This discussion has been locked. The information referenced herein may be inaccurate due to age, software updates, or external references.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a similar question you can start a new discussion in this forum.

Is there a better way to clean up clutter?

So I wanted to post this to the forum to see what idea's or tips there might be to help me out.

We have an environment that's been operational for many many years. It's been through it's shares of problems, upgrades, swaps, modules, etc. We've had the works.

Doing an audit I've noticed remnants and orphaned files. More specifically what I mean is for example I'll find remnants of old updates. Remnants of modules we've had proof of concept on but never really used. Remnants of modules we did use but no longer do. We find connection strings still pointed towards these places that are no longer valid, connection strings to old servers that are no longer part of the monitoring environment and solarwinds. We find site settings that belong to older sites no longer used. etc. There is plenty of remaining clutter that needs to be cleaned up.

My problem is when it comes to finding and how to properly clean these things out without it affecting production. Purpose is to keep an organized and efficient system that can be scaled further for future use. I find that with old connection strings I've had them removed several times before but upon running configuration wizard they are added back on.

In our database the data also needs to be better maintained.

Can anyone show me or guide me to how to clean up these? Or better yet, how do admin's on here maintain a clean running environment?

  • I run POC's on a separate VM from my production Solarwinds equipment.  The same goes for Beta versions--always install them on a separate VM.  When I'm done using a POC or Beta product, I destroy its VM completely and build a new test environment for incoming products.  That keeps the production environment running clean and without questions.

    If you have a production environment with questionable or unknown items installed, refer to the documentation created by the user who installed them and determine their purpose and value.  If you confirm the information or products or modules are unnecessary, not used by anyone, and have no planned use in the future, use the documentation the installation administrator created to uninstall all parts of it.

    That's in an ideal world.  If no one documented what was installed, why it was installed, whether anyone is depending on it now (or in the future), you've got a mess to clean up.  And you also have a great example that shows why the tedious documentation and planning is needed for future POC's and modules.  Going forward, require everyone to follow the best practices, to use separate test VM's or test hardware for POC's and other tests, and to document what was done, what it was done, and when it can be removed/deleted, or how to incorporate it into the long-term production environment.

    I've successfully built a new Solarwinds environment on separate platforms with different IP addresses and names, then shutdown / disabled / changed the names and IP addresses of the old gear, and given the old names and IP addresses to the new environment, and then brought the new environment online.  There's documentation at Solarwinds Support for how to do this with the least amount of downtime for your environment.  I recommend you open up a Support Ticket and get their experts to show you exactly what must be done to accomplish this migration to a clean environment.

    It's not a simple and easy answer to your needs.  But, IMHO, it's the right one.

  • Great answer! And I don't know how you did it. But you guessed alot of things right. I inherited a mess. No SOP's, no documentation at all. Everything thrown all over the place. No documentation of what is used and what is not and what was done with the environment. Call it the perfect storm if you will. lol.

    I think since I've started here I've opened above 250 tickets if not more with support. Many times these guys even know me by name. But even support hasn't even been able to help. About a year ago we did migrate from a dirty environment to a cleanly built environment using all the requirements as recommended by solarwinds. But instead of starting a new, management forced old information to be migrated as well. So the saga continued.

    fast forward nearly 3 years and progress has been made. But my plate is still very full so to speak haha.

    You've given me some good ideas as I've always been curious how other admins are handling their environments.  I appreciate it.

  • If/when you find a more graceful solution, or even a Draconian solution, please share it here.  Others may benefit from your tales of woe, and your successes and challenges.

  • Sounds like a good plan. I know we all have our up's and down's with our environment. I was just lucky enough to land a wild beast.