Where is The Money?

Mental Preparation

The first and foremost concept for troubleshooting is not to panic. It might sound like the simplest thing, but that is the reason why some new administrators make mistakes. Then, they dig themselves deeper because they panic. A calm mind can identify the problem and approach the problem with a systematic method. Sometimes, if you have been working with the problem for a long time, it will not hurt to just walk away from the problem and look at it after taking a break. You’ll see that there are some very obvious things you missed. I also like the buddy system. You might want to have someone else look at the problem rather than you seeing or not seeing the same issue - which was probably staring right at you.

Now, we know that in real life you can’t just walk away from a problem; your management might not appreciate that. You might be losing many millions of dollars while the network is down. I can tell you that in certain medical environments, you want to fix the problem fast since someone’s life might depend on that piece of equipment that you are trying to fix.