Networked!
Networked!
Networking in our environment would have to be one of the worst, primarily because we're not only running power-hungry graphics software, but as a bureau has to run just about every version of every package and occasionally all at once. Many packages have the potential to get awfully confused when there's more than one version running at the same time.
We made ready during the week before N-Day, by upgrading to Windows for Workgroups on all the machines and getting application software running on the new Windows. As anyone out there knows, upgrading your operating system can cause unexpected problems in other software.
One of the casualties was Accuscan, the OCR package for the HP Scanjet. The version we had simply would no run on WFW even though it had been fine on all versions from Win286 to 3.1. Luckily we were able to get a newer version that works. (Mind you, we discovered the problem at 6pm one evening, when trying to scan a 38 pager that had been promised for 9am the next morning! Gulp. On the phone, get helpers, start typing.)
N-Day, Saturday, arrived, and all the lids came off the PC's to install the network cards. Rule number one. Don't put the lid back on until you have tested the machine thoroughly. There may be interrupt clashes with scanner cards, soundblasters and mouse cards etc which means the lid has to come off again to flick a switch. In our case all the machines are different, with a different mix of extras installed - so each had to be treated as a special case and setup different.
We had decided that where ever possible we would run the cables through the roof, to lessen the mess under the desks. Mark also took the opportunity to remove the rats-nest of printer cables. With the network handling all the printers we wouldn't need them any more. (LOTS of printer cables going cheap. Call Mark!).
With the hardware installed the real job started, which was reinstalling software and fonts onto either local machines or onto the server. Initially we made out a plan based on how often each user would be using the software. If it was constant then the package would be best on their machine, if only occasionally then we would install it on the server and they would access it over the network. It was a pretty complex spreadsheeting exercise, to have everyone happy and not end up with more copies than necessary. (We have a constant tussle for hard disk space - trying to run software, do typesetting and leave at least 100meg free per machine for your jobs!)
After installing the software as per the plan and we did some rudimentary tests (it was 3am) to make sure everything was working. We reloaded WordPerfect 6 four times before it was happy. Some software packages that we only use very occasionally were installed on Syquest cartridges, ready to be popped in when required.
The big question for us was fonts. Previously we had only subsets of fonts loaded on individual machines but there were many doubleups and they were tying up 50meg+ on each machine. We were keen to see if we could have one huge bank of them on the server, so that any user could access any font he needed.
After much juggling, we have achieved it and are making a lot of use of FontMinder (it comes with Corel 5) to make up font packs for particular jobs or packages. This has given us a huge saving in time and disk space.
Sunday PM we discovered there was a problem with sending files to the imagesetter, they went OK, but would hog the whole network while they were at it. This was a technical hitch, that took a few days to solve, but caused a nightmare for anyone trying to use software across the network at the same time. Going to the laser printer was fine, it was just the imagesetter. The immediate solution was more reloading of software onto local machines - yes, I do use that package more than I thought!
Tip: Buy a small notepad to sit beside each machine and get in a habit of recording EVERY change you make to the configuration, loading, unloading software & fonts, changing systems setting etc. Then when something suddenly doesn't work - you'll have something to guide you as to what might have caused it!
As well as our usual system log books, for the settling in period we established a Network Gripe Book, to note down anything that needed attention. It proved invaluable.
The gripe book helped the settling in to happen faster, because noone needed to remember to tell Mark about a difficulty - everything was just recorded for the next fix session.
The network has now been in for a couple of months and is all settled. The notes in the gripe book slowed as the bugs were ironed out and we're now having fun learning what else we can do that we couldn't do before, like playing games and pinching disk space on someone else's machine. Some folks here are also learning the art of distracting someone who's about to print so they can get their own job in the print queue first!
