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Thread: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

  1. #1
    TiG
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    Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    At the place of work i'm leaving shortly (hopefully), we've had recent issues with an exchange server slowly dying. Due to me doing two jobs this was outsourced as no-one would sign off the fact the move from this old (7 year old, pentium 3, 768mb of ram and a whole 11GB raid 5 array) was fraught with danger. (it's physically died on me 3 times)

    So the outsourced company migrate to a new server, everything else the same, they did it over the weekend and the change cost me 3.5 days of fixing all the issues they had left me with.

    Now they've put in a proposal to take over the running of the network and i've just seen the plan and it is THE MOST amazing overspecced system ever.....

    we have 39 employees, the p3 exchange server has run without problems for 7 years till now.

    The replacement is based on Windows 2008 server, 2007 Exchange has virtualised front end exchange system, on two seperate servers with 2 backend servers running exchange with log shipping in place.

    So 4 servers on an operating system that we don't even run on our development boxes, all probably requiring 64bit servers due to exchange requirements.

    Talk about overkill!, i've never seen such a knee jerk reaction by management ever. Its like living in fairy land here at the moment.

    They are planning to outsource the mailsweeper at the cost of £3.50 a month per mailbox with archiving, we do the same in house for a grand total of £200 per year all tolled, the system has had 0 issues for 4 years. WHY!?!?!?!?.

    They are not going to replace my IT role at all, yet my junior will have no-one technically competent with any of this to guide him on what to do!.

    I'm seriously quite guidy at the moment with the impending disaster of them implementing a complete OTT solution, with a junior that won't be able to support it (he's only just graduated)

    If i had any power at board level i'd be putting in a move of no confidence in the MD heh.

    TiG
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  2. #2
    Will work for beer... nichomach's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    "Consultant" related to director by any chance? Seriously, though, if they wanted OWA or Mobile Activesync I can see 2 servers (standard FEBE with the FE server in the DMZ) but 4??? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? We support about 250+ users on a single BE server (OK, it's got a couple of dual core Opterons) and a single FE server that runs on a couple of DC Xeons. OK, I offload virus and spam filtering to a Barracuda, but still, they're taking the wee.

  3. #3
    VTECmeous Vimeous's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    2 servers is enough
    2008 is nuts as they won't have any certified support techies

    Frankly SBS would work just as well

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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    "Muppets"? You're being very generous! And discourteous to Muppets It does sound as if someone has too much money to spend and not the faintest idea how IT actually works...
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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    as I understand it, they have submitted a tender, it's not been accpeted yet ?
    It is Inevitable.....


  6. #6
    TiG
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    I've tried to explain that the moon is made of cheese and the MD believes that too.

    He seems to believe his "mates" external IT company that you need 4 servers to run exchange for 39 people!.

    TiG
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  7. #7
    Will work for beer... nichomach's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    My former boss got called in once to unkludge a setup that had been installed by a bunch of consultants. 20 users, potential to maybe grow as high as 50, absolute tops, and it'd take them years. Consultants got them to shell out for 3 fully loaded quad-cpu Poweredges and a dual; note that, not cores - sockets. My old boss walks in, looks at it (turning a bit pale), walks over to the latter box and just turns it off - it wasn't actually doing anything, just sitting there whirring its fans. He then got rid of that, and consolidated them down to (IIRC) 1 quad-box and got them a good price for the unnecessary kit.

    edit:
    Quote Originally Posted by TiG View Post
    He seems to believe his "mates" external IT company that you need 4 servers to run exchange for 39 people!.
    Yep, I can see the important word in that sentence...

  8. #8
    Editable... jimbouk's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    "Oh no a problem I don't understand, quick throw money at it till it goes away!"

    Although I wouldn't mind a bit of money being thrown at my work computer. Trying to run 3 VMs on 1gig of ram and running out of disk space because some of the VMs are 40+ gig...

  9. #9
    ɯʎɔɐɹsɐʌʍ mycarsavw's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    We have a very old Novell server (P3, 512 RAM, 4Gb HDD) which basically runs as a file server. It's rock solid and only gets a restart after a power cut.

    A few years back when we still had an IT contract I asked our maintenance company to price up replacement. The server had gone done in an electrical storm taking the mobo with it.

    They recommended two new servers, one running SBS 2003 and another acting as a gateway server for faxing and emailing. The said we should integrate our telephone system with the new computer system to give us on-screen dialling from our desktops and a host of other pointless over engineered solutions.

    The cost of equipment was phenomenal, the estimated cost of transferring the data (word/excel documents - no larger than 3Gb) from the old server to the new server was 2 days labour at £X,XXX a day and installation was a week all in. Then support on that, and on and on and on.

    We are a small law firm with less than 20 employees and we are still running the same Novell server trouble free some 3 years later
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  10. #10
    Mostly Me Lucio's Avatar
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    It's crazy what outside vendors can get you to buy! I hate them with a firey passion..

    You know what I really hate though? You've got a duff program, it's not been working for months, then suddenly a developer turns up and actually *fixes* the problem. Right at the point you've convinced the MD to shell out on a better system....

    Now that I hate!

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  11. #11
    Jay
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    Re: Most Ludicrous setup EVER!

    wow... lol I have 300 light users on a system less than that!

    I am thinking of using 2008 for my Terminal Service servers though due to the way you can diploy desktops in the same way as the way overpriced Citrix.
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