Blade Watch

The IT directors’ replies were as follows:

• Time taken to get a new starter up and running

At least a week, the main challenges are around getting a desk and then having their account made, IT security seem to take forever, and then the pc might need rebuilt or might be below spec so a new pc needs to be ordered. One of the things I’ve been making moves towards is pre-building pcs and just saying when a new guy starts, give them a new pre-built pc, avoid this there’s Janet’s pc, which could be unhealthy, out of support or create debates.

One of the things the business are particularly bad at is notification, just last week I had a manager phone up asking where his new joiners’ pc was only to find out that they had logged a call that morning saying, new user starting today at 9am, please set up with no information in the call.

• How long does it take to rebuild a desktop?

Interesting you ask that question, it used to take about three or four days from the time the user logged the call, to the time the desktop was collected and then another few days for the desktop to be built.

With consultation from desktop support and helpdesk, pc rebuilds are now classed as an incident, an engineer will check the inventory and check the pc, then from the users’ desk kick of the rebuild using Altiris at lunch or when they leave at the end of the day, with a rebuild itself taking about 1 hour. All that’s left is the post build configuration, the user specific Outlook, desktop settings and profile work but again that can be done at the users’ desk.

I wanted to get away from the action of rebuilding a pc being part of the service request five year plan, there’s no rush kind of thing, the old service request involved too many tasks and extra bits which weren’t necessary:

1. Verify desktop health
   1. Collect pc from users desk and deploy spare pc and verify it works for the user
2. Deploy build (this had to be scheduled by the help desk manager)
3. Install extra packages and return pc to user
4. Configure pcs packages and specific settings

The problem being, one engineer might work on each task, creating duplication of effort, of communication “how far did you get with… what build did you load on…”. Now I expect one engineer to handle the issue on their own (unless there are issues), to effectively own the rebuild from start to finish.

• How long does it take to build a server?

It takes about five weeks, it’s a continual improvement project which I’ve got two teams working on.

1. The first is the server/network teams, I’ve asked them to identify issues with the operating system build, the build process and the work flow.
2. The second is to work with purchasing, with asset management and move them away from the olden days way of doing business. They buy a server like they buy a toaster. They would order three 1u servers of similar specification a week, each time requesting three separate quotes. I’m trying to agree that we now adopt a simpler process every Monday and Wednesday we request quotes for our two standard configurations, that way when someone requests a server, there’s no delay in getting a price, slowing down the tendering process.

Next we invited asset management into the world of CMDB, they now had access so, when a server is ordered and delivered, they allocate a name (click a new server button), they enter the asset number and the details, it’s a R610 etc, so that when the task to data center planning comes they know the model type and asset details to allocate space. At the same time though, when a new server name is created that emails the server team saying asset PETS0028975 a Dell R610 server name WSWP000687 has been created, so they know all the details ready for the build, they just need to check the call for the operating system and confirm with the manager.

It’s a never ending improvement project, the virtualization aspect is easier but we need to structure it more, it’s fine that we can deploy a server in minutes, but I need to control that from a budget, charge back and licensing issue, so we’re trying to agree a process on that.

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