0xfeedface Tech musings and rants

Over the past few years working as a software engineer and security analyst, I've learned a few things about server administration. One I'd like to write about today is filesystem organization and planning. The company I work for has been in business for around six to eight years. They spent quite a few thousand dollars in buying a few Intel-based servers running Windows Server 2003. After years of use, our development server has no space left and often crashes due to lack of harddrive space.

One reason why we're having space issues is because we don't have any rules regarding organization. Often, we spend at least a half hour each day looking for the latest copy of one file. Sometimes that file is documentation, others it's a necessary DLL. We have multiple versions of files stored in multiple locations on multiple drives. Figuring out which file in which directory on which drive to grab can be a daunting task.

Take a lesson from someone who has spent countless hours looking for files: keep your servers organized. Especially if those servers are to remain in production for greater than five years. Maintain strategy for expansion.