Well with the snow came the abuse of the company VPN (will post more about that later) and some sofa / server time.
The least shocking element was the amount of work I could get down with a 3 year old and 6 week old in the house, easier to work from the sofa (no office yet) and less distractions than being the office…
So it was time to build some servers, I’ve got SonicWalls Global Management System and ManageSoft all requiring servers, also as we change things around the way we build and use servers will be changing, so I had three servers to build, (well four when we take into account the new development server for the in house digital team)
1) Windows 2K3 (64Bit) and SQL 2K5 Server for ManageSoft and SGMS usage
2) 2 x Windows 2K3 (32Bit) for ManageSoft ECM and SGMS
3) RHEL 5.4 Server for dev.
The windows servers were pretty simple. Build a new server, fully patch, then clone to a template, then join the server to AD with it’s new name and carry on with the specific requirements for the server.
Next server.
Use the fully patched template you’ve just created for your shiny new server, join to AD and you’re done, new server in under 10 minutes, sit back and rejoice at your new power…. repeat.
Three servers created in the time it would take you to create one new server.
Did the same with RHEL, so now I have my four new servers and three templates to enable me to deploy a new instance in under 10 minutes.
Nice having uninterrupted time to get stuff done – also printed out the manuals for the NSA2400 / SGMS / SSL-VPN, time to get reading…. and shortly re-configuring the NSA to make the most of the new power (before deploying to the other new NSA units via SGMS…)
“I have a cunning plan m’lord…”