Life of a network administrator / network engineer

[DelusionalSyko]

I'm going to treat this post sort of like a blog of what I encounter on the job and the steps I take to fix them. Maybe some of you are interested in a path of being a computer technician, network engineer, or a network administrator and can use this post as more of a learning experience for a head-start into your career. You can also look at how I come to my conclusions and look at how I've made mistakes.

Let's start with today:

Went onsite to a customer complaining about their server "not booting" when I arrived, the server had the ASUS BIOS post message on the screen. To verify her complaint, I restarted the server only for it to have the same issue. I went back to the office to pick up one of our spare standard ATX power supplies (This server was custom built, so it was a standard ATX PSU) (Also, it's a thermaltake 500W for those of you who are curious) I went back to the site, removed the old PSU, installed the new one, only for it to have the same symptoms. As I was pulling the server out with the side door off, I noticed the stock intel cooler dangling from it's perch. The thermal paste was this nasty bright blue crusty color. I called the office to see if I could just go back to my house to pick up some thermal paste, instead of going back to the office (It was closer) So I came back to the site with some surface purifier I bought awhile back, and a stick of Noctua thermal paste, cleaned the surface with coffee filters, reapplied the paste, then reseated the cooler. Then I booted it again, only for it to start making a horrible noise. The rear fan was pulsating on and off and was too hot too touch. Which is usually a sign of a blown motor. So I unplugged it. When I tried booting the server AGAIN the SAME issue was reacurring. I took the server out of it's cubby hole and had only the monitor and PSU cable plugged in. It booted fine. I turned it back off, started plugging USB cables in, issue came back. Then I unplugged 1 USB port, and the issue dissapeared. Such a strange STRANGE issue for the motherboard to not post. Any way, it ended up being the motherboard having an issue. Not exactly sure what, because it could be multiple things, but that's a defective motherboard nonetheless. They ended up buying the new PSU, since their old one was no where near the correct amount of power to supply the server. I also recommended replacing the server with a new one, because the operating system was SBS 2003, and there's a 2011 version of that now.

As I was filling out paperwork and retrieving their payment, the server crashed. I immediatly said "It's over heating" because the rear fan (The only chasis fan installed) was not plugged in. I told them to buy a 120mm standard fan and install it as soon as they can, so the server can start breathing better. I showed them how to install it.

Back at the office I built up a price sheet of a HP ProLiant ML110 with a xeon quad and 8GB of memory. It had 4 hot-swap bays, so I threw in 2 hot-swap standard SATA drives with 1tb a piece. The original server did not have a RAID array, so the new one will most likely just have the two drives striped. I also quoted them SBS 2011 standard edition, as well as a 700w APC UPS. (They already have a UPS, but it's always better to upgrade when everything else is being upgraded) They have 4 - 5 workstations, so a completely insane server isn't nessisary. And SBS 2011 requires 8GB of RAM minimum, so might as well get the minimum requirements.

[Dergle]

I think this thread is great Delusional! This area is one of the fields I've considered getting into in the future, so this is very interesting to me. Looking forward to the next post!

[hawkiee552]

This is interesting!

I'm interested in computers myself, also network-related stuff even though I don't have that much knowledge in that area.

[Internet-justice]

Moral of the story: Servers suck.