orphaned machines

[dninja at gmail.com (Robin Wood)]

Hi
In one of the last couple of episodes Larry mentioned machines which
were orphaned when people left a company, my immediate thought was
along a different track to what was discussed so I thought I'd mention
it.

What about temporary machines which are setup by sys-admins for
specific jobs or departments when the sys-admin leaves. Maybe a
developer needed a server with a specific version of mysql on it to
test a bug, the machine gets put on the network as a temporary thing
but then the sys-admin who does it leaves and the developer finishes
his testing and forgets about it. I can think of quite a few scenarios
where pet projects or temporary machines are forgotten about or lost
when someone leaves.

I supposed one solution to this is to make sure that every machine
that gets added to a network is logged but in reality I think people
are likely to be lazy and for short term installations bypass the
paperwork. An alternative is to scan the network regularly and pick up
any machines which are new or not in an approved list and have them
checked out. The problem with this is that once the machine is vouched
for once it becomes a recognised part of the network so wouldn't be
picked up as an anomaly.

So, that was my thought when orphaned machines were mentioned.

Robin