Is this to much for one person?

[Jay]

I am in a bit of a fix at the moment. An example of the situation I am in is that I need to remove Office 2000 and replace it with Openoffice throughout the company. This really needs to be done in a short a time as possible as I can see people using Office one day then openoffice the next and getting mixed up. The problem is that there is only me running the IT at the moment.

They have 200 staff in the UK, a few road warriors (in Spain) and 4 sites across a 10 mile radius that I have to support. I am currently dealing with their network infrastructure (or lack of) and have had Kingston in to quote for some dedicated private circuits for me to proved terminal services to the remote sites. My work load is huge and there is a lot of work to be done here, its basically a ground up Network project. This is not a problem as I have done this type of work before but never without some one else to do the gopher work, eg replace PCs, unistall or reinstall software etc.

I can see that once the circuits are in it will be much easier for me to run as its centralised but do you think that at the moment I should request a part time worker to give me a hand? I think its a bit to much for me on my own to do 1st to 3rd line.

Anyone else run anything like this on there own?

[peterb]

Only you can judge! However I would have said yes - as much as anythin g to have someone to bounce ideas off.

As for the changeover to OO, have you a training plan in place? This is a relatively major change as far as users are concerned, so even a morning showin g the similarites (and differences) would make the transition easier. I would also suggest a phased rollout - one site at a time - have you considered a pilot rollout - ione section at one site to identify any unexpected issues.

As for he support side, I can't really comment on your infrastructure, but are you loading OO onto the target machines remotely, or does it bmean a visit to each machine? If that is the case you probably will need help to do it quickly. Will it be pre-configured with templates ewtc (maintaioning a corporate image). The easier and more seamless you make it for the end user, the easier your life will be!!

[Jay]

All very good questions, I had not thought about the templates!!

After reading the above I am going to setup a test at my office site to see how it goes. I have been using open office myself for the last few months and find it very good but a little slow. Office 2007 is just way to expansive and 2000 is no longer supported as far as expanding my licence quota.

I agree that its always good to have some one to bounce ideas off or to just talk to! I will post back my findings and once my training docs are done I will see if I can post them up as well for other people to use as a base for any traiing they want to do.

[slugs]

I would work on a scripted install of open office. Deploy it to all the users but don't put a desktop icon on the machines.

And when your ready to do the training and change over put the icon on the desktops.

Keep an eye out for file association issues. Most new installs will try and take over the file types.

[TiG]

I'm assuming that large a site has a AD. If so you should just set up the install as a software installation policy from the AD in a group policy. You can trial it on a small group of machines at a time and should be fairly controlable.

TiG

[Instinct]

That sounds like a huge work-load for one person!
I have friends that work as IT Technicians in schools and they are not left on their own to do everything, and sometimes they hire 6th form students as well for general work such as you speak, im sure their work load is probably far less than yours as well anyway!

Also, have you considered contacting openoffice for their reccomendation on how to deploy their software for your company ?

[Jay]

Some good ideas here. I have run some big things before, I have worked for RadissonSAS on their networks (they are linked all over the world, DNS was not very nice)

Its not that I don't know how to do the things its how to do them on my own that I struggle with, I use this place to bounce my ideas off people as its the next best thing to having people working with me.

I will do the test, also like said before install it on the systems without the users having access to it then switch it over.

I'll probably be posting in this thread again... very soon I suspect.

thanks guys

[Jay]

Ok guys, need some ideas!

I am looking into the cost of their server upgrades. For the master DNS, DHCP, AD server I was looking at a basic DL380 with a two disk RAID 1 (or should I go with RAID 5?)

For their Termainl Services I was looking at a couple of DL320's with 2 gig of ram and a dual core Xeon in each(don't know what speed yet). I should be able to load balance them in a cluster (I did it with Citrix a while ago but I think that 2003 server now has this option as well)

Now for the file server do you think its too many eggs in one basket to also use the DL380? I will put their "My documents" on a share on a Thecus RAID 1 NAS to take the load of the DL380 and back this up onto tape every day. (as its done right now)

so we have

DL 380

AD, DNS, DHCP

2 x DL320

Terminal Services

Thecus RAID 1 NAS

Users My documents folders - This is a direct link to the share as some of the users have HUGE profiles due to the type of work they do but also a hot desk setup.

I also have 2 Dell Power edge 1600SC servers that I am using but want to retire, they are both 2 x 2.4 Xeons with 1 gig of ram. They have been running for about 5 years now so I think they need a rest.