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Super-NintendoUser
Jan 16, 2004

COWABUNGERDER COMPADRES
Soiled Meat

CLAM DOWN posted:

My entire large office's IP phones are all down. Happy Friday.

CCM, Avaya? Or maybe Asterisk JHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA

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Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

Bigass Moth posted:

Would powershell be a good starting point to jump into coding or should you begin with something else for this framework?

Do you mostly do (or want to do) Windows admin work? Then yes. Otherwise I'd suggest Python as something easy to learn and broadly useful.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:

CCM, Avaya? Or maybe Asterisk JHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA

Avaya hahahaha

I'm enjoying so much that no one can bug me right now while I'm watching our network team scramble

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
I'm at the end of my first two weeks and I woke up to find my first paycheck has already hit direct deposit. Since I no longer have to pay for my health coverage and I'm not yet in the 401k this check was about 50% bigger than what I got at the last place. If they keep giving these to me I might keep coming back.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
"gently caress the job, gently caress this gay earth" - me on the eve of payday

"scroogemcduckjumpingintoapileofmoney.jpg" - me on payday

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

icehewk posted:

What would be the qualifying skills of a mid-level network engineer?
There's lots of different specialty areas of networking, and lots of things in the scope of the CCNA that you'll never directly touch in the real world. You can go an entire lucrative senior network engineering career in lots of companies while never having the slightest clue how BGP works, or you can get passed over for a junior-level position as a network engineer with an ISP because you have no idea how BGP works. Same goes for VoIP, security, converged networking, and all that other fun stuff. As a rule of thumb, I would say that if you can read through the second edition of Network Warrior and make sure the concepts all make sense and don't confuse you, even if you don't memorize all the details, you've probably got the technical acumen to be considered solidly mid-level in most contexts.

In general, I've always differentiated different levels of infrastructure engineer by the amount of autonomy they can be trusted with, rather than their specific technical acumen. (If you work in a support setting rather than an implementation setting, switch the importance of these two criteria.) Whatever the specifics of the position, you need to understand enough to make good decisions without a lot of hand-holding.

Super Slash
Feb 20, 2006

You rang ?

CLAM DOWN posted:

My entire large office's IP phones are all down. Happy Friday.

This is like a bi-monthly thing for me, always Friday morning as well.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

Gyshall posted:

"gently caress the job, gently caress this gay earth" - me on the eve of payday

"scroogemcduckjumpingintoapileofmoney.jpg" - me on payday

"The pain goes away on payday." -Larry Fine

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy
Time for me to finally build some servers!

I need to run some various VMs for things like a security camera server that stores footage from PoE cams, and a phone server that handles voicemail/hunt groups. Nothing mission-critical yet but I want to build it so if I do need to serve something important I can.

I wanna get something along the lines of a cost-effective two-server high-availability thing. Something like two entry level HP Proliants, both with an 8 or 12 HDD SATA raid, dual CPU, dual PSU, dual NIC, and either one can take over VMs for the other if one still goes down somehow.

It's been a while but am I generally on the right track for what I'm trying to do? I saw in the OP that a NAS is recommended but I'm really nervous about single points of failure so I'd want to get two NAS with one empty so if the first NAS wonks out I can pop all the drives into the other with the same config and fire it up. Or can I get away with the Proliants as ghetto-NAS?

Oh, last stipulation is it has to either be bare metal Hyper-V or 2012 R2 running Hyper-V.

Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Mar 13, 2015

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


Upload the data to the cloud for a third backup.

Zaepho
Oct 31, 2013

Zero VGS posted:

Time for me to finally build some servers!

I need to run some various VMs for things like a security camera server that stores footage from PoE cams, and a phone server that handles voicemail/hunt groups. Nothing mission-critical yet but I want to build it so if I do need to serve something important I can.

I wanna get something along the lines of a cost-effective two-server high-availability thing. Something like two entry level HP Proliants, both with an 8 or 12 HDD SATA raid, dual CPU, dual PSU, dual NIC, and either one can take over VMs for the other if one still goes down somehow.

It's been a while but am I generally on the right track for what I'm trying to do? I saw in the OP that a NAS is recommended but I'm really nervous about single points of failure so I'd want to get two NAS with one empty so if the first NAS wonks out I can pop all the drives into the other with the same config and fire it up. Or can I get away with the Proliants as ghetto-NAS?

Oh, last stipulation is it has to either be bare metal Hyper-V or 2012 R2 running Hyper-V.

You can do Hyper-V replicas if you have enough space on the 2 systems for ALL the virtual hard-drives. The downside is that it is DR not HA. if you want HA, you need shared disk. there are ways of doing shared disks by consolidating all of the disks in the hosts into a storage space and dropping the virtual machines on a fileshare. It works, it's a real pain to get setup and running properly. Go with a NAS. A cheap iSCSI NAS should be fine. Get a 4 hour support contract on it and you'll be fine.

Make sure you have 1 or 2 NIC ports for just management then if you can bundle all the rest of the ports in the host (except for storage) onto VLAN Trunk ports. This lets you do cool things like add as many networks to your hosts as you could ever want. SCVMM is a fantastic tool if you're licensed for it. Worst case, spin it up on an eval and play with it/get your hosts and first round of VMs configured.

If you do a clustered Hyper-V and still want some DR, Azure Site Recovery looks pretty drat good. Some of the guys at the office have had a chance to play with it and have nothing but good things to say.

Definitely go 2012 R2 with the hyper-V role. You can remove the UI once you have things up and running. Make 100% sure you turn off Time Sync guest service for any Domain Controller VMs. Not sure what else I can toss out there recommendation wise.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
We're using RCloud for VM DR. Haven't had a chance to dig into it yet but it looks nifty.

12 rats tied together
Sep 7, 2006

Tab8715 posted:

If I can slowly read some bash/powershell/python with the help of google does that count? If I need to make a script am I allowed google, grab pieces from other scripts or do I just have a blank prompt?

I put Perl / Powershell / etc on my resume and I generally expect to do some whiteboard coding.

I usually admit that my syntax without an IDE is kind of rusty and I will probably miss a semicolon or something somewhere, and everyone so far who has asked me to do whiteboard coding or similar has been understanding and said "psuedocode is fine".

I handle my scripts with the same level of seriousness that I would a real rear end program and it annoys me to see the stereotypical "sysadmin script" be like 6 levels of nested for loops that takes 2 hours to run and is full of hardcoded paths or config files that you have to edit manually. I've also found that, usually in programming interviews or positions that are more dev than ops, they generally want you to do some weird tricky algorithm thing. All of my ops coding interviews where I have to write something are usually really simple problems where the solution is a where loop with 2 conditions or whatever.

quote:

Would powershell be a good starting point to jump into coding or should you begin with something else for this framework?

It depends on what your position is and what you want to do. If you are working with Linux, I would tell you to start with C (some people would say Python - personally I don't know any Python but it's probably fine too). If you are working with windows, Powershell is absolutely a good starting point but please please please excessively use Get-Member while you are playing around with stuff. A lot of "I just started Learn Powershell and..." questions on the internet are the same misunderstanding applied to different situations.

e: If you are a networking guy, you should start with Expect. :getin:

12 rats tied together fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 13, 2015

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair
"| gm" is the most helpful thing you can type in Powershell :v:

madsushi
Apr 19, 2009

Baller.
#essereFerrari

SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:

You should be able to understand how to design a network and networking principles.

Also if you can configure NAT port forwarding on a Cisco ASA via command line I'd consider you midlevel. if you can do it in the GUI I'd consider you high-level.

This is extremely accurate. You can also identify CCIEs by their steely-eyed stare when they see ASDM.

Zaepho
Oct 31, 2013

Inspector_666 posted:

"| gm" is the most helpful thing you can type in Powershell :v:

and | FL *

Cmdlets to Pipe to and Live by!

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

madsushi posted:

This is extremely accurate. You can also identify CCIEs by their steely-eyed stare when they see ASDM.

I posted about it in the bitching thread earlier today, but it seems like a good time to mention: gently caress ASDM.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin
My adjunct thing fell through. What a bummer.

I got halfway through the textbook last night too :(

Oh well, I'm sure there will be more opportunities in the future.

Paladine_PSoT
Jan 2, 2010

If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

I'm considering making the jump from software development PM to infra/MSP PM. How terrible is this thought?

Dark Helmut
Jul 24, 2004

All growns up

Paladine_PSoT posted:

I'm considering making the jump from software development PM to infra/MSP PM. How terrible is this thought?

Your market may vary of course but it seems like there are 2-3 times more development PM jobs than infrastructure. Getting the CSM along with the PMP seems like the best job security from my viewpoint.

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Paladine_PSoT posted:

I'm considering making the jump from software development PM to infra/MSP PM. How terrible is this thought?
Your software development PM experience isn't going away, so this will only open more doors for you. However, infrastructure has a lot more unknowns. Because the entire process is typically reliant on products from external vendors which may or may not perform as advertised, as well as physical constraints (datacenter power/cooling, etc.) any estimate can increase by 3x or 10x or 100x without warning. On the other hand, because there's fewer direct stakeholders, there's typically fewer people giving useless input and bikeshedding, and less politics once a project gets off the ground. Having been involved with both, infra seems harder, but also less stressful.

Bhodi
Dec 9, 2007

Oh, it's just a cat.
Pillbug
Double-count your power plugs before you buy hardware :suicide:

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Nah, I'll just put my laser printer, space heater, and UPS on this power strip. Problem solved.

Gothmog1065
May 14, 2009

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Nah, I'll just put my laser printer, space heater, and UPS on this power strip. Problem solved.

Just run another power strip from the UPS if you run out of plugs.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



How do you know about my bitcoin rig?

Super Slash
Feb 20, 2006

You rang ?

Bhodi posted:

Double-PURCHASE your power plugs before you buy hardware

Quoted for me, when we moved into this office the requests and recommendations for power poles and arranging power sockets were totally ignored. So heaps of 8-way surge protectors are the name of the game, some of them don't stretch far enough and completely bulk up every cable tray. :(

Super-NintendoUser
Jan 16, 2004

COWABUNGERDER COMPADRES
Soiled Meat

Super Slash posted:

Quoted for me, when we moved into this office the requests and recommendations for power poles and arranging power sockets were totally ignored. So heaps of 8-way surge protectors are the name of the game, some of them don't stretch far enough and completely bulk up every cable tray. :(

I used to install IP Phone systems. I would commonly go to an office on a Friday night, and then by Monday morning need to have the new system all setup and working. Frequently, I'd work with the SMB companies tech janitors to do it all. Weeks before I'd show up and ask them to have a seating chart with names, to make sure everywhere they wanted a phone had a jack for it, and that they had enough cables. They'd always respond, "we can check that friday before we install". Really, so if friday we find out a desk does not have a jack what are we going to do? Quickly rewire the office?

My favorite was where I'd be connecting 300 switch points to punch down cables and they guys would be like "oh, I'll just make custom length cables ". Really, so you are going to make 300 cables for hours and hours this weekend? I had a customer that forbid me from making cables, and instead agreed to buy a huge amount of them in every possible size and length, and then at the end of the server room installation they said "any cables you don't use just throw away, we do not care". I almost hugged the guy.

Bhodi
Dec 9, 2007

Oh, it's just a cat.
Pillbug
It really is terrifying what falls through the cracks and is patched up in the last minute. I was thinking about how if we did other jobs in similar slip-shod fashion that we do IT, society would collapse. Then I remembered...

Humanity doesn't change, so I wonder how many other things are cobbled together in other professions that we just don't know about. Construction is easy, there are TV shows about it and lots of scandals about bridges made from substandard materials and corners cut. Doctors/Surgeons leave surgery implements in patients and amputate wrong limbs, planes have random pieces fall off them all the time....

But what about other professions? I bet we'd be horrified to know what goes on behind the scenes at nearly any job. It's amazing we haven't collectively killed ourselves ebola-reston style.

Bhodi fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Mar 15, 2015

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



It's especially scary when you consider how much less of a gently caress people give in the lower-paying professions. It's really not a good idea to think about while eating fast food.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

Bhodi posted:

But what about other professions? I bet we'd be horrified to know what goes on behind the scenes at nearly any job. It's amazing we haven't collectively killed ourselves ebola-reston style.
I think in most professions, people know what the minimum quality of work that will get the job done is, and they shoot to exceed that. At times, they miscalculate and poo poo goes wrong. But generally speaking, I think that the world works in the right way -- the people who do it every day complete jobs in a way that is unlikely to come back and bite them in the rear end.

Contingency
Jun 2, 2007

MURDERER
The fast food places I've worked at, inspections are typically handled by an "all hands on deck" approach. Everyone gets more hours (and some regulars a lot more hours) to get everything ready. If something is overlooked, it's just a ding on the final score. If inspections occur frequently enough (not just health, but also district manager walkthroughs), things don't languish enough to warrant a health department shutdown.

At many levels, IT involves project work. There are plenty of other occupations that don't do that. Show up, clock your eight, and go home. As a "benefit" of that increased responsibility, IT workers tend to be classified as FLSA-exempt, so you don't qualify for overtime pay.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Contingency posted:

IT workers tend to be classified as FLSA-exempt, so you don't qualify for overtime pay.
loving what, you don't get paid overtime?!?!

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair

CLAM DOWN posted:

loving what, you don't get paid overtime?!?!

It's on a per-employer basis. I get OT if I work outside of set hours.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Inspector_666 posted:

It's on a per-employer basis. I get OT if I work outside of set hours.

I cannot comprehend why overtime is not a legal requirement for all employers there. Why.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Contingency posted:

The fast food places I've worked at, inspections are typically handled by an "all hands on deck" approach. Everyone gets more hours (and some regulars a lot more hours) to get everything ready. If something is overlooked, it's just a ding on the final score. If inspections occur frequently enough (not just health, but also district manager walkthroughs), things don't languish enough to warrant a health department shutdown.

At many levels, IT involves project work. There are plenty of other occupations that don't do that. Show up, clock your eight, and go home. As a "benefit" of that increased responsibility, IT workers tend to be classified as FLSA-exempt, so you don't qualify for overtime pay.

It turns out that the much of IT isn't exempt from overtime in the US. Unfortunately, I now fall into one of the groups that is, but I wish I had this information years ago.

http://callaborlawblog.com/misclassification/computer-professional-exemption/specialists-entitled-overtime-pay/

lampey
Mar 27, 2012

Many it workers are incorrectly classified as exempt from overtime laws by their employer. If your work fails any of the tests, you are not exempt. Additionally in CA overtime starts after 8 hours in a day, and the minimum salary for computer workers exemption is 85k a year for 2015. Also there are executive and administrative exemptions that have different requirements but generally don't apply if computer work is your primary duty. If your job involves regular work outside of business hours it may be easier to get comp/vacation time instead of extra pay. Also consider performing any maintenance during working hours so that it doesn't require overtime pay. If the impact to the business is too great, getting redundant hardware so that it is not interruptive.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

CLAM DOWN posted:

I cannot comprehend why overtime is not a legal requirement for all employers there. Why.

CORPORATE PROFITS

YOU ARE JUST LUCKY TO HAVE A JOB NOW KISS THE FEET OF OUR BLESSED JOB CREATORS

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice

CLAM DOWN posted:

I cannot comprehend why overtime is not a legal requirement for all employers there. Why.

Try to keep it at 40 hours.
If you're sitting in a meeting where the project manager has some unrealistic expectation that something get done in an unrealistic timeframe....or someone else's piece has slipped and is affecting your piece...deadlines aren't set in stone 99% of the time, what's the point of killing yourself over it?
Say something?

You want YYY? That takes ZZZ amount of time and depends on AAA and BBB. ZZZ does not flex, though pad ZZZ just in case, because it keeps AAA and BBB moving to meet the deadline, if they run a bit over you still accommodated for it. Make a stink about if if they do. Under promise, over deliver, etc.

Then again, I do internal IT, we aren't trying to keep customers or anything and there aren't contracts per say.

I'm also at a point where I don't feel like climbing the corporate ladder anymore, work life balance is already not great, don't want any more stress. Money is OK. Mostly at a good point where I can get away with working ~40 hours, and the stuff I'm on call for is pretty reliable (because I loving built it that way)

SSH IT ZOMBIE fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Mar 16, 2015

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.
If we end up working over 40 hours a week on a billable project, we get over time. Otherwise, they force us to take comp time.

There's plenty of examples of employers taking advantage of the whole salary thing. On the other hand, I've worked with tons people who somehow feel that they need to put in more than 40 hours a week without ever taking comp time or speaking with their manager about reducing their workload or changing their responsibilities. In some cases, this is just a ruse for those people to get away from their family (God help me if I ever want to spend more time at work than around my family). In others, they eventually get burned out from thinking the world rests on their shoulders and complain about how much they work, despite having done nothing to ameliorate the situation.

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CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




SSH IT ZOMBIE posted:

Try to keep it at 40 hours.

Nah I agree, when things break or my schedule runs over etc, I will go over 40/week. My disgust is that it's apparently not legally required to pay all IT workers overtime there.

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