Yesterday I had a meeting with the boss, and I found out exactly what’s going on. I’ll be working half-time at both Architecture and EWS (I’ll save you the links for these, since I included them in the last post about this). Apparantly at both depts I’ll be using my Group Policy and MSI mojo to make things run a little smoother. Yes, that’s right, my GPO and MSI skills are being whored out to other DS run departments.
I can see why this is done, but in all honesty, nothing that I’ve learned about GPO’s and MSI’s has been difficult. The only true advance knowledge I have about the stuff is actually using them. Otherwise, you could just as easily read a book and setup a test machine to play with. I just find it funny.
I think I’d rather jump into something totally new, but this will be nice, especially at EWS, because they are essentially starting all over. They used to use a Novell eDirectory and Zenworks, but they are now migrating to use AD and the free tools for machine administration and package deployment that come along with AD. From what I gather they really don’t have any experience with AD stuff at all. So, hopefully, I’ll be setting up what DIA is like from scratch there. At Architecture, they have labs that they want fairly automated, like what we have here at DIA. That shouldn’t be too hard, since everything can be done via GPO.
I’m looking forward to the move, but as I’ve said before, I still have my reservations.
**Update**
The more I thought about this post, the more I sorta want to change my opinion. I’ve sorta realized that this is indeed how businesses work. It’s not really about knowing how to do something or not, it’s more about how you do it and that you’ve done it. Like I said before, anybody can read about GPO’s and MSI’s and making their lives easier. However, I’ve actually helped implement a system that uses these technologies fairly seamlessly. I can see why someone would want me to come in and help. It’s not that they can’t, it’s just that, since I’ve already done it, it will be easier for me and make the user experience better.