Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

When I started my new job in December, they had an abysmal hostname policy. It's in the process of being changed for the better thanks to a new IT Manager. The entire point of a hostname is to make a computer more identifiable to humans. How do computers identify each other? IP Addresses. Why? Humans aren't good at remembering numbers. We like names, so we give things names to be more easily identifiable. DO THE SAME THING TO YOUR SERVERS. 

I started a new job so I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to. They also block anything with a google sign-in so I can't write while at work anymore. My new job is working for a state healthcare organization. Since I'm new, I'm spending a lot of my time with observing and trying to understand why things are done the way that they are. Without going into specifics on the environment here, some parts are really well thought out and others are like stepping into a time machine. There's lots to do (I easily found years worth of work my first week), so I'll have a lot to write about in the coming months. From implementing a DR solution with VMware Site Recovery Manager to setting up PRTG Network Monitor from scratch (because somehow there's virtually no monitoring going on), I'll write as much as I can about it when the time comes.