Best Practices in Workgroup Maintenance?

option8 asks: "As the sysadmin for a smallish workgroup (15 or so users) I'm constantly wrestling to balance a regular maintenance regime with the users' continued productivity. As it is, I strive to keep my regular maintenance to a minimum -- optimizing drives, checking for directory and file corruption, permissions repairs, clearing logs, software updates -- after hours, on weekends, or whenever someone goes on vacation. I have a lot of stuff scripted - backups and whatnot go off every night - but there's a lot that requires at least a minimum of my 'monkey clicks the Okay button now' attention. Is this the best way, or do the other BOFHs out there have a better solution to regularly scheduled maintenance for the workgroups/labs/studios they oversee?"

Comments

Re:Remote Desktop and Weekends

[TripMaster Monkey]

I use DameWare myself...glad I was able to talk the boss into it. System administration without DameWare would be a real drag...yes, everything you can do with DameWare can be done with the regular Windows software (Remote Desktop, etc.), but DameWare makes things much more centralized and easily accesable. Bottom line: I'd highly reccomend it.

lazy admin is good admin

[outcast36]

I wanted to reiterate how important scripting is for your sanity. Be sure to check out the resource kits that come with each OS & IIS. These have lots of command-line scripts that lend themselves to some time-saving admin scripting fun.