Inheriting a badly setup network.

[DesertWolf]

Just to let you know at the start this is a rant to let off steam..........
Some of you know me , and also know I haven't been around much lately...
I go a job in Oct. as a Database developer/Programmer with a nonprofit, with the understanding that I would also have to work as the help desk. OK no problem..right?...NO!
I was the first full time IT person that this company had ever had.. they had a string of consultant DBAdmins and Network people throught the years. so what I had dropped in my lap was a set of 3 different databases that should have been related to each other that were not. A network that was streached to its limits, thought they had a brand new Dell Server with Win2K# installed for me to set up for them....they had been running a W2K network up till now, and had 1 server doing fiel server. db server, exchange server, and PDC, on 1 SCSI harddrive....
I am sure my boss was not happy when I told him that all of our anti-virus and backup software would not work on the W2K3 server that they had. And that was befor I told him that the exchange 5.5 server they had planned to move to the new server would not run on it...
So I have spent half the time I was suppost to be developing a new DB and interface keeping the network up and trying to get what I need to get the new server up.
And then last week things hit the fan...I started getting driver errors in the events logs... the main servers 1 hard drive was failing....
so my boss said to order a new server to replace the one that was failing...OK I did that and Dell got it to me in less than a week. But the old server was such a screwed up mes that I have spent 2 days getting precesses that had not been working to work . Tonight I was at work from 9:00 am to 1:30 am and 8.5 hours of that was trying to get the old hard drive info transfered to the new server...
So after this novel I have written( if you made it this far) what is my point ?
I wish consultants and contract labor would put a little more foresight into their work and remember that they probably will not be the ones that have to deal with the system down the road.
If you made it this far...thanks.. As I said at the start this is a rant ...and a way for me to blow off steam.
:butt:

[sde]

i totally sympathize. i currently am working on a project to consolidate many databases. the hitch is that the main database resides in an as/400 which makes it difficult to integrate existing external applications which were written for mssql, mysql, notes, etc..

i don't think the problem relies entirely on outside consultants who develop these things, but rather a lack of understanding withing the company itself.

if the company doesn't communicate the direction they are going to the consultants, then the consultants probably won't have any idea.

with that said, .. if the company was capable of knowing where their IT systems were going in the future, they probably wouldn't need to contract outside IT work

be happy you're not having to consolidate everything into a db2 database

[Belisarius]

I know I brought in some outside help to patch up my Dad's computer network. A combination of a couple consultants himself and myself (back when I was in highschool, and didn't know anything) patched together the network over the course of about 5 years without any sort of planning, and I knew it needed some bad help.

Over the course of the next year, the help/friend I brought in to straighten things out has slowly gotten things under control (he could only work part time). Good thing I did, because after a few months, his servers (which were in reality shady desktops) died. And at the same time, he hooked the network up to the Internet for the first time, so we had fun with viruses. My friend spent the better part of a month cleaning off viruses, and we custom built three servers to replace the dying servers. Things are starting to get back under control, finally.

[amc_calder]

Y'know, as a barely beginning programmer, you guys are scaring me! Maybe I should have been a police officer instead?