Rebuilding Network Toplogy

[icsamis]

Hi,

I was looking to get some input on a somewhat unique problem I have. I took over IT operations for a small software company about a year ago and inherited quite an enormous mess. Although our developers are actually quite bright and knowledgeable I don't think I have enough space here to really describe how bad the previous IT management was at running the department but I think my great grandmother would have done a better job in all honesty.

One enormous, sprawling flat LAN with everything from ancient OpenVMS to Server 2008R2 to ESX, a generic domain admin account with a 4 digit lowercase pw known to almost everyone, a datacenter with power strips daisy chained into each other across the room and piles of excess wire so thick it was impossible to see the ground in some spots, 2 DHCP servers in competition with one another, zero documentation of anything, and on, and on, and on....

I have spent the last 12 months slowly making things better and have made a great deal of progress so far. There is one particular thing though that I think is going to be a enormous challenge to overcome given the ingrained mentalities present after so many years of mismanagement. That is, the LAN was configured a very long time ago as 200.1.1.0/24. Not only does this strike me as pointless and absurd, but we are also running out of IP addresses and I would like to take us to something larger and more standard like 172.16.x.x.

The challenge is finding a way to do it in a way that ensures a smooth transition and does not interfere (or at least minimizes interference) with the development process. I can't recall ever running into a situation where I had to re-address an entire production network, so I was looking for some suggestions perhaps.

Sorry for the verbose post, I appreciate any feedback anyone might have to share!

 

[papadba]

I'd suggest you lay out where you want to "be" on paper. This should give an indication of "how big a bear you have to eat". . .

Unless they will provide a chunk of $ and something is done wholesale over a weekend with rented technical resources, you might consider the following.

Once you have the initial concept, suggest you implement the first bit an entirely new environment. Give yourself a new pc and connect to the new environment. Once this works as you require, bring on the next few connections.

Make sure the new environment has excess capacity. Nothing is as underwhelming as a "new world" that does not perform as well as the old one. . .

One place i supported did this converting from old twisted-pair coax to ethernet. There were control rooms at various locations throughout the facility and once some of us who volunteered to be first on the new environment were working as needed, the wholesale conversions were done based on connections to each different control room.