New School, No IT staff, New manager, any pearls of wisdom?

[Oaktech]

Hi,

 

I have just today taken over a schools IT department. Sadly the previous Network manager died during the Summer holidays. The school has had a council technician in simply firefighting issues as there are no other members of ICT staff.

 

Luckily I have managed to get hold of the Admin Passwords so this is not an issue. I have ran ip sniffing software to get server and switch names and IP's and now have access to everything.

 

I plan to build a linux box to run a fog server and run NeDi.

 

Does anyone have any advice for me in this situation?

 

My main projects are to upgrade to windows 7 and office 2013 and also I must install wireless across the school. In any normal school I would go for a site licence but I am reconing we only have 140 computers including all admin staff etc. The servers also need upgrading as there is one on 2008 and the rest on 2003. Non are virtual and I'm not fussed about load balancing.

 

You wouldn't happen to be located in or near Bournemouth would you?

 

If so, I would be more than willing to offer any help I can to get you out of a hole!

Edited January 13, 2014 by Oaktech

[Sephiroth]

I would disagree. In the first 6 months I ripped everything out and started again, and its only led to good things for me, people saw what I was about, got excited by the changes and engaged with them. 6 months in and I would have been drowning in a world of sorrow!!

 

I would like to say that I did the same thing, except that I didn't have the opportunity to do so. I did start planning though, and making significant, but minor changes to facilitate the migration.

 

About 9 months ago, I inherited a network that seemed to have had a small thermo-nulear bomb explode in it's midst. I am now in the final stages of building a brand new network from scratch (everything will be killed, with the exception of the SIMS database, e-Mail databases and user data. the servers that they reside on though, are being rebuilt). I will be switching over during the easter holidays.

 

That in mind, I would say not to leave things until you know everything, when there is an obvious improvement that can be made to make life that little bit easier, whilst not being a dangerous move. One of the things that I did was to implement quotas on the file server (yes, there were no quotas at all for staff or students...).

 

Other than that, as has already been said, Documentation! The idea of running around with a notepad, cataloging everything may not seem very appealing or worthwhile, but will save you a lot of hastle later on. I say that as someone that has yet to do so!

Edited January 13, 2014 by Sephiroth
Grammar. Or lack thereof!