[wplug] Administration of Lots of Machines

[Michael Semcheski]

Hey everybody,

This is the kind of thing I talk about on Saturday nights. 

Anyway, I was just discussing administration of a network with a
colleague.  He had been doing pro bono administration of a museum's
network in New England.  The full time administrator wasn't an IT
person, but was reasonably intelligent and kept a notebook with
everything he did to every machine in it.

This notebook proved to be extremely valuable.  It sounds like such a
simple thing, but it really paid off.  The person in charge wasn't
really that knowledgeable of computers, but recognized the value of
documenting his work.  That was his principle of administration. 

I thought I'd throw that out there and solicit comments on what other
people do.

I'm not really an admin or a BOFH, but I do have about 60 computers at
work.  I think my philosophy is to standardize as much as possible, do
things that can be done to every machine or don't do them.  That's not
always possible, but it helps to simplify things.

Mike