First impressions

What first impression does your network make?

Best Practice (Litmus Test)

Professionals would say 'Here is a diagram of our network'

Amateurs are struggling to fix old machines

First Impressions

In the course of my work as consultant and trainer I have the privilege of visiting customer sites.  Whilst I would never divulge company secrets or name names, I would like to share my first impressions with you.  In my line of work, a rapid assessment of the customer is essential.  The reason is two fold, on the one hand it is vital not to tell professionals things they already know; on the other hand I want to avoid talking over the head of those less experienced.

First impressions - indicators of professionals

• As I sit down and they say: - 'Guy, here is a diagram of our network'.
• As I enter the server room, someone says: -  'That SMS package worked a treat last night'.
• On the screen I see a techie just finishing a terminal server session to a remote server.

 First impressions - indicators of amateurs

• As the client and I walk through a site, we pass some users.  One looks up and says: - 'My file share is not working on this Windows 95 machine.' (This is 2003 and I think shares should be on the servers; also Windows 95 should be upgraded!)
• I say: -  'Could you show me the application log in the event viewer'. They say: -  'Where do you find the event viewer?'
• When we arrive in the server room, the first thing I notice is the 3-D screen saver on the domain controller. (3-D Screen savers are fine on clients, but they drain valuable processor power on servers.

Another of Guy's Litmus Tests - Performance Monitoring

Professionals install ipMonitor
Consequently they can see instantly which servers are short of resources, and which are running smoothly.  

Amateurs
Keep their fingers crossed that the servers have enough memory and disk space.

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