I'm finishing my A+ classes next week. I'm pretty comfy with my skills so far. I have my little LAN at the house with 2 pc’s, but no server SW yet- ME and Win 98. I set up a LAN for a friend with 2 pc's, a router and their cable modem.
I was offered a contract position for a Windows 2000 migration project.
They just ask for a basic ability in networking/hardware and IP configuration.
Honestly, I'm just a little nervous because it's my first time.  :rolleyes:
Anything I should pay special attention to? or any tips for a nervous newbie?? Practice??
Install is from network or from CD, I've done it in class once or twice.
Any words of wisdom??

What exactly are they asking you to do?

If you are just going to be installing Win2000 on workstations, thats no big deal. Using a RIS server or unattended install, the system will do all of the work for you.

If they are asking you to design the network and AD, you better make sure you got all your ducks is a row. I have done quite a few of these over the years and know, designing a reliable and efficent configuartion can be a challenge.

The only thing I don't care for in the current course and test is a lot of it revolves around older eqipment. The questions on the Transcender are sometimes about 80486's and Win95 installs. It should change in a few months- I almost wish I'd waited to take the classes. The test is kinda like Jeopardy- it depends on which questions you get. I don't know my I/O's and memory address- how often do you need that off the top of your head?? But I'm pretty comfortable with the rest. It's just hard to remember/memorize [b]everything[/b]. It's that perftionist/compulsiveness thing I guess.

It's listed a s a PC migration project, installed from server or cd. How do they do unattened installs for multiple PC's? I've seen it in class, but haven't seen it live on a large scale. This is an insurance co. with multiple locations. 70+ techs for it all togather. 4-5 days in length.  

if it's a full migration, check out www.altiris.com we use their migration suite and it is great. It's saved us tons of work. About six months ago we migrated 200 users in about an hour without touching their machines.  It was smooth.

They have a bunch of multimedia demos up on their website that explain migration and it's steps.  Even if you want to do all the work manually the demos will give you a good idea about what a migration will entail and you will look smart even if you don't feel it ;-)

Don't sweat it too much, one thing I do is waste a lot of time worrying about possible problems, then wind up facing totally different ones, so I worry twice as much as I should. Just worry about a problem when it's sitting in front of you, you just work through it and on you go.


Matt
crashburnrepeat

Are you sure it is installs? If I had to do that many pc's, I would do it by ghost or image. Even if they were different, updating drivers is way faster than a clean install.

I'm not sure what to expect, it's my first time. My info so far:
"this will be a large PC migration project. 87 rollout Engineers will be needed. All levels of desktop support engineers will be considered.
Tech should have experience in the folowing
Win2000 rollout - migration project.
Knowledge of basic networking ability (ip- configuration)
Network printer configuration.
Ability to load SW from CD or network"

Shee-it!? People get /money/ for this? I want in! Seriously.

Only hits count

You seriously should look into the Altiris stuff, you and another guy could migrate up to a few thousand PC's from one OS to another with a single click drag and drop event.  We saw a demo and the guy doing the demo said he'd seen 2300 PC's migrated at once I think.

We did about 200 and it was super easy. It even backed up all the users files, desktop pictures and stuff and then put it back on the PC after the upgrade so it looked the same as before it was upgraded.  We only had one fail because the NIC card was messed up.

It sounds to me like you'll be making backups, installing the new OS and then applying SP's and reapplying the data files you pulled from the client machine.  I've done it both ways and it's WAY easier with migration tools.  We've used Ghost before but the Altiris stuff was a lot easier and more powerful.  All our PC's did the migration at the same time, took about an hour or so.

crash'