network assessment help!!!

[Lex]

hopefully i have your attention given the title.

I have been asked to give an assessment of a network that has around 100 users and on a mac infrastructure.

the background
The company is wanting to get rid of the network manager and has asked me to go behind his back to just take a look at the network. I'm assuming i need to determine:

- what systems they're running both workstation & server
- the number of workstations
- the number of servers
- connections speeds
- software licenses
- printers, scanners

I believe funadamentally they want me to see what it is they got, offer solutions to current problems and offer any recommendations. Incidently this is a media company so they're very application/resource hungary.

can you guys give me some further detail to which would be useful for me to ask or find out?

 

[Lex]

How complex is the current set up, does it use vlans, sticky mac addresses and so on ... basically how much do you know about the current set up.

Also without a network manager if your network goes down can your company afford the downtime? Do you have a backup system incase it goes down?

the idea is to replace the network manager. i myself am going to visit the company and do an i.t audit (siliently if possible) and make my recommendations but this is a first project for me but i think i can do it. just wanted some more depth to my knowledge on what to look out for.

 

[Lex]

if i wanted to do an i.t audit now on their hardware & software (no 108 machines 60% pc the rest mac) unfortunately i think i'd have to do it manually because i cannot install an agent on users machines to pickup their applications and pc spec as this whole operation is to be done silently. wonder if there's anything on the server machine?