Is Running a Health Check Hard?

[Arsynic]

I'm just learning Novell and my company needs a health check before we can get our patches installed. My company hired a third party company to handle our Novell stuff before I came on board six months ago and I'm scrambling trying to learn all I can about Novell. We need our 5.1 servers patched up and the company installing the patches won't do it unless a health check is done. The thing is that they charge $100 an hour and I don't want my company spending that much money if it's something I can do.

Is doing a Health Check easy for an MIS novice? I run DSrepairs, check time syncs, do VRepairs and all of that. I'm a Windows/Unix/Linux guy and I never heard of Netware until I landed my job, but I'm learning quickly. Is there any tutorials from Novell available on how to do a health check?

 

[terry712]

health check is very easy
but to be truthful so are the patches
run a config report (good for documentation)

firtly vrepairs - run these only if you have problems or if server is abending - dont run as routine

i always like to run a dsrepair -rc
this creates a dib which although you can recover from this - a novell dial in can - bit like an erd on steroids

also for ds - make sure you have no stuck obits
do this by loading dsrepair -a
then into advanced and check external references

you also want to check ds is syncing ok

surprised they are asking for a health check as to be truthful if i was coming in i would still do some check myself first

what patches are you behind ?

 

[TheLad]

Sounds like you are being conned. For $100 an hour, I'd want them to wipe the toilet seat before I sat on it let alone do a proper job in performing health checks before installing patches on critical systems.

-----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[lerdalt]

Just remember...support.novell.com is a good friend. Go to the knowlegebase and look up health checks. You will get some good information out there on what to do. They are easy to do, and once you've done them a few times you can practically do them in your sleep.

Same goes for the patches. All the patches come with a text file on what gets fixed and how to install them. I would have to say that most of the patches are only like 10 steps or so to really install.

TL

 

[Arsynic]

But I guess I'm asking if it's easy to screw things up. We have gigabytes of patient data and financial information and I'm new to Netware. So I don't want to take any risks.

 

[marvhuffaker]

I disagree with the other guys. I don't believe that paying someone that knows what they're doing is a con game. When you want to make sure it's done right, sometimes paying out some cash is worth it. You may be able to do the health check yourself, fine. But how will you know if something you see is normal or not? You won't unless you've done a lot of them. If you have critical data at stake, don't take chances, that's all I'm saying.

This same principal can be applied to several other areas in life. I don't fix my own car, even though I could probably find resources on how to do it myself and save money. I also put in my own sprinkler system, but found out the hard way that I should have just paid someone to do it. Would have saved me lots of time, money, and frustration in the long run.

BTW, I don't wipe toilet seats for nobody. They have other professionals for that.

Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[Lou0686]

Hi,

Ok here's my 2 cents.

I agree with Marv. The one thing that I would add is...patching doesn't always go smooth. What happens when something goes wrong? Since your not that familiar with it, what do you do?

You will call someone to get it fixed, that's what you'll do. And at that point....it will cost you.

Lou