am a software engineer first and fore most, but it so happens that in small businesses one must wear many hats. Last year I was also heavily involved in accounting activities and managed a marketing program.
Scale
I only have 30 workstations and 27 servers (only 2 are publicly accessible and 8 are in a RCF) to worry about presently:
Culture
It should be noted that my users are technically very competent, which is a totally different can of worms to you (I assume from your comments), but there are plenty of issues to guard against with too competent a user as well!:) The issues are just different.
Environment
Server OS: RHEL 3
Workstation OS: Fedora Core 4 and 2 MacOS X (those damn graphic designers/marketing folk!:)
VPN Server OS: NetBSD 3 (runs on an Alpha box)
Software Tools
SCM: Subversion http://subversion.tigris.org/ [tigris.org]
Issue Tracking: Trac, which integrates nicely with Subversion http://edgewall.com/trac/ [edgewall.com]
Internal Documentation (for future growth): Trac's built-in wiki http://edgewall.com/trac/ [edgewall.com]
Web Server: Apache, mod_python, mod_ssl, mod_dav, and all that good stuff http://apache.org/ [apache.org]
Knowledge Base: OpenCyc (but looking for something better that is still open source)
Intranet Framework: Python 2.4/TurboGears/Apache/mod_python http://python.org/ [python.org] and http://turbogears.org/ [turbogears.org]
Authentication: Fedora Directory Server (LDAP)
Updates: Yum, up2date
Server Monitoring: Nagios http://www.nagios.org/ [nagios.org]
[Internal] Remote Access: ssh and Gnome/VNC for the rare visual task
[External] Remote Access (i.e. VPN): OpenVPN
Internal Tools
Fixed Asset Management: Rolled my own TurboGears Web/AJAX application that hooks into our accounting system (it took 3 days part-time).
Backups: Rolled own Python backup mechanisms including scripts
Deployment Tools: Using Python's autoinst http://autoinst.tigris.org/ [tigris.org]
Continous Integration: I have started using Bitten instead of using cron and shell scripts to launch Python distribution builds and tests on a nightly and "continuous" basis for immediate feedback - something I find invaluable.
Office Software
As mentioned in a previous posting using a good calendaring tool is a very good idea. My recommendation is the Calendar extension for the Mozilla suite of tools.
The PC's have to go! (Score:2, Interesting)
Parent is Right (Score:2)
Shameless Plug (Score:1)
Re:Shameless Plug (Score:1)
Re:Shameless Plug (Score:2)
The only trouble with it is the web interface is a bit french.
Nice job though, I'll take a good look.
Jason
Biggest time saver: System Images (Score:1)
Google Desktop (Score:1)
In a Windows environment, Google Desktop does a good job indexing Word and Excel documents. In my world, these contain a significant part of our hard to find information. Get in the habit of using keywords in the text of your documents, combine it with some reasonable directory structure and you can keep track of things pretty well.
I've used this for years for my personal pro
Virtualization software (Score:1)
Plus you can't beat the price of free software from VMware(Player/VMServer) or Xen if you don't need to run Windows
Professional Solution (Score:2)
The company enteo [enteo.com] provides software which will do what you want. Look at their Inventory and NetInstall products. You may find the others interesting too!
It's not open source, and it costs money to buy (I think it's licensed per client). It does save a lot of time in the long run though. The demo licence will let you try it out for 90 days.
It's also the only solution of this type I know of that supports Citrix.
-- Steve
Shameless Plug (Score:2)