Holiday M’s

This is my last post for 2009 (barring any emergency stuff that is) and so I would like to impart my usual holiday wisdom to everyone who reads my blog.  There are a lot of things we as admins and engineers do every day of every year, but around the holidays at the end of each year, it’s nice to take a step back and review a few things.  I’ve got three M’s that each of us would do well to follow.

1 – Maintain: Maintenance is critical to a well-running technology plant.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a 1-server SBS shop or have hundreds of servers in dozens of countries, you need to make sure things are kept up to date.  This includes making sure you have the appropriate patches and fixes for applications, including your OS.  Windows and Exchange 2003 and 2007 have both undergone significant upgrades this year with Service Packs and system roll-ups.  Windows Update should cover you for Windows and Exchange 2007, but you’ll need to check the Exchange 2003 area of TechNET to get the updates for that platform.

Take the time to make sure you are up to date, the smooth running and security of your systems depend on it.

Also, now is the time to consider your offline maintenance runs, especially on Exchange 2000 and 2003.  MSFT doesn’t really require these tools be run, but after a long year of employee shuffling and database reconfiguration, an offline defrag can definitely help keep the system running optimally.  Exchange 2007 and 2010 do not generally require this, but it’s not a bad idea if you’ve removed or moved a large number of mailboxes around during the course of the year.

2 – Monitor:  So many of my clients don’t have any form of proactive monitoring on their systems.  There are inexpensive (and sometimes even free) tools that can keep an eye on your servers and systems, alerting you if things start to go south even before you start to see problems in the network itself.  More advanced tools like System Center from Microsoft and Tivoli from IBM can help hunt down issues that have eluded you up until now.  Monitoring should never be a “nice to have” item.  You need it, and as soon as possible.  At the very least, make a point of checking out the event logs on your Exchange servers once a week or so to see if there are any repetitive error messages cropping up.  Knowing about errors now saves you from dealing with corruption or failures later.

3 – Make Merry! Let’s not forget that no matter what holiday you celebrate (Christmas, Solstice, Chanukah, Kwanza, something else, or nothing at all) this is typically a time of year when people take a break from the day-to-day activities of their lives. Try to take some time, get some rest, and clear your head.  Every one of us deals with so many issues every day, that sometimes stepping back and looking at them with a new perspective is just the ticket.  The servers will be there when you get back, and the monitoring systems (see above) can let you know if they need you in the meantime.  Some of us don’t have the ability to take some time, but if you do, take it – you’ll be much more effective for it.

See you all in January, and thanks for reading along this year.  I always welcome questions and comments to miketalonnyc@gmail.com – so fire away!