Well, Blog me down!

NT4 to Server 2003 Migration.

It?s Friday 27th May 2005. Shapelle corby has just been found
guilty in an Indonesian court and scentenced to 20 years jail. A
terrible time for her and her family. There goes my holiday
plans. The server we have now is old and on the verge of
self destructing. I look forward to this challenge.

My IT History

I?ve been in the industry for 2 years...working at the one place. There are
about 50 users and just the one NT server. Before I started working here I had
very limited knowledge. I work with one other person, who is the IT manager. It
has fallen to me to take over the responsibility of the server and the network
and just about all the associated responsibilities. The work load is quite
high, as I have minimal knowledge as does my supervisor, who has been in the
job for about 5 years.

Beginning the Process

For some time I have researched the web for information about W2k3; browsing
forums, Microsoft sites and reading whitepapers...not to mention being
subscribed to the TechRepublic server 2003 newsletter! I have some friends who
are also in the industry that have provided some very good information on what
to do and how to address the roll over and so far it all looks promising. I
have bought a text book - Mastering Windows Server 2003, by Mark Minasi - and
am reading that at the moment, trying to absorb as much of it as possible. As I
am relatively new to IT many of the concepts and terms are foreign and
difficult to grasp, but I'm getting there.

I have also attended a MS course (which my work paid for! :) - Managing and
Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment (2273A) - and that proved
very beneficial. Before attending I had read a small amount about the OS and
this cleared up many questions that would go unanswered until I had a 'hands
on' look at the OS.

After the course I installed a copy of W2k3 to a test network - which work
also supplied! :D I have been following the books I have an trying to apply the
concepts to my test network and relating this to my real situation. For now it
seems to be going abnormally smoothly.... I've reinstalled the OS to the test server
only twice! As I write this and look over to the servers monitor I see that
"Setup will be complete in approximately: 7 minutes" I wait with
bated breathe.

It's a strange thing; to watch somoene being scentenced to jail.
To see the emotion on their face, see them weep, pray and pleed. 
Especially somone that I've seen every day in one way or another for
the last 7 months -
whether on TV, in the newspapers or reading online. I've been
presented with a Schapelle Corby that is completelly innocent of her
crime - and for what its worth... I think she is. Only for the
fact that no one can be that stupid to take drugs to a country that
imposes the death penalty to anyone caught importing them. The fact
that it was 4kg of dope that is worth more in Australia than over there
emphasises this point greatly...however this
girl is very lucky to be still alive

My initail reaction hearing that she was caught smuggling drugs into
Indonesia and that if found guilty she faced the death penalty was "You
fool! How could anyone be THAT stupid!" Then I learned
about dodgey baggage handlers, drug mules and the underground drug
runners between Indonesia and Australia. The Bali Nine portray
this perfectly. How then did Schapelle become guilty of
this? Either she was a mule, which is unlikely given the
circumstance (4kg of dope ina body board bag is hardly low profile), or
she is innocent and the drugs planted.

Also the fact that no forensic investigation by the Indonesian
authorities leaves the whole case open to speculation. "He says, She
says." Is that a basis for a fair trial? Believing a
customs officer over the factual evidence?! Fingerprinting of the bag
would be the simplest, easiest way to obtain a guilty or innocent
verdict. It leaves no doubt or suspicion. Now we will never
know. This system is flawed beyond belief!

The court system in Indonesia, from what I've learnt is based on the
European system, a legacy of its former occupancy... Guily till proven
innocent. Already you are on the back foot if you're caught, and now it seems
those feet will stay firmly on an Indonesian slab of concrete that she
will know as 'home' for the next 20 years.

Ok, so I talked to some supliers...but first I did some homework...

Obviously I cant supply and (fully) install the gear myself so one
afternoon I sat down with my supervisor and we mapped out our plan of
attack. Firstly we worked out exactly what we have now, no
biggie, just a whiteboard and some markers and we had a fairly good
understanding of what we are running and what we need in the
future. From this brainstorm we can easily determine what we need
in the future as far as Software and Harware. Some software
packages we have now will be also upgraded with the new server, as they
wont operate that well with NT.

We nominated Small Business Server 2003 as the OS, mainly because it's
ALOT cheaper than standard, and the premium version comes bundled with
ISA, Exchange and SQL - all of which we need. Too easy. The
only limitation that affects us is the 75 seats it can handle...as we
now have about 50 - and while we are growing - I cant (and the managers
- I refuse to take all the blame for this project if it fails!!!
;) ) see that we will eceed this amount in the next 5 years ( the
time nominated as the life-span of this beast)

So after this little jorb finished up it was time to email the suppliers! Hoorah!

The First Encounter...

I contacted 4 major supliers, inviting them to come to our work
place and talk with us about our need and to inspect our current
setup. All to easy, yet again. Within a week of the first
contact they all came out and met with us and I got a decent enough
impression they knew what they were talking about. Here is the
run down of the four supliers - that will remain annonymous.
( iguess thats the right thing to do??)

No1.
These guys were very impressive, they stayed for about an hour and got
a good feel of where we were at both technically and business
concious. They offered very practical solutions to many IT
problems, such as imaging, DR, PC, remote access etc. They have
contually got back to us with good questions about software
compatibility and asked for more details about things like remote acess
and remote backup solutions. I'm looking forward to seeing what they
come up with.

No2.
In comarison to No1, No2 were rank ametuers. I had never been in
contact with these guys but they kept sending us ther company info and
catalogues and asking us for their business so this looked like a good
test run for
them...hehehe...They turned up on the same day as No1 in the
afternoon. They stayed for 15 minutes and asked basically no
questions. They were the manager and assistant manager of their
company so I would have thought they were knowledgable. I 'sort
of' quized them about Server 2003 and asked how many users SBS can
have, niether knew the answer. This tells me they havent had much
experiecne with this sort of thing :P The only thing they offered
as a 'service' of theirs was a foldout TFT monitor and keyboard to work
at the server with - right after I told them I would prefer to
administer the server from my desktop PC! I also look forward to
seeing what they come up with. I fear it will be another copy of
thier catalogue with big red circles around the servers they sell and
an arrow pointing to it saying: "this one looks good for you"

No3.
These guys we had some dealings with in the past. they were
reputable and professional. Like No1. they sat with us for the
best part of an hour and offered many solutions, focusing on software
deployment with W2k3 through group policies.

No4.
This crew suplied our current server and do the routing
maintenance. Once more they knew their bacon and I'm sure they
can follow through with the goods. Since our meeting we have
recieved a quote with three different options from them for the supply
of the hardware and the software and delivered it in person, explainig
the different options and also came out with their techincal guy to
talk about the roll over and what options we have, such as create a
whole new domain, do the rollover during work hours or over a weekend
and how much input I will have with the job. So far they look
good. I just need to compare them to the others when we get thier
quotes.

Everything seems to be going rather smoothly. I cant wait till
we get to the 'hands on' stuff. I think that is where the
decision will be made - how well these guys can roll over to the new
server with minimul down time.

The Story So Far...

Since the visit fromt he Suppliers, a long long time ago, there has
been a bit of activity worth noting.  Lets break it down again:

No. 1  No quote from them yet, but Ive got a mailbox full of
emails and plenty of calls to answer regarding questions about our
services and network; such as connection speeds to different sites and
various other things. No other Suppliers have asked these questions so
it looks like No. 1 are going all out, which is good to see but may
also be unneccerily expensive.

No. 2  These fellas came back to us last week with a small delima.
They can't do the install - its "too far out of thier league".
hmm..they could have us this when we met them 2 WEEKS AGO! Geez. 
Soooo... they had to make a meeting with us and someone that we've
never heard of to discuss the install.  I cant wait.

No 3.  This lot were promising.  They have huge clients and
thier company has grown considerably in the past few years securing
many contracts.  They just called me 10 minutes ago to say they
were too busy with these large contracts to work on our piss small
job.  Bah, 2 years ago they would have been begging us for a
contract.

No 4.  Not much has changed with this crew since the previous blog
entry.  The quote of thiers is still sitting on my desk waiting to
be compared with 2 others.  One of which will be worth looking at.

So, after starting out with 4 perfectly reasonable Suppliers, they
themselves have narrowed the field down to 2.  Its not good from
my end.  I wanted more options to get the best possible sytem for
my company. 

However...

The Outsider...

There is another option remaining.  Our ISP, the bigest gossip
in the biz (if there is any dirt on anyone in the industry this guy wil
know it) he has put us onto another crowd that handles these types of
jobs.  If we need to, which I think we do, we can call onthese
guys to come and talk things over with us.  I'm leaning towards
this option to get more quotes.  It's late in the game but theres
still time.

So here we are...

Over a month ago we contacted the 4 suppliers. One has pullout
out and so we got a replacment. About 2 hours ago I have a meting
with number 1. They have finally submitted thier proposal.
So on my desk now, hidden amongst a couple of whitepapers, some blank
CD's and a hard cover copy of Mastering Server 2003 is the four
quotes. Heres a break down of what I see. (once more I'll refer
to them by a secret code number) :)

No.1
These were the first we contacted and the last to quote. It took
them a while but they got there. And I have to say my initail
thoughts are that I am impressed. Thier solution is thorough,
impressive, original, affordible and of all things...very good.
Basically they have several servers in the main office, that have the
tasks of DC, ISA and Exchange. this is backedup to a NAS offside
with Symantec LiveState and then to tape. Also they have
accounted for a full Electronic S/W and H/W audit as well as an audit
of cabelling and network infrastructure, as well as a few other bits an
pieces. On the whole this package looks excellent. The
price is high, higher than the others but on the whole it looks very
nice. To manage this server would be a breeze, and to not worry
about the server melting...well...we all know how much we hate
DR. This solution is very complete, if not too complete.
There are alot of bells and whistles...I just hope they dont ring and
shine so loudly that I can't hear the other quotes at all!

No.2 LOL. Thats all I have to say really. Not
allowing for any backup solution...at all. serioully. lmao.

No.3 N/A

No.4 I've still got thier quote here, with the three differnt
options. Price wise they have a very attractive solution. It fits very
well with the budget and will impress the managment with
costing and ongoing support.  The designs themselves look
excellent and will suit the job nicely.  Its not as thorough as
No.1's but it hits the nail regardless

No.5 ( the outsiders) So we ended up going to these guys.
We needed another quote as one had pulled out and another was
laughable. These guys came to us highly recomended by the
ISP. Everytime Im on the phone he words me up on how great they
are. These guys were actually very good. Definatelly knew their
stuff and would have no trouble getting the job done. They went with
the slant of using Citrix for our other 3 locations - which are small
(5 users each) On forst glance this solution it looks simply too
expensive to buy another server to run it. When they first came
to quote we had a slow link to these places but have since then
upgraded it, making access faster and negating the need for Citrix at
this stage. Thier solution for the main server is very good and
once again very affordable. Very similar to No.4's solution.

So thats about it so far. All the prices are in and getting
coffee spilt on them as I speak..er..type. (maybe it'll smudge
the price a little) ;) So in the next few days my boss and I will sit
down and spill more coffee over them and give one the nod. All
the solutions are excellent, from the supply right through to the
ongoing support and service...no doubt. Its just a matter of
lookingat the numbers and the service and really who can get the job
done the best to make mine easier.