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Hey guys,

I just accepted a new position. The job so far is not bad, it’s more what I’m used to doing, but I’m a little lost not being a full admin. I was just curious how you guys would start picking up from a position that the last guy didn’t document a thing… Where would you guys start and keep it practical? I’ve tried to do more with less but a highly automated factory just is not the place to do it i’m finding out.

5 Spice ups
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Run an automated scan, spiceworks or Alienvaults OSsim, very light shouldnt crash anything

1 Spice up
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I’m doing that right now over softperfect network scanner.

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Hang on… are you the head IT guy where you are? If you are, you should be a full admin. If you’re not, your boss should provide you with what you need to do your job, be that documentation or admin credentials.

If you are the head IT guy where you are, but are not a full admin, is there an MSP you can speak to? Someone’s gotta have the admin credentials!

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You will find yourself in this position more than a few times.
At first it can feel like your well in over your head, but you will come to realise that its the same demons lurking behind the infrastructure.

Discovering what nasties lies beneath is one of the joys of taking on a new infrastructure, especially if you instinctively know how to resolve it.

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@ Guy of Edgware - Nope, I’m not a full admin. This position was given to me to take over from a guy whom basically quit and ran for the hills… so they are slowly testing me out I suppose… I’m a limited admin on most things. There was no documentation ever done on this place the last guy was supposed to write it all but he didnt.

@Colin Kent - Thank you for the advice. It’s starting to feel that way soon as I get over the endless wave of end users that seem to have never been told no.

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So sounds like you are taking over as a one-man shop for someone who was previously a one-man shop.

First thing I would do is make sure everything is secure. Perform a network scan of course but when doing so checkout your network for vulnerabilities. If this dude just jumped up and bounced one day then who is to say he doesn’t have a VPN setup (or other remote access) that no one knew about. Check out active directory for user accounts with lots of privledges that shouldn’t be there as well.

There isn’t an easy way to take over a situation like this, you will find out months from now that you need access to X platform that is only used X amount of times in a year and no one will have a clue how it functions or how to get you access. So start with things that are essential to business continuity and take it day by day from there. See what applications, processes and workflows are most critical and evaluate each of those individually documenting everything a long the way.

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Doughnut Destroyer - It’s a bit more than that but not really. It is production, so it’s intensive for the work when things are wrong. The last person here was a one man band, to which I am as well, just I’ve never been to a place that had no standard documentation at all… nor developed it… so I’m confused for that… I have developed it in the past, and I’ve improved documentation when I’ve went to places. This is more of, no one did anything, I don’t have a map, I don’t have IP addresses, switch configs, nothing…

I’ve asked that, and the local people since basically we are a small group that maintains one division of the company, we do not have full blown access to AD, only partly. Yeah, I’ve been here a month and it seems kinda like what you described. Some stuff just breaks no documentation on it, just what it is, what it did, and here you go you fix it.

I’m slowly going in that direction, right now I’m doing more help desk tickets, and I’m doing documentation when I figure out what is what. A lot of what they do for what I’d call needs to be a procedure they have done in the form of a ticket… Reporting I guess? but a lot of this really needs to be in a book.

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Spend some time to document everything you can when things are going well and document everything you do when things break and you’ve fixed them. It will take longer and more time than leaving things on their own. If there wasn’t any documentation from the previous person, then you’ll be doing yourself (and future folks in your role) a service by having that in some place to ensure continuity.