Maintainece Schedule

[Neville]

I have been asked to put to together a maintainece schedule for our PC's and laptops can any body give me help into what kind of maintainece I should be doing on a half termly basis.

 

Also I need to do one for our servers such as checking logs and event viewer so again if somebody can let me know what to look for or have a list which they use themselves that will good.

 

Many Thanks.

[jamin100]

I'd find this info useful too . . . .

[powdarrmonkey]

We health check all the PCs and laptops that are in school (not teacher's laptops that go home) once a year during the summer - defrag, vscan, spring clean etc - and do a quick check probably termly I should think. Don't really have a formal schedule for it.

 

Event logs on your server: you should be checking these daily. Go through every event if you have the patience, or at least the warnings and criticals, looking for anything unusual or that you're not expecting. We've found it's the best way to stay ahead of stuff, DNS configuration for example was a bit broke last recently but still worked mostly; the event log was the only way we weren't aware that replication was doing half a job.

[Sirbendy]

Weekly visual walkaround of the machines looking for physical damage to base/TFT/KB/Mouse.

 

Summer term (and as in for repair or reimage), crack 'em open and blow the dust out with the compressor, wipe them down and make sure no fans are dying - fix any that are.

 

Keyboards and screens given a wipe on half terms.

 

Smartboards and projectors serviced, wiped down, cleaned out and reset/recalibrated on a monthly basis over a week at day end, split by floor.

 

Laptops get cleaned up, reimaged or sorted when they come in...we have no rota for them.

 

Aircon gets a service every 3 months, I run the diagnostics monthly and spray deodouriser/disinfectant into the intakes every 2 weeks or so. Can't hurt.

[fafster]

Sirbendy: When you say do a weekly walkaround of the machines, do you also include those individual machines in classrooms?

[localzuk]

Sirbendy, how many machines do you have in your school and how many staff? That amount of checking would be impossible for me to do, as my working day is packed as it is...

[Erudit]

Hi There

 

We do maintenance for several local schools and tend to do the following on workstations annually:

 

Check all fans and replace if required.

Clean system out (With a compressor)

Check case / keyboard / mouse for damage and wear and tear

Tidy all cables and reseat them all checking the connections fit properly

Turn on all PC's and then restart (Listen for PSU fans failing and Optical drives)

Scandisk and Defrag all Hard drives.

 

We tend to do this maintenance on the server quarterly and monitor the event logs for critical errors daily.

 

On the server we also do a quarterly check of all UPS, retension backup tapes, clean tape drives, clean up old exchange mailboxes and defragment exchange.

 

Depending on the systems you have in place the list could go on for ever !

[DevilsAdvocate]

Sirbendy, how many machines do you have in your school and how many staff? That amount of checking would be impossible for me to do, as my working day is packed as it is...

 

Agreed! I'm in a managed service school with approx ~70 Desktops, ~40 laptops, 12 Projectors + Boards and would struggle to find time to even do half of that!

 

Rob.

[fafster]

We have roughly 200 desktop machines here. I'd get around the suites in a day with no problem, but the classroom machines would be out of the question.

[Pete10141748]

Weekly Maintenance;

Server; defrag, backup, log readthrough

Desktops (Suite); general walk-around, sit in on a few lessons to check on "real world" useage performance

Desktops (admin); defrag, updates, general running tests, backups

 

Every 3-4 weeks;

Projectors quick clean with airduster (through fan holes, not taking down + apart), quick wipe of the SMARTboards too.

 

End of each half-term;

Server; defrag, disk cleanup, thorough log readthrough, clean outer case and insides with PC Cleaner.

Desktops (Suite); defrag, disk cleanup, check logging on / off / sychronisation and general use, software updates (flash, shockwave etc.), clean outer case and insides with PC Cleaner.

Desktops (admin); defrag, updates, general running tests, backups, clean outer case and insides with PC Cleaner.

Projectors; take apart and clean with PC airduster cleaner, test running / image quality / lamp life, wipe down SMARtboards, speakers etc too.

Printers; test print speeds / quality / decide if replacement is needed soon, re-align print heads if needed + print head cleaning etc. replace ink / toner if needed, general cleaning.

 

End of summer term (before Summer hols )

Complete cleanup and testing of everything mentioned above

Staff Laptops; updates, cleaning, performance testing, installation requests, + any other jobs which can't be done while they use them for teaching.

 

 

We have aprox. 60 laptops, 50 desktops, 22 projectors + SMARTboards and 75 members of staff.

[russdev]

I have asked for the info ont his thread to be put on a page onm the wiki so got central list etc

 

Russ

[FN-GM]

Hi i am working on the list i haven’t forgotten about it.

 

Z

[FN-GM]

There we go hows that. Please feel free to add to it.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/wiki/index.php/Maintainece_Schedule

[Michael]

I find it interesting so many of you perform Scandisk and Defrag tasks so regularly. Windows will only recommend Defragging if a drive is 10% or more fragmented.

 

Another thing missing from the maintenance schedule is Service Packs. XP SP3 and Vista SP1 will/have been released recently, so implementing these into a schedule would be beneficial. Realistically, re-imaging workstations along with all new up-to-date plugins, applications and patches is recommended.

 

Service Packs added to Yearly Maintenance Schedule

Edited March 24, 2008 by Michael

[localzuk]

My schedule is as such:

 

Termly - clean equipment (projectors, mice, keyboards etc...)

Termly - re-image all curriculum workstations, including all latest updates

 

I don't see the need to do any defragging, any disk checking etc... as re-imaging is much more efficient as it provides a fully optimised image for every machine. Building such an image takes a day, imaging all the machines another day. 2 days work instead of all that defragging etc... easy decision.

 

Everything else is done as and when needed. No formal maintenance windows, as I have too much general stuff to do to have such a schedule.

[GrumbleDook]

Before I add these to the wiki can people say what they think.

 

Daily

Connectivity check - make sure all services are connected to the internet where required. This can be done in a number of ways and the main one being that users will complain if it isn't working!

Server check - visual check of the servers to see if they have restarted overnight or are even actually on. One easy method of doing this is by ensuring your servers are logged on at the console with a suitable administrative user (not necessarily Administrator) and then checking that it is still that way in the morning. If it is at the log in prompt, then check why. A quick whizz round on a KVM is the way we would do it.

Weekly

Storage check - highlight areas of storage that need cleaning out or migrating to different servers. This also helps with long term planning for storage and backups. Using DFS can be helpful here to ensure that users do not see a break in access to files / resources.

AV / Malware - Check the logs of the central consoles to ensure that all clients are up to date and that no single machine is highlighted as a risk. If this can be automated as a daily email then all the better.

Web Access Logs - Check to see the most used sites, whether it is by number of users, by number of times accessed or by bandwidth. If a site is popular that you can be sure that it is either being used as part of a lesson, or the kids have found a site to waste time. If this can be emailed via a daily log then it is better.

 

Monthly

WSUS checks - ensure that patches are applied

 

Termly (the old terms ... not the renamed half-terms!)

Updating of WDS images to include new software that is presently pushed out via GPO. This includes testing / QA to eliminate issues. The Image is only pushed out as required.

 

Most of the above entries also apply as well, but these as just a few additions.

[torledo]

I don't defrag or scandisk any of the lab computers....never have done. I find it of questionable benefit, particularly as the machines are locked down and so there isn't any file sprawl on the local machine. I find there are much better methods of improving performance - reimaging being the easy one.

 

I used to reimage once a term, but since implementing mandatory profiles it becomes even less frequent.

 

As for cleaning keyboards and monitors, i'll occasionally take a can of air to the keyboards but that's about it.

 

@GD - you're list looks good, especially the daily stuff.

I tend to take a reactive approach to connectivity aswell. ;0)

Edited March 24, 2008 by torledo

[acrobson]

We do similar things on a termly basis as mentioned above, however we tend to re-image the whole estate termly as appose to yearly. We have an estate of approx 400 desktops and 1000 laptops.

 

The laptops get re-imaged as they come back for repair. However the desktops within the dedicated suites get imaged termly.

 

We average 3 suites of 20 machines in one ay between 2 of us, once the pre-image updates etc have been completed.

 

We have approx 5 dedicated suites of 30 machines and the rest are either small suites, with 10 or less machines or loan classrooms. We just stick a USB boot stick in each, have a ghost cast session set up and let them all connect. Sort

[FN-GM]

We re-image ours tearmly as well. As for service packs you cant really put them in the Schedule was designed for regular things. Service packs are not that regular. Plus we would push them out with WSUS