Network Procedures

[chaddlad]

Hi Guys,

 

I hope you can assist, I am an new learning it technician at a school and I would like to know your procedures for looking after your network,

 

1) I at the moment collecting all the software licences, how do you keep up with what is installed now and in the future,

 

2) Is there any standard documents that I could use to help with this procedure or any it related procedure or do you guys have anything.

 

Any help would be appreciated I`m really looking for the paperwork side as at the moment the assets and software is a mess, but I am installing new images, so I get the chance to track and categorise the software installed.

 

cheers

 

Ian

Edited March 15, 2012 by chaddlad

[glennda]

I have a bunch of Folders with all the licensing information in - I have have 2 filing cabinets of software CD's.

 

If its not in the folders or they cannot put information in front of me to say its licensed then I don't install it. Most companies will let you now licensing information.

 

I even have copies of free software license agreements - Just keeps those auditors on side

[chaddlad]

thanks for the reply, do you follow any required procedures within the school that ofstead my require, there were pdfs on here recently but I can't find it now.

 

Cheers Ian

[glennda]

Nope - I'm not the best with paperwork though

[Chris_Cook]

We have a hidden (and secured) network share with a copy of most of the software on it. There is a folder of sysadmin-type stuff on there. For each new program, we create a text file with the serial number or licence key, and a note of how many copies we can use. Once we make a copy of the software, we try to give the original back to the department to look after. At one point we had a massive box of old software and not much clue what was still required. Departments can manage that better than we can.

 

As glennda said, many software suppliers can tell you what you've brought. I've called several recently, including RM.

 

Something like spiceworks can be quite useful to get an overview. It wont pick up every computer on a large network straight away, but its free and pretty quick to set up so worth a try even if you don't keep it.

[chaddlad]

Thanks Glenda not very good with paperwork myself, think that's why I was hoping somebody would have a standard form, thanks chris I have just installed spicworks and just trying to see what is coming back with scan errors, I have seen some results and spiceworks does report so decent results but more scan errors than PCs found at the moment.

 

Thanks for all the help

 

 

Ian

Edited March 17, 2012 by chaddlad

[RabbieBurns]

can SCOM be used to audit the software which is installed on computers?

[gshaw]

SCCM does software collection audits so you can build reports of what PCs software is installed on, even down to particular versions etc

[Pete10141748]

I started out by having a "Software Amnesty Day" where everyone was asked to bring along any and all CD's and/or paperwork to do with ICT they had in their classrooms, cupboards, bags etc. It helped to have the Head's backing for this as she made sure everyone knew they had to have a good search through all their stuff!

 

Once I started getting the CDs in I made a list of all of the software the school has, got my hands on all paper licences I could (which wasnt many) and for the rest I contacted the company the software was purchased from to get the licence details (this did involve asking the finance team for help too, backtracking to find out where software was bought from).

 

I took scans of all the paper licences and kept them in a folder together with screenshots of all the emails I recieved back from companies with licence details.

 

Later I created an individual word document for each piece of software that lists the software name, where it was purchased from, date of purchase, contact info for the company, the licence key, what type of licence it is (single, multi, site, etc) and a list of all the computers it is installed on. Obviously this folder & all the files are password-protected etc. to keep it all safe!

 

Licence management doesnt have to be difficult once you get in the habit of keeping the paperwork updated, but it can be a real pain to get everything together in the first place when no-one has taken responsilbity for it yet - be prepared to find lots of "single user" licences for software that they want installed all over the school! I had to spent quite a lot of money to bring this place up to legal-level with it licences!

Edited March 19, 2012 by Pete10141748