Company affiliate Upgrade July 18- 30th 2014
Our presence in Jiangmen, China was required at our affiliate manufacturing facilities to upgrade various network infrastructure. Below is the summary report of activities and photos that my co-worker and I maneuvered. Upgrading site email, active directory/file server,SonicWall endpoints as well as microsoft clients (in Mandarin!). This situation took months of preparation, hiring a translator from a local college and just good old memorization of installation. Below are a few of the documents collaborated on with translator, facility manager, and us during planning of rights on fileserver naming convention:
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Left US
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Arrive Hong Kong
Friday, June 20, 2014
Ferry to Mainland- 8:00 am -Later, Management picks up at dock
Visit CompakmcnyUnamed1 – meet staff take a look at systems
Visit CompanyUnamed2- take a look at systems – 2:00 PM
*Adding new video cameras not recommended until best solution to minimize bandwidth is fully researched.
Noted workstation workstation wiring is terminated in office rather than where it should be in the cool server room . Main Switch is in non-air cooled enclosed shelf. Must have been a mistake from original run. Solution is get another switch and mount in cooled room for future runs to be sent from. Also, Make sure every wire is labeled from end to end for traceablility.
We head back to CompanyUnamed1 to propose our plans of fileserver shares
We realize that the setup we have with mappings (pre-assined in Newington) are not going to work for how Management visualizes the data to be shared. We must work out a new scheme reworking all shares
Saturday, June 21, 2014 7:15 am
Early rise to CompanyUnamed to work on shares & plan the new scheme. Time consuming-Lot of spreadsheet crunching and decisions to be made on share abilities
DominoCN is populated with data & we notice that only some are able to access the server
While diagnosing and visiting different machines, we find out most machines have had registry edits & individual host files pointing to machines/ static addresses, etc.
Visits to both sites to see if we can get notes working. A lot of Arp-d settings and location document changes cause us to get machines up for notes for the most part but theis does not immediately address the dns issues we still see. Machines are quite hacked . By the end of the evening (late night) , it is discovered that we should visit every workstation and attempting to edit location and connection documents to point to ipaddress rather than DominoCompanyUnamed, this seems to be a fix.
Management contacts as many people as he can to get lotus notes passwords so that we can pre-hit a lot of the machines to avoid trouble on Monday. (We end up utilizing the Default .ID files for most users which forcibly changes passwords for those users, however we are able to do more work.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Overall, Today’s afternoon plan is to move some test data to the new file share folders for Viewing. – Turns out, No time for test data
Plan to warn users of changes and consolidating directories, along with new shares, is also needed. We meet on what should be said and best way to deal with local data -Management drafts letter to employees
Management wants folder structure setup on old file server to mimic what the new file server will have so that after his email goes out, people will have the ability to consolidate true data to a similar structure
Visited all machines and create a shared folder (in chinese at root directory) viewable to all local users that may sign on. Gives them an opportunity Starting on Monday/Tuesday to dump work and personal stuff there. After domain swap, we will move to new user directories on file server. Takes long time; Met slow machines and dns issues that we attempted to straighten out.
It is discovered that File Shares not working as should be . We work on this and brainstorm most of the day
It is also discovered that there are certain users with a lot of large folders (video/pics). — Need to address this at some point before end of week to not clog the new file server.
Monday, June 23, 2014
*4:20 AM -Email sent to amuir LATE that night after back at Hotel to get him preparred for what we are running into with shares & rights based on Management’s needs.
Morning spent fixing lotus notes users that we did not have rights to fix. Still fixing dns issues
10:00 Am conference with Amuir – 1.5 hour phone conversation and GoToMeeting session. Ironed out what we needed to change and how to fix.
Straightend out the rights based on video conference with amuir. Much time re setting up groups so easier maint. For laing. Took most of the day.
Changed group names from Numbers to department names aggreed upon; changed Shared Folders from scratch to similar “group names”; Time needed to fix the script and associated shares to get them working properly again.
Management sends email about copy of work and shares to get ready for go live on new domain Tuesday morning
Scheduled amir to help next morning-go to meeting session and voice converence.
Monday Evening = late night moving all to CompanyUnamed.int domain; very troublesome; user locks after one login, domain issues from local machines & possible issues with script over bandwidth running as well as multiple machines joining at the same moment via bandwidth to CompanyUnamed1 while doing CompanyUnamed2.
Folder data moved slowly from original files server to the new file server while the machines are being introduced to new CompanyUnamed.int domain.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Went around copying data from all machines to user directories (time consuming)
Some users not seeing groups- Started addressing what we could on this
Started file backup setup with Liang and Management. Had Liang call support for eiossos to find out licensing.
Server 2013 and sql for U8 is not able to backp. Can however get the rood directories providing backup of Notes.nsf files and it should be fine- Needs a restore test. U8 data directorie at least is able to backup, but not the transaction files.
Late night started copy of data Main Data afte rcuttoff time of 4:30 pm
All users lock out after sign on – time spent researching – Had Amuir on hold for tomorrow morning in case we did not come up with solution.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Found fix for autosign in set to zero..works fine. Fix is to adjust security policy on active directory so that Account lockout threshold set to 0. Cancelled scheduled GoToMeeting with Amuir and put him on standby since things smoother; Each machine then needed gpupdate /force command Managemente
NetAdministrator looks into vpn for Management | Visits his house;
Documentation started & updated on new database, Took while to get going; Showed liange the important things to document
How to’s written up for them in CompanyUnamed IT database and link given to Liang and Management.
Management mentions 3 machines not able to do bank transfers;
Cleaned out old filserver and create “video” shared drive for huge files from users to maintain without clogging fileserver
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Gave Management new backup drive. Instructed how to do so.
fixing messes and rights first morning; Fix for the bank situation turns out user needs local administrator and to reinstall the bank software. All users working now.
NetAdministrator Visits Management’s home again to work on vpn
NetAdministrator suggests wipe Management’s machine… Lang takes care of it; Resetup ; he has less problems.
Suggestion was to wipe machines and keep them as “Vanilla” as possible – No regedts, no host files, etc.
We spend only half day at plant ; Summarized all work and expectations; Thanked staff. Susan took us out to mall – By 6:00 PM we are dropped at the ferry.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Spend day in HK
Video Chatted via Smartphone with Management to make sure he is all set. He confirms all is well.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Spend day in HK
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Left Early morning – arrived 11:30 PM in BDL
Overall Recommendations:
*If trouble arises with any current PC’s, consider wiping them to keep them as “Vanilla” as possible | Consider DHCP addresses instead of static
*Avoid local Host files and rely on DNS entries on server
*Avoid registry editing at all times
*Work on replacing XP machines with Windows 7 (start small but have it in the budget).
*Adding new IP cameras not recommended until best solution is found. Liang can research this with our help.
- Keep seagate external drives on any imporant machines (i.e. Management’s local backup & Mandy local backup and private share with Management)
*test recovering files from backup frequently
*Any new shares created on the ROOT drive of new fileserver should follow procedure in the CompanyUnamed IT Documentation database
*Any changes to IP addresses, servers, switches should be quickly updated in the CompanyUnamed IT Documentation database
Ryan Messier 