have recently been elevated from being a general field support staff member with some server, network and extensive PC support skillsets, to a full-time NT Server administrator. My superiors, operating under suggestions from a "consultant" now want me to fully develop a written set of NT Server maintenance procedures and schedules. I have had exposure to NT Servers and worked with components such as DHCP WINS and User Mgr. but now I am a little hesitant to jump into the water, not knowing how deep it is, so to speak. Is there anyone out there that can help me to keep from "re-inventing the wheel?" The "consultant" tells me "just search the web...you can find everything you need there!" (gee thanks was my response). I have been asking for formal training for 5 years and the response has always been "...there's no money in the budget..." Any advice, help, pointers, email transmitted documents, etc. would be greatly appreciated. Below is a description of our current NT Server farm: : Most of the servers are Compaq Proliant ML 530s and 370s, which are dual 800 MHz Xeons. The BDCs are on older Compaq Deskpro 350 Pentium II's and the PCD is a newly built Gateway ATX AEG LX2 700 X with a 2.4 GHz single processor, 1 GB of RAM and is running Windows XP PRO. One of the ML530s is my primary Exchange Server and one of the ML370s is the secondary. All have redundant power supplies and they also have Lightsout kits. The remaing 4 ML370s are for the Unicenter products which aren't functioning correctly, except for their Help Desk module. Then we have an older Proliant 3000 which is a dual 400 PII which is our primary backup server and another Proliant which is a PII 350 that is our restore server. We also have an older Gateyway ALR 9200 which is a PII 550 single processor, and we have a HP NetServer LH 3000 which is a dual 800 unit which serves as our CheckPoint Firewall. Recently added are also some Gateway ATX AEG LX2 700 X which are basically high-end desktops with 120Gig HDDs and 2.4 GB single processors. These are used for Antivirus protection with the newly acquired Trend Micro Enterprise protection package just installed by the "contractor," and also run XP PRO. Anything else is a glorified Compaq desktop unit that has maybe 128 to 256 MB RAM and a single 350 processor with a small 4-6 GB HDD. We have CA's Unicenter products including Unicenter, Asset Management, Software Delivery, and Remote Control Options, however, after the third reinstallation they are still not functioning well (as in not at any level of practicality). Currently, they have one person, a self-proclaimed, non-technical, former bureau chief, who was demoted to a technical position as the CA adminstrator and she has had no formal training on our CA products. Our biggest & most critical production servers are UNIX based running primarily Oracle Forms. However, there is a separate team for those. I am responsible for the NT server side which has our Exchange Server, file shares server (the ML530's) and the Server which houses all of our financial databases. None of these except the email server is 24 x7 and aren't concidered "critical" until they go down! (bet you've heard that one before!)

NT servers really don't need much maintenance, do they? It sounds like the consultants needed to come up with something to earn their fees. Check event viewer to see if anything funny is happening / check free space to see if they are filling up (you can make a neat chart out of this to predict when you need more disk) / check backups or do a test restore to make sure backups are working / check that the virus is updating / It sounds like NONE of your problems are due to lack of NT server maintenance!

No money in the budget ? that's bullsh*t! I'm dealing with the same problem here but I have bit the bullet and have purchased training on my own (guess what I'm planning on doing with it! ha!) The NT servers here don't require much maintenance other than a little house cleaning from time to time. The biggest time consumer for maintenance isn't the servers it's the app's that run on them. We have one large MRP package written in COBOL that's a big pain in the *ss. It leaves temp files all over the place and occasionally trashes some of the data files if one of the workstations lose connection during a transmit (thin client technology) and I have to manually repair/reindex the files. If you are looking for some training I would look at your local tech colleges or even a Compumaster seminar (pricey but effective). I've found that meeting other people in the same field in non-competative business's are helpful, kind of like this forum. Good luck with your servers, Aloha