New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?
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How do you feel when your new IT manager/managers start making changes to infrastructure you built over the year?
I will not say that my infrastructure is perfect or future proof as my main goal at the time was disaster recovery. I took over a role as system administrator for a company where everything is physical and has little to no redundancy (except only nightly backup that takes hours/day to restore). As of now, I am confident that the infrastructure is sturdy enough to withstand some minor human errors, or failure, and still be able to recover within couple hours at most.
The new changes involve briing his familiar infrastructure and implement them here. For example, stepping away from hyper-v and onto VMware. His goal seem to be one central command center to control all aspect before anything happens. I like his idea and his vision. He seems to be experienced, or veteran, in making these changes in his previous jobs before. However, my biggest concern is the cost to make all of these happens. All the changes I made cost around $30K - $50K. His changes may cost $100-200K in the span of 2-3 years.
Since I started over a year ago I tried to find a cheap but sturdy solution where IT can survive while it doesn't take a big chunk out of company' pocket. What he wanted, I used to think of getting as well. The different between me and him probably I am willing to work extra hours while save the company thousands of dollars in labor or license. He wants to spend more to make less work in the future. I am torn to see all the work I have done being overthrown in favor for a more simpler control but costly option.
I don't know if I should bring my thoughts to management or CEO or not. If so, should I let him know of all the things I have in my head? What is my approach?
For certain, I will get back to acquiring more certifications, and expect the worst.EDIT: Since I am not the only making the calls, I do not feel I am responsible to the consequences that may follow. Am I wrong? Do I go with the flow? This is almost opposite to what I have done so far, and I am lost for thoughts.
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It's not necessarily bad if thought out...
the problem is if he is just doing what is all too common in IT is making everything cookie cutter, do it once and repeat at each job.
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@Jason said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
the problem is if he is just doing what is all too common in IT is making everything cookie cutter, do it once and repeat at each job.
That would be my concern. Is he just taking "what he knows" from somewhere else, that he likely learned by rote, and applying it blindly here? What planning and discussion was done before this happened?
My biggest concern would be process. What process was followed that is leading to these changes? Was VMware, for example since you mentioned it, evaluated as having a specific value that will overcome its price point? Did he look into how to get those features potentially with Hyper-V? Or is his goal only to shift money to VMware and hope that no one asks questions.
If I was a CEO and had an understanding of IT and knew that this was happening I'd be looking for that discussion to have taken place or I would question if this wasn't a secret deal for the manager on the back end where he gets a job, shifts tons of money to a vendor and then moves on to another job having gotten some insane kick back. Don't think that that doesn't happen, it really does. IT is ripe for that kind of thing because it is so hard to discover when something totally inappropriate has gotten a huge budgetary spend until it is far too late and people are long gone.
Most likely this is just someone who thinks what they did before will work again and is hoping to get maximum attention without doing their due diligence. Possibly they did due diligence and you just haven't heard about it. Possibly it is something nefarious. It's hard to say and how you react will mostly come down to your goals, how the company's politics are and such.
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At the average SMB, no one will want to hear that money is being wasted. People just don't care and might actively get mad if you bring it up. But I've worked at companies where you are explicitly required to question this stuff and not doing so would get you in trouble.
Mostly this comes down to you reading the situation and figuring out how to approach it. How much clout do you have and how much does management actually care?
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@scottalanmiller said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
My biggest concern would be process. What process was followed that is leading to these changes? Was VMware, for example since you mentioned it, evaluated as having a specific value that will overcome its price point? Did he look into how to get those features potentially with Hyper-V? Or is his goal only to shift money to VMware and hope that no one asks questions.
This is all still brainstorming. He has to report and try to justify with another department manager before actually getting a green light. This department manager has experience in IT, but very vague and broadly. One could say his knowledge come from passion not directly from experience. Hopefully he will ask a lot of questions before giving it a green light, or even better I am hoping he would bring it up to our CEO directly before making decisions.
Most likely this is just someone who thinks what they did before will work again and is hoping to get maximum attention without doing their due diligence. Possibly they did due diligence and you just haven't heard about it. Possibly it is something nefarious. It's hard to say and how you react will mostly come down to your goals, how the company's politics are and such.
He seems to be experience with these kind of changes before. I don't know his true motive, but he doesn't give out any sign that he is working for a vendor or such. His vision is very vivid, and doable...and expensive.
@scottalanmiller said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
At the average SMB, no one will want to hear that money is being wasted. People just don't care and might actively get mad if you bring it up. But I've worked at companies where you are explicitly required to question this stuff and not doing so would get you in trouble.
Mostly this comes down to you reading the situation and figuring out how to approach it. How much clout do you have and how much does management actually care?
Any money spent need to be justified and produce result. With the amount he proposing there will be a lot of meetings before any decision is made. My concern is he may ignore free or cheaper options and go for a more expensive, but robust option. I am positively certain if he manages to pull this off his position with the company is secured for couple of years or more. The end result will be astounding, but at what cost.
I am a lowly IT guy. $100-200K is beyond my ability to compensate how much it is. To spend $500 I have to dig deep as is it necessary, luxury, or waste of money. I want the best for the company, but not to the point of starving for that perfect body.
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All the changes (VMWare, terminal, VDI, SAN/NAS, switch, etc) he is proposing I once think of doing the same thing. However, at the time (last year) I did not deem it necessary and overkilled. We grew from 45 people company to 80ish people company within one year. If I have to reconsider those option now... I still think it is overkilled.
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@stess said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
All the changes (VMWare, terminal, VDI, SAN/NAS, switch, etc) he is proposing I once think of doing the same thing. However, at the time (last year) I did not deem it necessary and overkilled. We grew from 45 people company to 80ish people company within one year. If I have to reconsider those option now... I still think it is overkilled.
Don't think in terms of overkill, that is an unhealthy way of thinking that often leads IT people astray and stops IT folks from effectively communicating problems to management. If he proposes something foolish and you respond that "it seems like overkill" then management hears "this is a solid choice that might be more than we necessarily need, but at least we have gone over and above." But that is not at all what any of those things mean.
None of those things, VMware, VDI, SAN, etc. are overkill, in fact they might be underkill (delivering too little, rather than too much.) But regardless, the question is if they are good investments. You need to look at their TCO and use that to determine their projected ROI. If they fail to have a better ROI and/or better risk evaluation than an alternative choice then they are simply bad design. We should never refer to bad design as overkill as this misstates the concern and can lead business decision makers astray.
Buying what is not needed is "misunderstanding the time value of money", "mismanaging financial resources" and "reckless and wasteful." Think in these terms, not in terms of overkill.
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Your big challenge here, if you decide to pursue a counter to these recommendations, will be in properly assessing business need (if you feel that his designs are not in the best interest of the company then you should, in theory, be able to not just put that into words but be able to put it into numbers) and then communicating that effectively to the powers that be. This is where the average IT person fails hard - IT tends to attract people who struggle to be able to quantify, qualify and communicate IT in business terms. Maybe you are not one of these people, but if you work in IT the chances are extremely high that this is an area where you feel a particular challenge.
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You should do a lot of research ahead of time and have reference material ready. A SAN in a 45 or even 200 person company is almost always total insanity - not because it is overkill in any way but because it is incredibly underkill (bad reliability), financially irresponsible (costs many times as much as something better would cost), downright reckless and often represents a "selling out" of the business to IT vendors. The last point is the hardest one to explain, but the most important. A key role of internal IT is to represent the business in a technology buying situation and way, way too many IT departments decline to do their jobs and don't protect the business especially when it comes to storage and will often actually totally hand the business over to predatory vendors looking to make a quick buck off of a foolish company that is willing to let sales people do their IT work for them. Not necessary the case here, but an 80 person company talking about SAN is a huge red flag. What possible reason could exist in such a tiny company to even have SAN get brought up for discussion? Just the time spent discussing a SAN would generally be a total waste of resources as it is so totally unlikely to be remotely rational to consider.
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@scottalanmiller said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
Your big challenge here, if you decide to pursue a counter to these recommendations, will be in properly assessing business need (if you feel that his designs are not in the best interest of the company then you should, in theory, be able to not just put that into words but be able to put it into numbers) and then communicating that effectively to the powers that be. This is where the average IT person fails hard - IT tends to attract people who struggle to be able to quantify, qualify and communicate IT in business terms. Maybe you are not one of these people, but if you work in IT the chances are extremely high that this is an area where you feel a particular challenge.
Thanks for the insight. I'll gather more information before making any decisions. These changes are estimated to take 6-8 months at least. I got time.
I will look at the link you posted and make a better judgmental decision. I am 110% against SAN and know there are alternatives that could deliver results with fraction of the cost. *cough starwind virtual SAN *coughI'll see if I can have a quick talk with the management to give my input about all these changes. Obviously I am not going in empty hands.
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Quick question: When would you justify Datacenter license for Windows Server 2012R2? Seem to be about having each VM running individual Windows server role.
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@stess said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
I am a lowly IT guy. $100-200K is beyond my ability to compensate how much it is. To spend $500 I have to dig deep as is it necessary, luxury, or waste of money. I want the best for the company, but not to the point of starving for that perfect body.
Don't let raw numbers scare you. If you want to play this game, take the bull by the horns. Start by asking the CFO for a meeting because you want to try to do something for the company. Sit down with the CFO and ask him to walk you through your risk aversion vis a vis your technology infrastructure. If he doesn't instantly know what you need to know here, you have a financial management problem, but this is your chance to start correcting it.
The CFO should be able to explain how much your company will be impacted by downtime (as it related to IT, at least.) You can get a loss number by minute, hour, day, etc. Talk about mitigation strategies. Mention concerns like "loss of reputation".
Talk to the CFO and finance department about how much risk aversion they have and how much they would be looking to invest in mitigating how much risk. Make this a business, risk and financial conversation. Don't talk tech, this is about the business not the technology.
This is information that anyone needs to even start designing a solution. This is what will tell you if high availability is even on the table. And it will tell you how much downtime mitigation has value. This is the most fundamental starting point to this conversation. Not one iota of work or planning should ever be done without this information.
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said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
His changes may cost $100-200K in the span of 2-3 years.
To be clear, That's 30-60K a year. Less than a FTE for an IT position. Spending that on an infrastructure refresh in the grand scheme of things isn't that much money for an environment with more than 1 IT person...
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@stess All the changes (VMWare, terminal, VDI, SAN/NAS, switch, etc) he is proposing I once think of doing the same thing. However, at the time (last year) I did not deem it necessary and overkilled. We grew from 45 people company to 80ish people company within one year. If I have to reconsider those option now... I still think it is overkilled.
VDI is more about what it offers you (Unique desktop experience, anywhere at any time). I've seen companies with 12 people VDI make sense for. I've also seen companies with 500 who it didn't. If you have aggressive security/compliance needs and a highly mobile workforce then some type of remote end user compute solution is a better deal. Don't focus on "We are a SMB" focus on the important IT can have in delivering solutions and value. If these solutions mean you can increase productivity for field or operations by 10% that's 10% less staff which may be a cheap ROI for instance... As Scott Mentioned, learn what the business need is. That said if your doing VDI on VMware at that scale I'd argue a SAN/NAS isn't necessary (horizon Suite Includes VSAN).
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@stess said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
Quick question: When would you justify Datacenter license for Windows Server 2012R2? Seem to be about having each VM running individual Windows server role.
Simple rule is when you need 14 or more VMs per node of Windows servers, then DC makes more sense than the alternatives. This is purely a financial licensing factor, not a technical one.
DC gives you the ability to split more workloads, though, so you tend to do somewhat bad things like condensing VMs until you have a DC license. So DC tends to make you behave better. DC is also much, much more flexible for disaster recovery for semi-obvious reasons.
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@scottalanmiller Going to disagree with you Scott. You need more than risk aversion (its only 1/3 of it).
Agility, Risk Mitigation, Cost Control are the 3 reasons you spend money on things in IT.
Take a bank. If all you cared about was risk aversion it would be a giant vault with snipers everywhere. Instead we recognize that having drive thru tellers is a better use of capital (Agility), and having managers and people who do audits to prevent fraud and loss (Cost control) is also worth funding.
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@scottalanmiller said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
@stess said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
Quick question: When would you justify Datacenter license for Windows Server 2012R2? Seem to be about having each VM running individual Windows server role.
Simple rule is when you need 14 or more VMs per node of Windows servers, then DC makes more sense than the alternatives. This is purely a financial licensing factor, not a technical one.
DC gives you the ability to split more workloads, though, so you tend to do somewhat bad things like condensing VMs until you have a DC license. So DC tends to make you behave better. DC is also much, much more flexible for disaster recovery for semi-obvious reasons.
This is going to change shortly as 2016 will involve core's in that calculation. If your buying 2012R2 with SA and the possibility of executing upgrade rights, keep this in mind...
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@John-Nicholson said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
His changes may cost $100-200K in the span of 2-3 years.
To be clear, That's 30-60K a year. Less than a FTE for an IT position. Spending that on an infrastructure refresh in the grand scheme of things isn't that much money for an environment with more than 1 IT person...
It's not bad at all in that sense. The question really isn't "is this too much for a business to handle" but should be "what are we getting for that cost?" If there are good reasons for it, it's probably well justified.
Of course, probably the bigger question would be... "why so many IT people for a company of just 80 people?" Might be good reasons there too, but that is likely too many IT people per employee. At least for an average business.
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@John-Nicholson said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
@scottalanmiller said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
@stess said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
Quick question: When would you justify Datacenter license for Windows Server 2012R2? Seem to be about having each VM running individual Windows server role.
Simple rule is when you need 14 or more VMs per node of Windows servers, then DC makes more sense than the alternatives. This is purely a financial licensing factor, not a technical one.
DC gives you the ability to split more workloads, though, so you tend to do somewhat bad things like condensing VMs until you have a DC license. So DC tends to make you behave better. DC is also much, much more flexible for disaster recovery for semi-obvious reasons.
This is going to change shortly as 2016 will involve core's in that calculation. If your buying 2012R2 with SA and the possibility of executing upgrade rights, keep this in mind...
Yes, when 2016 comes out we all have to learn how the licensing works out all over again.
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@John-Nicholson said in New IT manager making changes... should I be concern?:
VDI is more about what it offers you (Unique desktop experience, anywhere at any time). I've seen companies with 12 people VDI make sense for.
I said literally the same thing to Citrix like fifteen minutes ago
