Monday morning and server disaster

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i had the worst day ever today im my it career i get in monday morning and the servers screwed im employed as 1st line with only minor experiance in server 2003 Active directory and guese what the server only boots in safe mode doesnt boot in safe mode with networking SMTPs somehow unistalled its self ISS is screwed. if i try to start normaly its hangs on applying computer settings this is a 6 year old server by the way and why i was scrolling throught tech forums looking for a solution none of them worked everyones downstars complaining NO INTERNET NO E-MAILS NO PRINTERS and to make matters worse the it engineer who runs the sever was on his first day of anual leave need i say more worst monday ever!

 

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och oh.

how did it end?

 

Did you get it all sorted out in the end?

They can't expect a first line to resolve an issue like that, you'd get major browny points if you can though.

 

Yep... could definitely turn into the best Monday ever. ;)

 

Especially considering "it's not your fault it happened but luckily you were there to fix it, while the other person wasn't"

 

Nope the problem is still not fixed i feel so bad

i got SMTP back thats about it the first time id ever installed it

i even rang a freind of mine whos an it engineer at Nortel! he could not find a solution the engineer is comming down 1st thing tomorow morning thank god

my line manager made me sit there for 7 hours troubleshooting and kept reminding me its not good enough this day was hell

 

What did it say in Event Viewer when it booted in safe mode?

Did you look in Device Manager to determine if the ethernet adapter driver was happy?

 

Restore?

 

Wow nice bit of support from your line manager

 

Ah yes the ever present managment line of its IT you can fix it

 

Do you have any images of the drives? With System Recovery or something? if not, might be good to show up your manager by suggesting it to his senior.

 

Sparky - what a top bloke - nice gesture there mate!

yep that's the good old I.T wand people think is available to us.

 

the engineer has just fixed it it was a weekend update with IIS that corrupted IIS what a joke

 

[rant]My manager thankfully never says its not good enough, he does however ask for a full run down of problem, cause, fix and timescale when we suffer a major problem. This is annoying because he expects me to stop working on fixing it whilst giving him this information.

I now have some stock responses which can be rattled off in such a way to convince him to leave me alone to get on with it "its broken, I don't know and/or care yet, I'm going to fix it, when its done". These work because at the moment our most likely point of failure is our reservations system whose support department are totally hopeless and refuse to accept any responsibility for problems with the system until you fix the code for them. Normal response is "it must be a hardware problem" with a Quad socket Quad Core server with 32GB of RAM and a beltingly fast disk array which is succesfully running 24 users on Terminal Services without any difficulty as well as your web app (virtual machines)? Yeah... fix it you pains in the arse. [/rant]

I feel better for that...

Anyway, sounds like you really got the rough end of the deal on this one. Pretty good case for some more training though, only having one tech with the skills necessary to put the whole thing back together again is a recipe for disaster. If your manager trots out the 'its not good enough' line again go for the element of surprise, just say no, its not and give him some real reasons why.

1. the servers 6 years old and was therefore due for an upgrade a while ago
2. only having 1 tech that can fix it is totally ridiculous and asking for trouble
3. your a 1st line tech, if they want you fixing major server failures you need training, a different job title and a pay rise

 

Ouch, I take it this update wasn't tested before it was let lose on the server?

 

i was not made aware of any updates where goin ahead the engineer must have done it remotely at the weekend by the way hes still on anual leave im the only IT guy on duty got 50 users in 3 locations nightmare

exactly what i was thinking btw well said i have no sever troubleshooting experiance at all

 

Although it was probably stressful for you, the overall experience you have gained will be worth it in the long run, I promise you.

 

Sounds like a bit of a rough couple of days. The line manager sounds like a great boss too

If I were in your position, I'd use the experience to push for some training.

Glad you got it sorted.

Maria