Top 3 IT Stressors

What cranks a sys admin's blood pressure? Depending on the size of the environment a sys admin supports, he or she might not be able to narrow the cause down to just three top stressors. However, we took a stab at it in an informal Friday afternoon poll. Besides the issues involved with less-than-knowledgeable managers and users, as well as the usual migrations, patches, and hardware replacements, we singled out three top IT stressors:

1. Security, particularly user permissions. "User permissions are an endless task. Do people have access only to what they need, no more—balancing security against user access and ease of use."

2. Disaster recovery. "Are DR procedures in place? do they work....reliably? There's nothing worse than stressing about the Exchange server because there isn't a good DR plan in place."

3. Tape backups. Ugh.

We can't ease your pain, but we'd be happy to try to help lower your blood pressure. A little reading on the side, perhaps, might help. Though we also threw in a link for "Do Good" gaming. Call us in the morning.

Permissions:

"Safeguard Sensitive Content with Information Rights Management" by John Howie

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99821/safeguard-sensitive-content-with-information-rights-management.html

"Use PowerShell to Manage Fine-Grained Password Policies in Windows Server 2008"

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99929/use-powershell-to-manage-fine-grained-password-policies-in-windows-server-2008.html

"Using Access Denied: Restricting Users' Read Access to AD Objects"

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/98297/using-access-denied-restricting-users-read-access-to-ad-objects.html

Disaster recovery:

"Exchange Server Archiving Software" by B.K. Winstead

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/97738/exchange-server-archiving-software.html

"Spring-Cleaning for Your Exchange Server Deployments" by Jerry Cochran

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/24405/spring-cleaning-for-your-exchange-server-deployments.html

"Disaster-Preparedness Checklist" by David Chernicoff

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/94564/disaster-preparedness-checklist.html

Backup:

"Server Storage Options" by Alan Sugano

http://windowsitpro.com/Windows/article/articleid/99920/server-storage-options.html

"Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software" by Lavon Peters

http://windowsitpro.com/Windows/article/articleid/100032/enterprise-backup-and-recovery-software.html

"Your Worst Recovery Nightmare" by Karen Forster

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/45399/your-worst-recovery-nightmare.html

Readers Review Hot Products"

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/98120/readers-review-hot-products.html

Games With a Purpose (GWAP):

http://www.gwap.com