Why do some companies DO this??

[drjones]

I am really grateful for the enormous number of awful IT companies out there....

Makes my job so much easier when my firm comes in, does a great job, installs quality hardware & software, and treats our clients like gold.

SO I met with a prospect; a law firm of about 8-10 people.

Their biggest complaint is network performance.

After chatting for a while, they give me the tour. All their equipment is newer, mostly Dell Optiplex, PE T410. Overall decent stuff....they'll need a few new computers here & there, but overall decent equipment.

I look in their server closet and first thing I look for (and of course my suspicions were right) is they've got a 10/100 switch - granted its a Cisco managed, but still - not Gig, AND plain ol' Cat5 - NOT 5e or 6 - patch cables feeding into it. The cable in the walls looks to be 5e/E, so that's ok....but seriously.....who installs a 10/100 switch with cat5 cable anymore??

I don't get why anyone would do that....but I guess I love it. Gonna drop in a Cisco GIG switch, new cables, QoS, they should see a substantial improvement in speed and performance overall.

Server's got 24GB RAM, it was pegged at about 98% usage....gotta figure out what's causing that....

Anyway, lots of room for improvement, just wonder why some companies are so careless/clueless.....guess they hate money!

 

[NYJimbo]

At least it wasn't a hub.

 

[14049752]

Server's got 24GB RAM, it was pegged at about 98% usage....gotta figure out what's causing that....

Exchange. It's supposed to do that.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2008/08/06/3406010.aspx

 

[drjones]

Exchange. It's supposed to do that.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2008/08/06/3406010.aspx

I'm looking at another of my clients servers that runs Exchange 2007 (as does this prospect) and they're using 13.6GB out of 16....still high (85%) but that one I saw yesterday was like 98% RAM usage.

Yet another exchange box I'm looking at right now is at 81% usage.

 

[brandonkick]

I'm looking at another of my clients servers that runs Exchange 2007 (as does this prospect) and they're using 13.6GB out of 16....still high (85%) but that one I saw yesterday was like 98% RAM usage.

Yet another exchange box I'm looking at right now is at 81% usage.

Which from what I've read is exactly what exchange uses. It will "return" memory that's needed if and when it's needed by the system.

The 98% usage.. I dunno. I wouldn't panic, but check it out at least.

 

[drjones]

Which from what I've read is exactly what exchange uses. It will "return" memory that's needed if and when it's needed by the system.

The 98% usage.. I dunno. I wouldn't panic, but check it out at least.

Yeah, I'm not too worried, definitely not panicked, I just don't think it's ideal.

The server is slower than mud to log on and do just about anything - that can't be good.

Looks like they may be running an instance of SQL, definitely BES....maybe they need a second server to take some of the load off, or just more memory for this box or something.

I'm going to have my tech take a good look at it to see WTF is going on with it....assuming we get the gig.