These are some excellent tips. I'll be adding all of them to my to-do list. It's starting to seem that I may not get through them as quickly as I hoped. Oh well, job security, I suppose. I honestly don't see how I could skip any of the steps. They're all critical things that could take down the system.

Regarding the test system, there's a large VMware cluster. At a minimum, I'll use that to provide a test environment. Because of the size of the environment, I tend to think there's no unused servers, but I'll look for on.

I will have the chance to interview a former admin. I'll try to find out if there's a log, change log, etc... If not, I'll press for details. Any specific questions or terms I might want to use?

---------- Post updated at 09:38 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:30 PM ----------

Great brain storm, man. There's some great security tips in here. I'll have to add all these in too. At some point, I may have to get some help in prioritizing these. It's a good problem to have, I suppose. I want my client to get their money's worth.

---------- Post updated 01-07-13 at 08:47 AM ---------- Previous update was 01-06-13 at 09:38 PM ----------

I had cross posted this on Oracle's forums and got a nice tip for taking a snapshot. Also, to review the logs associated with reboot and looking for anything unusual to return the server to it's expected state.