The Small Client and Their 5 Routers

Keeping with the theme of the previous post about the client with their "redundant" servers, here's another amazing sight that I walked into. It's another small client with a part time IT guy. We're told immediately that he has a PhD in computer science. I'll give him credit for creativity, but I still have nightmares about fixing this.

The client was pretty cheap before we came on board, and they didn't want to spring for a business grade firewall or router. So our guy goes over to Bestbuy to pick up a Linksys. Problem is, they have a few servers on site that they want to make available to the Internet, and the Linksys could only handle one IP address on the WAN interface.

The solution?

• Buy two more Linksys routers. 
• Give all three unique IP addresses on the WAN side, and on the LAN side. 
• Statically assign everything, so all workstations are going out one router with NAT overload, the email server is going out one with a static NAT, and the webserver is going out the third, again with static NAT. 
• The asterisk box can be tied directly to the Internet, with a 4th public IP address.
• The 4th router was also sitting in the pile, using the 5th public IP address. He wouldn't tell us what that router was doing, but we found out soon enough that it was his unauthorized back door into the system.
• The 5th router was sitting in a file cabinet as a cold spare.

By the time 5 Linksys routers were purchased from Bestbuy, or wherever they came from, why couldn't they have just bought a decent firewall?

Small Client and Their "Redundant" Servers

I mentioned this client and their "redundant" servers in a previous post. Here's what they had. Their previous IT guy set up a pair of servers with ESXi. One hosting the live servers, one hosting the backup server for each of the live servers. Failover meant him running over from his 9 - 5 job at Ford as soon as he could, pulling the virtual Ethernet connection on the live server, and then connecting the virtual Ethernet connection on the redundant server and powering it up. And of course hoping that it connected to the .vmdk file correctly on the datastore. If this is the best that you're capable of setting up, I guess I get that. But what I don't get is why a company of 6 people needed 8 live servers and the corresponding 8 backup servers set up. There was a SAMBA server running an NT style domain, an LDAP server in addition to that doing the actual authentication, A file server, the Peachtree server, an engineering server (which I think was pretty much just another file server) and a couple others I don't recall now.

Overheard at the Office #45

Meat had just started recently and was set to go out with Daniel to meet with a prospective client. Apparently he was excited at the prospect as he came in wearing his suit. He popped his head in and then it started.

Sven: Holy crap dude, did you just lose a bunch of weight?
Meat: Um, yeah.
Me: So do you own an iron? Or a mirror?
Meat: .....
Daniel: Dude, you are NOT going to meet a client looking like that.....

Meat was wearing a suit that was obviously 4 or 5 sizes too big and looked like he pulled it out of the bottom of a bag where it has sat crumpled up for a couple years. To top it off, he was wearing some really old beat up Chuck Taylor's with said suit.  He never did go out to meet clients.

Overheard in the Office #44

Lunch was a big deal at the office. We had longer discussions on what we were going to eat and who was going to get it that day than any technical discussion. If you've read a few of these posts, it's apparent that this was a group of guys who took lunch very seriously. So this one day Mitch was completely adamant that we get Domino's. He had a Domino's app on his phone, and had a coupon for free bread pieces, that day only! Despite none of us caring for chain pizza, we gave in and Mitch went up to get the pizzas and his precious bread pieces. Now here's the kicker. The bread pieces were terrible, no matter how many times Mitch said otherwise. Second, they only cost 99¢. It's not like the guy was hurting for money.

Overheard in the Office #43

Not long before Cynthia started, we did a bit of a reorganization/cleanup of the office. The well stocked refrigerator was brought out of the back room that became the lab, and it was brought into the tech area. There was a single row of interconnected "desks" that ran around the room, and the refrigerator was put on top of it in the middle of one long wall.

Cynthia's desk was set up in the corner, right next to it. Naturally, her first question was "Are you putting me next to the fridge because I'm a woman? Am I going to be making sandwiches?" Without missing a beat, Daniel replies "Yes. And here's all you need to know. I like mayo, but not mustard. Alan likes mustard but not mayo. DO NOTmess that up."

I should mention that I knew Cynthia before she was hired. We probably wouldn't have pulled that on someone we didn't already know.

Overheard in the Office #42

Donald can be a little tunnel visioned at times. He came over to my desk one afternoon to let me know about the carpet cleaners coming in over the weekend. As this conversation was happening, Mitch, who was on the phone with a client, yelled over to Sven and I that a client was completely down. All their "redundant" servers (which I'll cover in a future post), were offline. Sven and I sprung into action, remoting into something that was still up at the client,and assessing the damage. Sven figured out the issue and got everything back going. During all of this, Sven and I were frantically typing and clicking away and yelling things back and forth to Mitch, who was still on the phone with the client. It was about this time I noticed that Donald was still standing off to the side, mumbling about the carpet cleaners as if nothing was going on.

Did I mention that he's a bit tunnel visioned at times.?

Overheard in the Office #41

Non-IT coworker: Are we using Windows 10?
"IT" coworker: Yes, Twenty-ten.
Non-IT coworker: No, I mean Windows, not Office.
"IT" coworker: Yes, Windows Twenty-ten.
I just ignored that exchange. We're using Windows 7, and there is no Windows 2010.