A bit baffled by what my company has bought

diable

adouglasmhor wrote: »

If they are on a server it will be a case of turn it off, open the cover, look and see it the hard drives match what was ordered.

Might be "to" swappable do no need to turn the server off, may need to see what the RAID level is if any.

diable

Oh and if your IT has left under a cloud then I would consider changing all the admin passwords and checking AD for any unusual login accounts.

prowla

diable wrote: »

Might be "to" swappable do no need to turn the server off, may need to see what the RAID level is if any.

Well, you'd need to know what the drives were for...
Failed drives on a server would typically have an orange light instead of green, and often they can just be hot swapped.

But really it needs someone who knows what they are doing, or it could all go badly wrong.

I'd suggest hiring a contractor for a day or two; you could try advertising on http://www.freelancers.net if you don't know anybody.

bluesnake

if the drives are part of a raid 5, set which by buying 3 suggest they could be, then probably you had better leave it to someone more experienced, as it is not just not as easy as plugging in a larger drive, or 3 drives.

Make sure you have an up to date backup. Make sure all your files are on that backup, and know how to restore. More than one backup is also good. Backing up via more than one different method is again also good. Make sure you know how to restore.

your old disks - number them and their corresponding bay slot, so it you are going to take them out and shuffle the drives around, they go back into their original position should things go wrong.

Remember to do regular (daily?) backups. We do 4 hourly ones at work for select critical stuff.

Pthree

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the replies I realize I am out of my depth here.

We are only a small company and our "IT Guys" are external, the chap that has left was very (very) in with them, which makes us think there may have been a few under the table deals type things going on, but maybe not and we have got what we paid for.

Spoke to my boss last night and explained I had no clue so we have agreed to get another IT company in to do an audit and see where we go from there.

No doubt I will have questions, so don't go far!

Just to add I did manage to change all the passwords etc.. its just all the internal guff (technical term!) I cant get my head around!