Keeping on top of your network

CoXeY

CoXeY

CoXeY

Associate
Joined
6 Feb 2004
Posts
689
Location
Herts
I am aware that a number of you lot work in an around corporate networks and just wondered how you keep track of things…

I work for a relatively small company who have matured technically over the past 18 months (well we’ve gone from servers under desks to an in-house comms room and data centre co-location!). I am primarily responsible for the network and all servers and workstations in its make-up. This was fine for the first year or so but now, as the company has grown, I have been forced to delegate administrative tasks and other maintenance activities to members of our production team – a group of programmers who are very specialised in what they do but have little experience with server operating systems.

The problem, as I’m sure you can imagine, is that things are slowly going down hill and ultimately giving me more work to do! :mad:

Over time there are a number of cultural changes I can try and introduce to improve the attitude towards network administration and even maybe ask for an assistant but in the short term I need a way to get on top of things so that I can quickly identify faults and the cause of the problems. Now we’re not talking hugely complicated issues here but things are currently very difficult to trace without a proper auditing system in place. So, my plan is to implement a server auditing / logging system where by all server administrators log their activities and any changes made to a server’s configuration so that steps can quickly back tracked should the need arise.

My initial thoughts were to roll out something on our intranet site (powered by SharePoint Services) but then maybe something as crude as Excel would do the job?! The solution needs to be available to those that need to know and not put too much of a burden on simple administrative tasks, but at the same time be a central source of information for all servers and workstations on the network – hardware and software config, license keys, passwords (maybe), and a change log.

I’m thinking that surely you guys must have something in place to keep on top of things – so what d’ya use?

Any feedback, thoughts and suggestion on the matter welcome…

Dan.
 
well, i'm more a networks person but our procedures are

- a ticketing system for faults, all faults are logged by webpage, decreases overhead taking calls etc.

- a integrated (though it needn't be) change control system and rigid procedures for change control

- SNMP monitoring, proactive problem detection is always better and allows you to plan capacity increases

this all sounds compelx and expensive and in our case it is, but i've seen a very capable free php based web ticketing system and there must be similar for monitoring, change contol can just be a spreadsheet in a smallish company

for change control to work it's important that it covers all the bases, ours, everything must be submitted to change control, it must be approved by 3 different people, making sure all objections are covered and then it must be done in a certain window

as for server details, we simply use a (huge these days) excel spreadsheet which is our 'run book' it has hardware details, OS details, key details, purpose, network details, ilo details, carepak details....everything we need to know abut each and every server. We also mentain another such document that details every network port on every switch.

there are also a lot of visio diagrams. it's a lot of documentation but it's worth doing early and growing it with the network rather than facing documenting a huge network from scratch
 
For network monitoring Hobbit in an excellent free tool.

Fairly easy to configure and customise too.
 
I use a cut down version of bigredshark's method

Excel with server info, passwords

Visio layouts (stuff like overview, sites, LAN, WAN. phones, ports, file structure etc)

a simple "what was done last" text file on each server, F5 to add the date, log last change ...this has solved many a problem.

log everything, run scripts to catalogue and alert on changes in config/file changes/new IPs/services/programs.

standards documents on how to do stuff (implemented because some IT people don't know how to set file permissions :) )


.
 
Last edited:
logging is a very good way to keep on top of a network. You no what loggin is for so theres no need to explain it.

Bandwidth monitoring is a MUST if you plan to increase to a bigger network 50+ workstations. This will help you with upgrades to the network.

On a good day check the server cpu and memory capacity to see whats been used and what is not. This would come in handy for server upgrades. For example hard drive space, cpu threshold, memory threshold e.t.c.

If you have 5+ workstations then you should consider gettin same machines this could be good for an image to be made or some sort of ris server so if a machine breaks there is less down time.

How about security? desktop enhancements lockdowns e.t.c ?

The best one has to be documentation. If you were to fall ill some techy person can take over ** network in a day and know how to fix it. Keep on top of your network topology and diagram everything or report documentation.
 
on this subject, we (me and a colleague) just finished writing a change monitoring script for our shared hosting servers, essentially it does an MD5 hash of the entire hard drive excluding user data and then compares it to the previous one, any changes, it emails us about. half a days scripting and we're quite pleased with it, it's designed to alaert us if the server is hacked but it's adaptable.

it's also worth saying, it does an MD5 hash of everything (including user data as we were testing) in about 11 minutes, which is a real testament to the HP hardware (more so than our programming anyway)
 
FCAPS

faults, configuration, accounting, performance and security management.:)

concentrate on those and you'll be fine.
 
bigredshark said:
essentially it does an MD5 hash of the entire hard drive excluding user data and then compares it to the previous one, any changes, it emails us about
Click to expand...

ooooh, v.nice, :cool:
just the thing I was after (can't afford Tripwire)
would you care to post the script ??? :D
 
bitslice said:
ooooh, v.nice, :cool:
just the thing I was after (can't afford Tripwire)
would you care to post the script ??? :D
Click to expand...

i could get a copy on monday maybe, i don't think theres anything obvious we'd need to take out before posting it. We wanted tripwire but it's unsupported and a pain to get working these days.
 
bigredshark said:
i could get a copy on monday maybe, i don't think theres anything obvious we'd need to take out before posting it. We wanted tripwire but it's unsupported and a pain to get working these days.
Click to expand...

If you don't mind me asking, who do you work for?
 
bigredshark said:
ISP in the city

www.hso.uk.com
Click to expand...

We do a little bit of business with you guys :).

As for documenting the network - lots and lots and lots of excel spreadsheets for us ;). One day I'll write something completely integrated in PHP to provide a nice multi-user web frontend.
 
bigredshark said:
ah, our darling transit providers! we just took a suite in the goswell road facility too, small world... (unless you work for level3! what do you do for them?)
Click to expand...

I am an IP Implementation Engineer, looking after the EU and TA network. No customer contact though now :)

If I need to do a network change I need to create a ticket at least 7 days in advance and get approvals from as many as 10 different groups within the business. It used to include GBIC/XENPAKS but thankfully thats now changed. It can be a pain having to do this process for a 7206 port adapter but its for a good reason.
 
Last edited:
pdw8 said:
I am an IP Implementation Engineer, looking after the EU and TA network. No customer contact though now :)

If I need to do a network change I need to create a ticket at least 7 days in advance and get approvals from as many as 10 different groups within the business. It used to include GBIC/XENPAKS but thankfully thats now changed. It can be a pain having to do this process for a 7206 port adapter but its for a good reason.
Click to expand...

We're not quite that bad, though you'll be pleased to know abovenet killed one of our fibre spans today (i hate being on call :mad: ). Cue much running around london enabling alternative routes...
 
Adz said:
We do a little bit of business with you guys :).

As for documenting the network - lots and lots and lots of excel spreadsheets for us ;). One day I'll write something completely integrated in PHP to provide a nice multi-user web frontend.
Click to expand...

Really? for our size we have a big name, who do you work for??
 
bigredshark said:
Really? for our size we have a big name, who do you work for??
Click to expand...

A company called UK Webhosting Ltd - we entered the fold recently through your recent acquisition :). It's only a very small contract.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom