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Thanks Ants posted:Presumably you could leave the DHCP server configured on the switches but just set the delay to something that would never normally see it do anything, I'm not that familiar with using Cisco switches as DHCP servers outside of using them in a lab in L3 mode to mimic a clients network. I'd love a DC on-premise but Azure VMs include free 2012 license and unlimited CALs, whereas locally I'd have to buy server hardware, licenses and cals, and then we'd probably have to pay 70k to install a functioning air conditioning unit in the server room up to union specs. So basically $200 a month versus like $100k up front. Right now it is just switches/routers in there so ambient is fine.
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Dec 30, 2014 01:38
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You're going to need to do all that work as soon as you need some decent storage on-prem as well though. Lenovo have some servers that are designed to run hot if getting AC is going to cost you too much. Also: quote:Dell Fresh Air capable next-generation hardware can perform continuously at 40°C (104°F), in up to 85 percent Relative Humidity at a 29°C dew point in non-corrosive, clean air environments such as ISA-71 Class G1. And this enterprise hardware can perform for time-based excursions up to 45°C (113°F) and humidity up to 90 percent (29°C maximum dew point).
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Dec 30, 2014 01:40
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Thanks Ants posted:I built an intranet off the I'd love to get confluence going in our department but that would be stepping on the toes of our special (idiot) snowflake who has spent the past two years trying to get sharepoint going. He can't even swap a printer out and confuses DHCP issues with group policy, but sharepoint is "his project" so I just sit here with a bunch of word documents spread out over two different drives as our documentation that nobody reads anyway, and an externally hosted intranet in the iron grip of marketing.
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Dec 30, 2014 01:58
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version of Confluence a couple of jobs ago. 10 users is plenty if you just make the thing viewable by everyone, then have one account per department or whatever to contribute. If it turns out that it's useful then you can move to the paid version.
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hihifellow posted:documentation that nobody reads anyway. Confluence didn't fix that part, for what it's worth. The only time anyone here refers to documentation is when it gives them a chance to be all  about the fact that a change that was made wasn't reflected in the documentation, because what's change management.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:00
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Zero VGS posted:There's a lot of dogpiling here when there's not even that much consensus. If you guys think best practice is letting Server 2012 handle it, that's cool, but I wouldn't trust it even if it were an option for me (which it isn't because my only servers are in Azure and I don't even want to imagine how that is supposed to work over VPN). The consensus is don't do this on a Cisco switch (or Juniper or Arista or whatever.) It's basically opening up a future world of pain and anyone that follows you into that environment will curse your name. Everything you mentioned about people going around processes and updating things or breaking things behind the scenes is equally true of dedicated network hardware (probably more likely since most environments I walk into don't bother with TACACS+ or even RADIUS to provide AAA for the devices. Just use admin and a shared password..) If you have concerns about people logging into your DHCP server and loving with things you lock it down and park it behind a firewall. Don't give it internet access and push updates to it only via WSUS and whatever policy you feel is appropriate. Most people don't seem to want to factor in processes and people into the uptime equation but it's probably the single most important piece of the pie. These are the sorts of network services best left to a dedicated server. I wouldn't enable the DNS server on my routers and point clients to that for example. Use your switch CPU cycles on something useful like routing protocol updates or maybe to provide a hardware NTP source for your virtualized DCs. The only time I would consider doing DHCP on the switches is if I have literally zero server footprint on-prem and my company is small enough/I'm the only guy. Even then I would consider buying a couple cheap boxes and running a local DC/CA, RADIUS for wireless auth, local NTP, a proxy server, and DHCP. At my primary employer we do exactly this and whenever we get a new printer or wireless access point or something they don't have to call me to setup the reservation. I'm drat sure not going to make regular changes to the single most important piece of my infrastructure or give the keys over to one of our junior IT dudes. quote:Okay, well, I might look into that. Let's say something wacky happens like oh, say, finance department lets the company credit card expire (like just happened, whups) and so Microsoft shuts down my Azure account without notification. Nobody can log into the network anymore because they lost access to domain controllers! This is a very real problem you're just going to have to make sure the finance department accounts for appropriately. I would see if Azure will offer you net 30 payment terms so your finance people just get a bill from microsoft to pay with whatever means (I dunno if they do this yet but it's possible!) Otherwise this will just end up being a pain point for the future.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:11
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Keeping a list of poo poo that is linked to a company credit card is 100% the job of the accounts department, so they shouldn't be looking around for ways to minimize the impact of them not doing their jobs. Having said that, I'm reasonably sure you can add a second funding source if setting an Outlook reminder that a corporate card is about to expire is beyond them.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:20
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1000101 posted:Even then I would consider buying a couple cheap boxes and running a local DC/CA, RADIUS for wireless auth, local NTP, a proxy server, and DHCP. At my primary employer we do exactly this and whenever we get a new printer or wireless access point or something they don't have to call me to setup the reservation. I'm drat sure not going to make regular changes to the single most important piece of my infrastructure or give the keys over to one of our junior IT dudes. To zero vgs, I know the capex sucks, but I just can't fathom having no DCs, no DHCP, no DNS running at my main location. What do you do if your internet goes down? Jerk off all day? Good luck, you can't even download any porn.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:21
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Zero VGS posted:but the long and short of it is Uptime and not having things automagically gently caress themselves every year or two. Zero VGS posted:I've seen servers get viruses Zero VGS posted:windows updates break poo poo, Zero VGS posted:raid recoveries fail Zero VGS posted:(which it isn't because my only servers are in Azure and I don't even want to imagine how that is supposed to work over VPN). Zero VGS posted:Many people have their print server double up as DHCP Anyway, as someone said, best tool for the job. I think the point here is not just that the Windows product itself is better, it's that a product with easy manageability, accessibility, and auditing is far better than something essentially buried on an embedded device (inaccessible to anyone without at least some knowledge and more importantly privileges to manage switches), and making blanket statements that Winblowz sucks are basically contrary to what most good IT people have learned, which is that fanboyism has no place in enterprise IT because it really is a case of whether one product will best fulfill the needs of the company.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:15
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Yo I really enjoyed DHCP chat but what does it say about us as a thread that we've talked about it for over two pages now. That's probably longer than the actual RFC.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:18
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psydude posted:Yo I really enjoyed DHCP chat but what does it say about us as a thread that we've talked about it for over two pages now. That's probably longer than the actual RFC.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:20
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Eh, I thought the DHCP-chat was quite engaging but if we want to move onto a different topic how about getting jobs way outside your current residence? It seems this is less of a problem in our industry but curious to see what's everyone else's take on it is.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:39
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psydude posted:Yo I really enjoyed DHCP chat but what does it say about us as a thread that we've talked about it for over two pages now. That's probably longer than the actual RFC. Are you really shocked that this thread is full of pedantic nerds with a preferred style or adminning?
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Dec 30, 2014 04:39
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Tab8715 posted:Eh, I thought the DHCP-chat was quite engaging but if we want to move onto a different topic how about getting jobs way outside your current residence? It seems this is less of a problem in our industry but curious to see what's everyone else's take on it is. I'm down for this topic bc I am looking to move west and haven't gotten much traction other than 3 month contacts in lovely locations.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:43
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it was a good discussion to have lest someone actually think his advice was good
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Dec 30, 2014 04:51
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Tab8715 posted:Eh, I thought the DHCP-chat was quite engaging but if we want to move onto a different topic how about getting jobs way outside your current residence? It seems this is less of a problem in our industry but curious to see what's everyone else's take on it is. If you've got an in-demand skill set you can make this work. I left the southeast US to move to the San Francisco bay area in 2007 on nothing more than a VCP and a prayer. Expect to have a LOT of phone interviews and your first job in the new location is pretty likely to be a piece of poo poo and you're going to totally gently caress up your first house/apartment in the new location as well.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:01
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mayodreams posted:I'm down for this topic bc I am looking to move west and haven't gotten much traction other than 3 month contacts in lovely locations. The bigger companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon don't seem to give a poo poo about where you live as long as you're willing to relocate. Microsoft was ready to fly my rear end out to Seattle to interview for a position there before I accepted my current position The issue is that it's much harder to do this when you're early in your career, as junior level positions are usually easily sourced from the local labor pool. Of course, by the time people are at the mid and senior level, they oftentimes have families so moving across the country is less "Sure, why the gently caress not" and more of a logistical nightmare.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:08
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mayodreams posted:I'm down for this topic bc I am looking to move west and haven't gotten much traction other than 3 month contacts in lovely locations. Yea, same here. A lot of Contract-to-Hire which isn't horrible but eh...
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Dec 30, 2014 05:27
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Outside of running various operating systems on Virtualbox, I don't actually know that much about virtualization. Is there a resource for a beginner to ease his way into learning more about that kind of thing? I'd really love to dig in, but I'm not really sure where to begin. e: Just found the VM megathread, so I guess I'll start there.
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Dec 30, 2014 06:09
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Garrand posted:Outside of running various operating systems on Virtualbox, I don't actually know that much about virtualization. Is there a resource for a beginner to ease his way into learning more about that kind of thing? I'd really love to dig in, but I'm not really sure where to begin.
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Dec 30, 2014 06:28
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Inspector_666 posted:Are you really shocked that this thread is full of pedantic nerds with a preferred style or adminning? Nice.
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Dec 30, 2014 09:39
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Inspector_666 posted:Are you really shocked that this thread is full of pedantic nerds with a style of administering that adheres to BCP? Fixed that for you.
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Dec 30, 2014 10:53
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ElGroucho posted:No, whenever someone has a different approach to an issue, I immediately think of ways to terminate them Are you my former boss' boss? Because that's exactly what happened.
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Dec 30, 2014 15:55
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Colonial Air Force posted:Are you my former boss' boss? Because that's exactly what happened. I was being sarcastic. "You better think outside the box! No, not that box, your box! My box is fine!"
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Dec 30, 2014 16:02
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Whelp looks like we are facing major data loss that may cost the company hundreds of thousands or more. The ERP system at one of our branches (who had their own one-off system) went down and they had no backups. I handle the enterprise side datacenter backups and systems but another admin is in charge of all of the branch servers and backups. Unfortunately since I'm the most senior technical person and have jumped in to spearhead the data recovery process with a lab, I'm worried that people will see that as me owning the failure as well. I've spoken to my CIO and he is 100% behind me, admitting in private that the failure has nothing to do with me, but I can't help but feel very uneasy. Senior execs are coming to me asking what happened and I don't want to point fingers and name names so I'm just keeping things vague. Any ideas on covering my rear end at this point? The admin in question will definitely try to shift blame when people start asking questions. I was in charge of this stuff up until 2 years ago when he officially took over everything branch related. This isn't documented anywhere except in our job descriptions though.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:05
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syg posted:Whelp looks like we are facing major data loss that may cost the company hundreds of thousands or more. The ERP system at one of our branches (who had their own one-off system) went down and they had no backups. I handle the enterprise side datacenter backups and systems but another admin is in charge of all of the branch servers and backups. Unfortunately since I'm the most senior technical person and have jumped in to spearhead the data recovery process with a lab, I'm worried that people will see that as me owning the failure as well. I've spoken to my CIO and he is 100% behind me, admitting in private that the failure has nothing to do with me, but I can't help but feel very uneasy. Senior execs are coming to me asking what happened and I don't want to point fingers and name names so I'm just keeping things vague. Any ideas on covering my rear end at this point? The admin in question will definitely try to shift blame when people start asking questions. I was in charge of this stuff up until 2 years ago when he officially took over everything branch related. This isn't documented anywhere except in our job descriptions though. Get. It. In. Writing.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:22
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psydude posted:Get. It. In. Writing. I tried that. Sent him an email clarifying the situation and he called, said he knew it wasn't my responsibility and that ultimately he had to answer for the failure. We have a very good long relationship and he is the kind of guy who would fall on a sword for his team, but I feel like I need something solid to put my mind at rest. I'm considering just briefly clarifying the situation to the execs who are questioning but I don't want to go around my CIO at all (he is on vaca which is why they are all coming to me). I have an exemplary reputation in the company, constant praises and commendations so I really don't want my reputation tarnished for a failure outside of my realm of responsibility.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:30
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syg posted:I tried that. Sent him an email clarifying the situation and he called, said he knew it wasn't my responsibility and that ultimately he had to answer for the failure. We have a very good long relationship and he is the kind of guy who would fall on a sword for his team, but I feel like I need something solid to put my mind at rest. I'm considering just briefly clarifying the situation to the execs who are questioning but I don't want to go around my CIO at all (he is on vaca which is why they are all coming to me). I have an exemplary reputation in the company, constant praises and commendations so I really don't want my reputation tarnished for a failure outside of my realm of responsibility. I didn't see an explicit reason from him re: why he didn't email you, so... Get him to email everything you've just said.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:36
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DrAlexanderTobacco posted:I didn't see an explicit reason from him re: why he didn't email you, so... Get him to email everything you've just said. He said he started writing but had trouble wording it. It was a kind of awkward email and it would be hard to reply to. I know that looks really bad from the outside, but this guy is stand up and I've been his right hand for 10 years, its not uncommon for him to call when talking about sensitive things.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:40
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syg posted:Whelp looks like we are facing major data loss that may cost the company hundreds of thousands or more. The ERP system at one of our branches (who had their own one-off system) went down and they had no backups. I handle the enterprise side datacenter backups and systems but another admin is in charge of all of the branch servers and backups. Unfortunately since I'm the most senior technical person and have jumped in to spearhead the data recovery process with a lab, I'm worried that people will see that as me owning the failure as well. I've spoken to my CIO and he is 100% behind me, admitting in private that the failure has nothing to do with me, but I can't help but feel very uneasy. Senior execs are coming to me asking what happened and I don't want to point fingers and name names so I'm just keeping things vague. Any ideas on covering my rear end at this point? The admin in question will definitely try to shift blame when people start asking questions. I was in charge of this stuff up until 2 years ago when he officially took over everything branch related. This isn't documented anywhere except in our job descriptions though. If you need to say anything which would indicate fault of any kind, or would make you look bad, refer the asker back to your manager for a fuller explanation. That's why they're here.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:48
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Misogynist posted:The most important thing is that you don't lose composure. Don't look like you don't give a poo poo, but your appearance of composure is about to be tied to your appearance of competence. Everything will be fine if everyone understands that you're the person who will keep this from ever, ever happening again. Thanks, this is what I've done. Taking point on organizing the rebuild efforts as well as the data recovery, I've asked my CIO to contact the execs who wanted blame answers from me and he is reaching out to them now. It's frustrating because I am meticulous about the backups and DR that I am responsible for. I have 5 different layers of redundancy on our mission critical systems but this one failure outside of that realm is going to be seen as "IT hosed up and ruined everything" and as part of IT my own reputation is going to take a hit.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:53
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So this is pretty interesting, in case you guys didn't see it - Microsoft's Browser for Windows 10 Won't Be Internet Explorer Looks like there's a bit more to it than a renaming, which was probably overdue. Even though IE11's pretty decent, the IE name has been poo poo for a long time. Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 20:33
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I would probably be more excited about that if there weren't still apps that required IE6, so it's not going to actually make a difference.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:51
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I'm not holding my breath for it to be a radical departure. "According to Foley’s sources, Spartan will use both Microsoft’s Trident page rendering engine and its Chakra Javascript engine." So it's the same code still doing the heavy lifting, just with an (arguably) nicer UI and support for extensions. Which is still good, I'm not berating MS for doing this. I'm just not ready to get super excited about it yet.
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Dec 30, 2014 21:12
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Docjowles posted:I'm not holding my breath for it to be a radical departure. "According to Foley’s sources, Spartan will use both Microsoft’s Trident page rendering engine and its Chakra Javascript engine." So it's the same code still doing the heavy lifting, just with an (arguably) nicer UI and support for extensions. Although apparently it IS going to be enough of a departure that as of right now they're planning to include this new browser and a classic version of IE so it'll work with people's lovely corporate pages/apps...
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Dec 30, 2014 21:34
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Tab8715 posted:Eh, I thought the DHCP-chat was quite engaging but if we want to move onto a different topic how about getting jobs way outside your current residence? It seems this is less of a problem in our industry but curious to see what's everyone else's take on it is. I was living in MI and applied to companies that I wanted to work for including many out of state. After a phone screen and a skype interview the company I work for now provided a plane ticket for an interview. The day of the interview I was given an offer and accepted. I would say this is not typical for an entry level position at a smaller company, but it is more common in higher demand areas. I was really surprised how many candidates look good on paper and then bomb the interviews. Simple stuff like not being prepared for open ended questions. "What was the last project you worked on, do you use computers outside of work, can you tell us about a difficult problem you worked on?" If you want to move to a high demand area apply to the companies you want to work for. On the cover letter focus on the value you bring to the company. It seems like half of all the IT workers in the bay area or the DC metro come from somewhere else so it is just business as usual.
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Dec 30, 2014 21:58
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After trying to comprehend the past few pages of DHCP chat I suddenly feel like I have a LOT to learn. 
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Dec 31, 2014 12:49
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Drunk Orc posted:After trying to comprehend the past few pages of DHCP chat I suddenly feel like I have a LOT to learn. DHCP is a really useful foundation technology to learn. And when you get down to it, isn't very difficult to learn down to the Packet level. At least to a general level of understanding the workings. Once you under stand how it works you can deal with all of the other complexity modern networks have added to it (IP Helpers/DHCP Relays, Failover, Split Scopes, etc). Once you've got that you're golden for the next few decades on DHCP issues. The great part about a lot of the really base foundation layers of technologies is that no matter how much the front end changes, they pretty much function the same and once you know them you can remain competent nearly forever with very little effort. I think there is a trend to just learn how to do things vs how things work (especially on low level stuff like DHCP/DNS/Email) that it really hampers peoples abilities to troubleshoot these things effectively and they all become black boxes that get blamed for EVERYTHING! Old Curmudgeonly IT guy's advice: Learn how poo poo works not just how to do things. Now... GET OFF MY SUBNET!
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Dec 31, 2014 15:48
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Zaepho posted:DHCP stuff That's awesome actually because I have this obsession with needing to understand how things work. Hopefully the guys at work are willing to help me with learning this stuff at a basic level.
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Dec 31, 2014 16:04
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Zaepho posted:The great part about a lot of the really base foundation layers of technologies is that no matter how much the front end changes, they pretty much function the same and once you know them you can remain competent nearly forever with very little effort. I think there is a trend to just learn how to do things vs how things work (especially on low level stuff like DHCP/DNS/Email) that it really hampers peoples abilities to troubleshoot these things effectively and they all become black boxes that get blamed for EVERYTHING! I'm pretty new to IT, but I did electronics troubleshooting for a long time, so maybe this'll be useful to someone. When I was in the Navy, we learned a troubleshooting methodology called six-step. 1. Symptom Recognition 2. Symptom Elaboration 3. Listing of Probable Faulty Function 4. Localizing Faulty Function 5. Localizing trouble to the circuit 6. Failure Analysis This shouldn't be anything new to an experienced technician, but I find it's useful to make the process explicit. Steps 1 and 2 might seem kind of redundant. Step 1 is going to be symptoms from the perspective of a user. "When I click on the shortcut it's supposed to open up a chart, but now it just asks me for my login credentials and even if I type them in it doesn't work and it says I have a bad password. This is a good time to ask questions like "When was the last time it worked correctly?" or "Are any of your coworkers having the same problem?" or "Are any other programs having problems?" Step 2 is going to be some initial guided symptoms from a technician's point of view. Generally it'll be stuff that you check for ANY problem. Check recently installed programs / updates. Check the firewall, make sure accounts aren't locked etc. Ideally, the things you're checking at this point have a logical relationship to the symptoms, for example, it'd be illogical to check and see if an account is locked out if the reported problem is that the monitor is all black. That said, I think the Pareto Principle applies so 80% of problems can be solved from the 20% most common solutions. "Have you tried rebooting?" I'm not going to go into detail on steps 3-5. It's basically What could cause this? What IS causing this? Find the specific thing that's broken. This is what people normally think of when they think of troubleshooting. Step 6 is really important and I think separates good troubleshooters from the great. It asks the most important question: "Why?" This is the difference between "fixing" a problem so it goes away for the day and FIXING the problem so that it never happens again. It's not necessarily something you'll do with every single problem but if you see a recurring issue, it'll save time in the long run to perform a root cause analysis. If the problem is an account lockout, the problem might not be "The account is locked out." The problem might be "User's keyboard is damaged" or "User's cellphone has an old password in it" or "User was told that in order to type the '@' symbol, they press shift and '2' at the same time so they use two fingers to press them simultaneously and inconsistently get either a 2 or an @ depending on the timing." or maybe it's something else, is the lockout even originating from the user's workstation? Why does it only happen on Tuesdays?
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Dec 31, 2014 17:48
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lampey posted:I was really surprised how many candidates look good on paper and then bomb the interviews. Simple stuff like not being prepared for open ended questions. "What was the last project you worked on, do you use computers outside of work, can you tell us about a difficult problem you worked on?" Are there any basic guidelines I should know when answering open-ended questions? I was asked "A client is upset, how do you handle it?" or "An important server crashed and a client is losing thousands of dollars per minute, what do you do?". I responded with more or less "I would let the customer speak, listen and not even interrupt if I knew the answer or even if it was their fault." and "I would safely and quickly stop whatever I'm doing, message my immediate supervisor, so they know what's going on, what I'm doing, where I am and start/join an outage bridge". I was never hired for that gig but I did get up to the 3rd round of interviews 
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Dec 31, 2014 18:26
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