[SlowToady]

I hear you, sort of. My situation isn't *quite* as bad, but my employer (well, one of them) expects miracles on a next to nothing budget. Take the following example:

Everything we do depends on *one* server. Yep, one point of failure. One server running the place; if it goes down, we can't access any files (they are stored on the server), the accounting software (it's server based), the internet (DNS for LAN provided by server), process credit cards (need internet) or ship orders (need internet, too). Well, one day last semester I get a call at 11AM. The server is down, hard. It shut itself down, and when they try to re-start it, it starts up, and then goes down. Everytime. Well, I had class from 9-5 so I didn't get the message until 5P. Oops. Server was down all day, at about $2.5K hour or something. I know, not big $$$ but it's a small, somewhat seasonal company. So it's a lot to them. It took me 6 hours to get this thing rebuilt and running. (And MAN did they get me cheap!)

Well, just the other day, I approach my boss, the owner, about how I think we should implement a fail-over cluster, so that if it ever happens again, the second server will take over and I can rebuild the first one without the business grinding to a halt. He says, that sounds expensive, I don't think it's necessary.

Keep in mind our "server" is a HT-enabled P4 with a Promise FastTrak and 2 SATA disks, mirrored.

I can't get $$$ for ANYTHING.

Sorry for the rant..heh. And, sorry Mikester, I have no useful advice for you.

Maybe at your next meeting you could do like Maddox suggests: just hold up a sign that says "YOU'RE ALL FULL OF ****. YOU'RE NETWORK IS LAME, GIVE ME MONEY TO FIX IT." Ahh..maybe not.

Good luck.