"the other day I saw a switch go offline (a big red blip on my monitor),
so I went down there, realized that a rat had pooped all over the
wiring, and chewed through some of it. I replaced the main cable and
they came back online. As I was going to leave, someone said 'Hey, what
is CTS doing here?' I replied 'I became aware that your department was
offline and I came down to fix it.' They replied 'wow, I didn't know we
were offline!" To which I said 'yes, for about 15 minutes now.' they
paused.... 'Wow, that is proactive! In the old days we used to have to
call you up and tell you about the problem, and then maybe wait a few
days for you find a replacement part.'
That felt good to hear.
One of the earliest things I did was install a NOC suite of software here.
A friend donated an outdated version of Solarwinds Orion (7)
I wrote a letter to PRTG and got them to donate 100 licenses.
I'm running ipSentry for my Windows services because they donated a full
license as well.
So... if a machine, or a router or a switch goes offline, or a service
crashes... I get an alert via email.
And away we go, repairing it, like little invisible mice.... who can
repair stuff.
-chad
