New Job: 6 Month Report

It's been a busy six months. I started with email and calendaring, moving one set of users from Exchange 2003 to Google Apps, and another set from an existing Google Apps domain to the new one. Maybe sometime I'll write about the pain of migrating from one Google Apps domain to another, but right now I'm still enjoying the fact that it's done, and I don't have to think about it again.

After the email migration, it was the same thing with telephony. Taking one group off an old analog system and one group on VOIP, and unifying them on a new Elastix VOIP service.

Next step, that's now moving in to the final stages, is storage management - taking a mix of Windows and Mac servers with various levels of attached storage to a high-availability cluster of Synology NAS boxes.

All throughout there's been the regular day-to-day IT support, as well as managing domains and hosting services. I've learned what can only be described as a shitload, and I've been given a lot of freedom to design my own solutions to problems, the time to research what I need and, thankfully the funding to buy the (relatively modest) hardware and software I've wanted.

It's been ludicrously busy. I've said several times, quite seriously, that I've done more work in the last six months than I was ever required to do over 4 years in my previous job. And while there have been some days where I've felt like I've bitten off more than I can chew, as well as days when I've felt like biting off heads off those interrupting my work, I've not had a morning where I wake up not wanting to go to work and get stuck in to it.

It even got to the point where I realised that a personal project I was playing with on a weekend was really just a thinly-veiled excuse to play with some new (to me) tools for setting up virtual servers at work.

What's my point? I guess nothing really, except that I'm loving my new job and it's a massive change in my professional and personal mood after four and a half years in a job that wasn't challenging me at all.