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Best Practices in Workgroup Maintenance? 43

Posted by Cliff from the efforts-in-tedium-reduction dept.
option8 asks: "As the sysadmin for a smallish workgroup (15 or so users) I'm constantly wrestling to balance a regular maintenance regime with the users' continued productivity. As it is, I strive to keep my regular maintenance to a minimum -- optimizing drives, checking for directory and file corruption, permissions repairs, clearing logs, software updates -- after hours, on weekends, or whenever someone goes on vacation. I have a lot of stuff scripted - backups and whatnot go off every night - but there's a lot that requires at least a minimum of my 'monkey clicks the Okay button now' attention. Is this the best way, or do the other BOFHs out there have a better solution to regularly scheduled maintenance for the workgroups/labs/studios they oversee?"
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Best Practices in Workgroup Maintenance? More

Best Practices in Workgroup Maintenance?

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  • Simple. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:17PM (#12999122)

    One whip, one master, 14 slaves. "Code, ye dogs!"

  • Remote Desktop and Weekends (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cdwiegand ( 2267 ) <chris@wiegandfamily.com> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:19PM (#12999125) Homepage
    I get to take off time early sometimes because I often Remote Desktop to the windows machines (and ssh to the linux ones) to do upgrades/auditing/etc. on Sundays. I don't do that every Sunday, but at least once a month, usually twice a month. So my boss is a little flexible when it comes to coming in at 9, leaving at 5:30, etc.. But without Remote Desktop, I'd have to either a) come in the office, or b) use VNC (which sucks). I have a 12-desktop/9-server setup, so I'm around the same size site as the OP.

    • Re:Remote Desktop and Weekends (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:25PM (#12999158)

      I use DameWare myself...glad I was able to talk the boss into it. System administration without DameWare would be a real drag...yes, everything you can do with DameWare can be done with the regular Windows software (Remote Desktop, etc.), but DameWare makes things much more centralized and easily accesable. Bottom line: I'd highly reccomend it.
      • System administration without DameWare would be a real drag.

        With a name like "DameWare" ("DameWear"?) I'd think it was for doing drag! [rimshot] Thank you, dahlings, you've been loverly! I'm Angie O'Plasty and I'll be here all week! [cue exit music]

    • > my boss is a little flexible when it comes to coming in at 9, leaving at 5:30

      Isn't the workday 9-5?
      • Not where I've worked - all in Colorado.US. Workdays are 8a-5p, with 1 hour lunches (so it's a 40 hour workweek). I'm supposed to come in at 8am, but I usually end up coming in sometime before 9.. And sometimes I take a longer lunch, but that's to make up for part of my Sundays.
      • The normal workday for most people is 9-5. Since I work in a K-12 environment, my workday is 7:30-4. I wish I was 9-5.

  • um (Score:3, Funny)

    by ReverendRyan ( 582497 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:31PM (#12999197) Homepage
    It seems to me that a good BOFH wouldn't worry about little things like regular maintenance. Or any maintenance. Or users, for that matter. In fact, why do you even go into work, except to delete files?

  • UltraVNC. AutoIt. OpenVPN. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:37PM (#12999225) Homepage

    I've found that UltraVNC [ultravnc.com] is the best VNC. Version 1.0.0 was released on 24 Jun 2005, but it is a quite advanced package. Be sure to install UltraVNC with the video driver [uvnc.com], which is not included on Sourceforge.

    AutoIt [autoitscript.com] is by far the best open source software for automating Windows installs and other tasks in which the program pretends to be a user. There's an IDE with an Intellisense-like interface and a compiler.

    I've heard that OpenVPN [openvpn.net] is the best software-based VPN, but I have not used it. There are hardware firewalls with VPNs; I suggest you stay away from Netgear's, which I have found to be quirky.

    --
    Bush lied, 100,000 died. J.C. said not to return violence with more violence.
    • Why are people obsessed with "The Best" software package for everything? Everytime I browse through forums and newsgroups, there'd be people asking for "the best" software package for this, and that.

      "The Best" is what you decide on after evaluating all reasonable choices. The question is not what "the best" is, but what "the recommended" are.

      I hate "the best".
      • "The Best" means that someone has an opinion about something that makes them feel that that something is able to fill a solution or need above the other choices they know about.

        More often than not, however, people do get blindsided by things they don't know. For example, if I hadn't read about the grandparent's post of ultravnc, I may not have ever heard about it. At this point, I am going to look into it as a solution for managing my own boxes at work and at home, as a possible replacement for plain-van
        • The best is a singular exclusive choice. What you're actually after is a set of choices from which you can perform your evaluations on. I am against the authoritative term "the best", not against people seeking for suggestions.
    • I've heard that OpenVPN is the best software-based VPNIt is & it has replaced an odd mish-mash of PPTP, IPSEC, and services-which-run-over-SSHD for me. If I were ever to buy a hardware VPN again (not likely), I'd probably buy one with OpenVPN support. I think CheckPoint and NetScreen do this.

  • cfengine (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Procyon101 ( 61366 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @09:18PM (#12999428) Journal
    check out cfengine [cfengine.org]
  • If you're maintaining Windows-computers, I can highly recommend AutoIt [autoitscript.com].

    It is the perfect tool/language for automating away tedious tasks. You can even make executables with it. :-)

    AutoIt is script based, so it might take a few minutes to write what you want, but in my experience it's worth it. The language is very simplistic and reminds a bit of batch-files in DOS. But, using the utilities that comes with it, automating a task is a relatively quick undertaking.

    It has saved me a lot of time and hassle in

  • a pound of prevention, vs. a ton of maintenance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @10:18PM (#12999702) Homepage
    I manage about 300 college classroom/lab computers, but I don't really have much "maintenance" for them. Of course shortly before each semester begins, I go around and wipe every hard drive down to the boot sector, and reload pre-configured software images. But not much in between. I do have work-study student employees for "monkey clicks OK" type stuff, but since they rarely actually do what I ask them to do, so that doesn't really count.

    Most of my efforts are preventative, putting a lot of thought and fine-tuning into the base software images, to harden them against user abuse and malware, and to automate security patches and definition updates as much as possible. For the Windows machines that's Symantec Anti-Virus with daily updates, Spybot S&D with full Immunization, and MS's auto-critical-updates.

    I've found Apple Remote Desktop to be very handy for occasional maintenance on the Macs, such as OS updates and security patches.

    For the Windows machines, I usually wait for users to complain about spyware before I wipe them and reload a clean image, rather than doing it on a regular basis during the semester. Mostly that's because the profs don't teach their students good backup habits, and I'm not BOFH enough to go around teaching them painful lessons about not keeping the only copies of their work on the hard drive. Yet. I'm still new on staff, so I'm building up my goodwill reserve before I start doing that.

    • I'm in a similar situation to yours, maintaining ~200 lab PCs for the ITE program at a Community College. Like you, I put a lot more work into creating a clean, stable image on the front end. But one piece of software has made my maintenance/ virus/ spyware/ user error worries dissapear:

      Faronics Deep Freeze [faronics.com]

      Deep Freeze works by "freezing" a workstation after you've imaged it (with remote console functions in the Enterprise version). All changes after that point are journaled (?) and the journal is fl
      • I has a run-in with Deep Freeze once in my last job. The IT dept there doesn't use it, and I was unaware the product even existed. But someone in the library had installed it on one of their computers, and neglected to tell IT that they'd done so. After a while, the anti-virus software started complaining about the virus defs being out of date - and promptly shutting the system down, according to college policy - so I was sent to fix it. I hacked on that thing for two hours* before I figured out why no r
    • Similar to my work.

      Classrooms:
      We build and create a new default image with all the new software that we require on the machines (most is actually provided via dfs) every year for the 'summer upgrades'. Paranoid policy settings to restrict access to as much as we can get away with without breaking software. These have an automated reboot every night and install whatever patches etc on the reload. This does create an issue where some users ignore the pop up warning of the reboot in 15mins/10.. etc and theref

  • Scripting to the rescue!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by chota ( 577760 ) <chrishota@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @10:26PM (#12999732) Homepage

    Seriously, you can do everything you've hinted to with VBScript.

    I recommend:

    The Microsoft ScriptCenter has just launched a new monthly column regarding beginning scripting in Windows; it's called Sesame Script. (The scripting guys are a little geeky.)

    Also, point your favorite nntp client at msnews.microsoft.com and do a search for wsh, script, etc, and subscribe and ask! The newsgroups are full of helpful folks!

    Remember the motto: If it has to be done more than once, script it!

    PS, to get a script to emulate a monkey pressing ok, have it loop, watching for a dialog box of whatever name it will be, then activate that dialog (WScript.AppActivate) and then send an "Enter" keystroke (WScript.SendKeys). Good example is here:

    • Absolutely, scripting is the way to go.

      Perl might be a better choice if you have multiple playforms to manage (Win32, Unix-like, some big iron).

      Script a lot and use centralised management tools. You have got a windows domain, and not just a workgroup? With a Windows or Novell domain you get a directory service and either Group Policy or ZEN works to manage your workstations. Forget even going to those workstations every month, reduce that to every quarter.

      Remember that 15 workstations might turn in to 20

  • Take all of this good advice... (Score:3)

    by jannesha ( 441851 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @11:35PM (#13000094)
    ...only, remember:

    Use this advice to save yourself time, but don't tell your boss about it. Keep him thinking that you do it all on Sundays, and continue to take the extra time off.

    Since you seem to actually care about Things Being Done Properly, you deserve it

  • Hire a monkey. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @11:52PM (#13000169) Homepage
    Seriously. You are the sysadmin, not a digital janitor. OK, so even if you can do all of this maintenance work from home via Remote Desktop on a Sunday afternoon -- do you really want to? Is this in your job description? As you pointed out, you still have do do the monkey clicks. Even if you script everything, you'll still need to do basic functional tests after the smoke has cleared.

    I know of at least one shop in town that has hired weekend help (usually honest and lonely college students) to maintain their end-user Windows PCs. At the end of the year the monkey salary still adds up so little that it's still cheaper than moving to a new platform (Linux, Mac OS X).
    • Seriously. You are the sysadmin, not a digital janitor.

      Spare me. You are the sysadmin, not the Prince Consort. The job description for such positions (especially in small shops) probably does include "click OK buttons as needed". I've got the proverbial brain the size of a planet, but I'm not above cleaning mice balls or other menial tasks if they need to be done. In a small shop the sysadmin's job is "make it go" and this is all just part of that.

      Hiring an additional primate (of whatever species a

  • I don't know if this suggestion helps at all, but I'd recommend setting up weekly CRON scripts if your servers are *NIX-ish at all. I don't know what your maintenance routine consists of, so I don't know if this is even applicable.

    Aside from that...

    In my line of work (web application development), I write scripts to do database integrity checks on my clients' systems, filesystem monitoring (for checking file sizes and permissions), and data transfer monitoring. Scripting all of these things together, and
  • That might cut down on the mindless button clicks.

    At my work we have about 25 desktops. Because our company is small, one of my side responsibilities is sysadmin stuff. The maintainance part is really small. If you leave a system with auto-updates and an under-targetted browser and email program, it almost maintains itself.

    Most of our systems run XP Home with an extra script to properly mount everything on bootup. I have another script for easy installion of that script. We enable auto-update. It hasn't c

  • Monkey clicks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by leprasmurf ( 561814 )
    I'm not sure which monkey clicks your talking about, but I know for windows patches, if you run them from command line you can put in flags. `KB###### /?` should give you the available options. What we've done at my work on certain occasions is to create a batch file that runs each of the patches, followed by a program that runs at the end to give priority to the proper patches (afraid I can't remember the program, but a google search should reveal). The "At" command also helps with scheduling that batch

  • lazy admin is good admin (Score:3, Insightful)

    by outcast36 ( 696132 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @08:40AM (#13001855) Homepage
    I wanted to reiterate how important scripting is for your sanity. Be sure to check out the resource kits that come with each OS & IIS. These have lots of command-line scripts that lend themselves to some time-saving admin scripting fun.

  • Off-site backup and good PR. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Presumably your computer stuff is important enough that if you totally lost it, you would be out of business.

    One of our local ISPs runs a 'data fortress' where people keep off-site backups. It's a really good idea. Depending on how prone your area is to natural disasters, you might want your backup a long way from where you are.

    People are also starting to run virtual machines for their servers. I haven't done it myself but I'm told that you can get back online really fast even if the original server is

  • If You're Using Windows.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Doc Squidly ( 720087 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @03:12PM (#13006574)
    ...then 10 systems is about the max for workgroups.

    If you plan to grow any larger I'd recommend moving to a Domain instead of a Workgroup. This would give you centralized administration, give you the ability to remotely publish software updates to you systems and the ability to control all your systems via Group Policies.

    This will be a hard sell to you boss but, try to provide a detailed cost/benifit analyse looking at the manpower that currently is wasted by having maintain each system seperately and scaleability issues.

    If that doesn't work you can still create local policies on each computer to prevent problems.

    Good Luck
  • checkout http://sf.net/projects/matr [sf.net]
    It is being developed to help reduce and organize administrative tasks. It allows you to manage the computers connected to your network using a Jabber Client as your admin interface. It works like this:

    1) Create scripts that determine which computers have a problem.

    2) Send scripts to the MATTER clients in your Global Buddy List.

    3) MATTER executes those scripts which reports the result back though the MATTER client by assigning a new buddy to their roster. ie.

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