big server problems – need newbie advice

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This morning, one of our servers (W2K) suddenly stopped allowing users to print. We ended up rebooting it twice in desperation and suddenly, it started working again. This server cannot be patched as it contains some software that we depend on and can’t get the supplier to guarantee it will still work with some of the W2K patches.

This afternoon, our Exchange 2000 server suddenly reported that it’s dbf(?) was full and email went down. We’re in the process of defragging and rebooting. It has all the patches.

Oh, also, yesterday, a hard drive failed on yet another server. We were able to ghost and get it back and working within a half hour, but there was no reason (other than a “bad” manufacturer according to the sysadmin) why this drive would fail. All three servers are in the same general location.

Is it just a bad couple of days, or are there any suggestions as to what could be happening? Sorry I can’t be more specific – this is the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing happening and, of course, I’m just a programmer.

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Unless someone is deliberately being bad or there is malware running in your environment, it sounds more like people are overworked and no one is doing “basic maintenance” or keeping an eye on things. IT needs to have a detailed checklist for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, etc., items that, if not done, result in someone not getting a bonus. Otherwise, the ball can get dropped. Obviously a mail server should never run out of space. SOBIG is gobbling up resources — database, transaction log, and virus quarantine space — but if someone is watching, the disk would always have headroom. After this, I bet someone will be watching.

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Unless someone is deliberately being bad or there is malware running in your environment, it sounds more like people are overworked and no one is doing “basic maintenance” or keeping an eye on things. IT needs to have a detailed checklist for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, etc., items that, if not done, result in someone not getting a bonus. Otherwise, the ball can get dropped. Obviously a mail server should never run out of space. SOBIG is gobbling up resources — database, transaction log, and virus quarantine space — but if someone is watching, the disk would always have headroom. After this, I bet someone will be watching.

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