Work is really starting to get to me again.  It happens periodically…  A bunch of stuff breaks at once, nobody else can fix it, and it all winds up in my lap.  Suddenly I find myself without enough hours in the day to get everything done.

I’ve got our in-house Exchange Server issues, which I’m going to have to simply abandon today.  I can’t keep working on in-house stuff because it doesn’t earn us any money.  I’m just going to have to call it “good enough” and move on to our clients - which I hate to do.

But in addition to the Exchange issues we have other problems in-house, which these recent Exchange issues have hilighted.  Our Domain is not happy.  There’s constant replication errors.  There’s far more machines showing up in ADUC than we actually have…  DNS is just a mess of old entries and aliases…  We’ve got a ton of users and mailboxes that may or may not actually be in use anymore…  And now I’m wondering what other issues, like the failure to move our Public Folders, may be lurking in my future.

We’ve got a client who is replacing an ancient Linksys router with a new Cisco.

We’ve got a client whose Cisco is malfunctioning and needs to be fixed.

We’ve got another client whose Cisco is acting odd, and may need to be fixed.

Another client has been working on setting up a pile of VPNs between several branch offices and a few remote users, and it just is not working the way it should.  Contant problems, connections dropping, slow connection speed…  I suspect their hardware isn’t up to the task and will need replacement.

We did a server install last week, but were unable to complete all the software setup on-site, so I need to finish that up remotely.

We’ve got a new backup system (tape drive & software) coming in for a local medical office, which will have to be installed after hours some night.

We’ve got a server reload scheduled for this weekend…  We can’t touch their server until 4:30 Friday afternoon.  Which means I’m going to spend most of the weekend reloading it.

And we’ve already got another server reload scheduled for next weekend…  Another place where we can’t touch their server until Friday afternoon, and I’ll wind up spending most of the weekend reloading it.

So I’m looking at a good two weeks of frantically trying to keep my head above water, without even a break on the weekends.  Fun!

Had a truly wretched day yesterday.  My Exchange migration has gone to hell.  We’ve got corrupt data in our Public Folders store, it’s been there for years.  We’ve also got an assortment of errors in Active Directory from when our Domain Controller up and died one weekend.  And there’s some lingering crap from the first time I tried to move us from Exchange 2003 to 2007.  The end result of all this is that I’m unable to move our Public Folders over to the 2007 server.

Everything I do kicks up a cascade of errors.  Data doesn’t move, errors are logged, and servers fall over.  And I can’t really keep the Exchange 2003 server up and running just for Public Folders because it is barely running as it is.  So I’ve had to create a completely new Public Folder store on the 2007 server and manually re-enter everything important.

And while I was struggling to get the server back up and running properly I had folks around the office asking me every hour or so whether they could get back in to Outlook yet.  And my phone was ringing constantly - assorted clients with various issues that only I can take care of.

So, once I got home, I fired up Left 4 Dead and spent some time killing zombies - very therapeutic.

I played through Death Toll, which takes place in and around a small country town.  It reminded me more of the original Night of the Living Dead than 28 Days Later.  There was a general feeling of open-ness…  Sure, there were still plenty of obstacles to channel you where you were supposed to go.  Plenty of hillsides, car wrecks, walls, fences, buildings…  But everything felt far more open and expansive.  Not everything was paved over.  There was actually grass, and trees, and a river.

We started out on a country road, but had to abandon it because the bridge was out.  We made our way through some kind of industrial complex…  They had some kind of a big shipping depot with lots of trains and stuff.  Made our way through a small town - little shops and assorted houses.  Had to work our way through a couple small country houses.  Eventually we made it to the river and caught a boat to safety.

Earned a few more achievements…  And I actually lived through to the end of the game this time, instead of dying literally feet from safety…  Had a lot of fun mowing down zombies left and right…  I’m getting a little better at dealing with the zombie horde.  Managed to save some folks from hunters and smokers.  Managed to take down a tank before it actually hurt anyone.

I managed to clear my schedule for today and tomorrow, slated myself to work on our Exchange server in-house, and kicked everyone out of Outlook/Exchange for the day.  So I’ve really been pretty productive today…

I reloaded the new Exchange server, got all the software installed and configured, started migrating data…  And that’s where everything really ground to a halt.  We’ve got piles of data on that old server.  I mean, tons of it.  Some of the individual mailboxes are a good 10+ GB.  So I’ve spent most of the day today just watching progress bars slowly crawl across the screen.

It’s boring, but it feels good to finally be getting this done.

Tomorrow is Monday…

Normally I don’t like Sundays much.  I wind up in a state of near-mourning because the weekend will soon be over, and I’ll be back at work once again.  And that’s never a good thing.  But it isn’t nearly so bad this week…

The four-day weekend was certainly long enough for me to unwind.  I had a great Thanksgiving, and a couple very restful days afterwards.

I feel very ready to take on whatever this week has in store for me.  Which is probably a good thing…  I’m supposed to spend Monday and Tuesday getting our new Exchange server up and running.  Yay!

Our Exchange 2003 server has been having issues for a while now.  It hasn’t worked right in a year or more.  The drives are filling up and we’re rapidly running out of room.  There are some software oddities that have accrued over the years, and Exchange itself doesn’t work as well as it should.  The remote agent for our backup software has trouble grabbing data.  It falls over periodically for absolutely no reason.  You get the idea…

I’ve been pushing to replace this server for almost a year now.  About six months back I finally got approval to buy some new hardware and load it up with Server 2003 x64 and Exchange 2007 - which I did.  And I was supposed to go ahead and migrate all the data over to the new server shortly after it was built…  But that’s where things fell apart.

They weren’t willing to let me take down our existing Exchange server long enough to migrate the data to the new one.  Nobody could part with their email or calendar for the time required.  So the migration got delayed…  And delayed…  And then put on the back burner…  Somewhere along the line our new server was shut down and shoved into a corner.

Recently our Exchange 2003 server has been having even more issues than normal.  It is falling over on a daily basis.  People can’t send or receive mail.  The public folders are unavailable half the time.  Backups are failing more often than not.  And now it is suddenly important that we get a working Exchange server up and running.

Which means that in addition to all the other work that was scheduled for today, I’m trying to get an Exchange 2007 server up and running.

And because this server has been offline for over three months, replication between it and the rest of the domain has been shut down.  So I can’t just fire it up and start migrating information.

I did a quick search for information…  A little troubleshooting…  And while it does seem to be possible to convince the servers to start replicating again, it also doesn’t appear to be a very good idea.  It looks like the recommended way to get things working again is to un-install and then re-install Active Directory on the server.  And since it’s got Exchange installed simply un-installing Active Directory is not going to work very well.

So I’m likely looking at a complete reformat & re-install of the entire OS, from scratch.  Which means we have to locate the media we used to install it in the first place - not an easy thing to do around here.  Discs seem to vanish into thin air.  And then all the updates will need to be downloaded and installed again.  All of which is supposed to somehow be squeezed in between jobs in an already short and busy week.

Yeah…  Fun…