I do not have a car in New York, and I cannot find a reasonable way to get from Manhattan to a data center in Somerset, New Jersey.
The drive is about an hour. A rental car looks like roughly $50 for the day.
I sent the client a very practical question: can I expense the rental and fuel? I would not bill for the drive time. If they knew a better way to get there, I was open to it.
I am a very happy public transit commuter :).
The actual job is bigger than the transportation problem. I need to spend time in the room, understand the virtual-machine hosts, trace the network and power, look at how the switches and firewalls are connected, and document what is really there. After that, most of the work should be possible remotely.
There are several projects waiting behind the first visit. The core data-center setup needs to be reliable. The VM hosts may need active-passive links across separate switches. An Exchange migration is also on the list. I have done that kind of Microsoft work before, including a multi-site domain trust between Denver and Berlin.
I am planning the visit for next week, then working remotely while I am back in Denver after the holiday. A later message produced a slightly better option: train to New Brunswick and a cab from there. I still need to be back in New York by four.
The servers can wait for the site visit.
First I need a way to reach them.