Edit: Another post that still rings true today.
Originally posted June 3, 2008 on AIXchange
For a lot of us in North America, a chunk of our springtime is devoted to yardwork. Winters can be harsh, and yards and gardens need care. So we remove clutter, trim plants and pull weeds. And now, as we near summer, we–make that our kids–are mowing the lawn regularly.
While yardwork is a seasonal chore, when it comes to maintaining your IT environment, there’s always work that needs doing. So are all of your patches and microcode up to date? Do you have old users that can be removed? Can you reclaim disk space by removing old file systems that are no longer in use?
Are the tools and scripts in place to automatically document your machines? Is useful performance information being automatically collected? Are these reports being sent to a back-up machine so that they can still be analyzed if your source machine is no longer responding? Are your machines and cables labeled correctly? Is your documentation up to date?
These items may not seem as urgent as a run-away job or problem tickets that must be dealt with, but you need to plan for them. Because if you don’t, your IT environment will grow out of control like a weed-infested lawn, and you’ll eventually find yourself with a mess. Constantly caring for your machines may seem like more work, but the attention to detail ultimately makes your job easier.