Workshop

• Network login scripts
• Network user attributes
• Network application configuration
Having identically configured components means that if one component works in one place, it should
work in others as well, unless a hardware problem exists. (Hardware problems also become more
obvious if everybody’s on the same operating system page.) It also means that you don’t have to
understand many problems in order to troubleshoot them. Instead of having to understand the nuts and
bolts behind a complex network configuration, you can compare simple items to “known good” items
(for example, login scripts or user attributes) or quickly redo more complex items.
For example, once you discover that a workstation that’s supposed to be identical to other workstations is
having an operating system or application problem (you’ve ruled out the entire user object, user
attributes, and network application configuration), you can simply clone its hard drive. This operation
takes 15 minutes (versus the hours that you might spend troubleshooting it otherwise). What’s more, if
the hard drives are indeed all configured the same, cloning the workstation couldn’t hurt—that is, at least
it won’t hurt the configuration that’s supposed to be on the drive.
To keep from upsetting your users, you need to communicate before you leap. That is, you need to let
your users know that keeping data files on their hard drives is a really, really bad idea. Apart from the fact
that their data will be lost in the event of a hard drive failure—c’mon, how many people you know back
up their hard drives every single day?—the cloning of a given hard drive completely overwrites any
information stored there.
Here’s the bottom line: Troubleshooting starts with identifying whether the problem is local or systemic.
If it’s a local problem, you can often treat it via homogenization of the workstation or user object. This
means that, typically, all you need to spend your brain power on are the systemic problems. If you apply
the techniques in this hour, local problems will become no-brainers.
Manual Standardization
You don’t really need automated deployment tools in order to get organized (on the other hand, they do
make tasks go a lot quicker and easier). Regardless of whether you choose to use power tools or a hand
drill to automate your network rollouts, in order to be successful, you definitely need a well-defined work
plan. (It’s an old saw in the automation game: How can you automate anything that has yet to be done
manually?)
Let’s look at the parts of your work plan that will need to be addressed whether you automate or deploy
manually:
• Divide tasks into workstation-oriented tasks and user setup–oriented tasks