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Defenestrategy posted:I've joined your ranks as the only IT dude in a twenty-ish user environment. Any sage wisdom you guys could pass down? Recognize that the reason your predecessor did that clearly insane thing is likely because s/he was told "make it work right now, and don't spend any money on it."
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May 15, 2018 22:16
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The Fool posted:Document everything, automate as much as possible. I agree with this. Documentation is priority #1. Do not make changes unless something is on fire if you do not know the details about how that is set up. Automation is what will allow you to accel. I'll add that you should implement a ticketing system. Spiceworks is fine (and free) until you decide you need something better. Actually, let me say that backups are priority #1. Make sure you have proper backups. [Edit: Also, I would make sure you've discussed with the business owners what their expectations are for after-hours support and what it looks like when you take a sick day or are on vacation. I could never be a 1 man IT show because in almost all cases that means you are expected to be available 24/7/365.] Internet Explorer fucked around with this message at 22:57 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 22:54
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Internet Explorer posted:Actually, let me say that backups are priority #1. Make sure you have proper backups. This means doing test restores, not just taking the software's word for it that the backup is good. Unless it's Symantec BackupExec, at which point it's better to just assume the backup is bad and always will be and there's nothing you can do about it.
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May 15, 2018 23:56
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Thanatosian posted:Recognize that the reason your predecessor did that clearly insane thing is likely because s/he was told "make it work right now, and don't spend any money on it." This describes almost all IT problems. Almost.
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May 16, 2018 00:18
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I don't know, I'm pretty sure my predecessor was just a loving moron.
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May 16, 2018 00:20
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Not just your predecessor either, it can be you two weeks ago.
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May 16, 2018 00:20
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Thanks Ants posted:Not just your predecessor either, it can be you two weeks ago. It's morons all the way down, unfortunately. Make no assumptions, and make sure you're backing up everything that needs backup up. Do test restores. You can be awful at everything else, but if you've got that covered you can at least be reasonably confident it's not your fuckups that'll run the company into the ground. Limoncelli is good, read his stuff.
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May 16, 2018 00:49
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Defenestrategy posted:I've joined your ranks as the only IT dude in a twenty-ish user environment. Any sage wisdom you guys could pass down? Lol. Sucker.
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May 16, 2018 01:08
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Digital_Jesus posted:Lol. I'll gladly be a sucker for a decent five figgies a year after five years of being at the mercy of pell grants and a slightly better than minimum wage job walking through southern scrub lands for engineering overlords.
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May 16, 2018 01:16
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There is a fine line between insanity and money. Know your limits.
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May 16, 2018 02:50
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Internet Explorer posted:I'll add that you should implement a ticketing system. Spiceworks is fine (and free) until you decide you need something better. Use anything but spiceworks.
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May 16, 2018 04:43
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Moey posted:Use anything but spiceworks. As a current spiceworks hostage, I can get behind this sentiment.
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May 16, 2018 04:52
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Eh, it's fine for baby's first ticketing. Are there better free ticketing softwares out there? We're in the process of switching to FreshService and I'm not in love. I'm actually shocked with how few integrate into Outlook calendar/tasks.
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May 16, 2018 06:02
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Did Spiceworks ever stop doing that thing where I caught it trying to dial home to send data back after setting it not to report usage info?
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May 16, 2018 10:48
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Backup Chat. I'm looking for some alternatives and I would love to hear a high level on what you guys use. I'm stuck using Backup Exec myself right now, and I hate it. I'm backing up about 14 TB of data right now. Growth rate seems to be about 40-50% a year. A bunch of Hyper-V instances (Microsoft Failover Clustering) and a ton of raw data on file shares (I think this excludes Veeam as an option for me) that is also setup on a Failover Cluster File Server setup. There's also some MS Sql and MySQL instances. Currently I do a lot of Backup to Disk, then Duplicate to Tape (AWS Storage Gateway VTL). Please wow me with awesome alternatives!
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May 16, 2018 11:18
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Gerdalti posted:Backup Chat. I'm looking for some alternatives and I would love to hear a high level on what you guys use. Having recently looked at Veeam I'm pretty sure it can handle that. Their Backup & Replication product (also available far more cheaply as Backup Essentials for businesses with fewer than 250 employees up to 6 CPU sockets) includes the Windows and Linux agents for physical machines.
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May 16, 2018 11:30
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If you're completely Microsoft then Azure Backup might tick all the boxes for you. Bonus is that you can have DR into Azure without having to do much extra work.
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May 16, 2018 12:10
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Defenestrategy posted:I've joined your ranks as the only IT dude in a twenty-ish user environment. Any sage wisdom you guys could pass down? if windows: take advantage of your ample free time to learn powershell for your next job
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May 16, 2018 15:53
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Internet Explorer posted:Spiceworks is fine lying is against the rules itt
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May 16, 2018 15:53
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agreed on backups priority #1Thanatosian posted:This means doing test restores, not just taking the software's word for it that the backup is good. And it ALSO means making sure your backup strategy is aligned with business needs. In other words is 30 day retention enough, or 90 days? do you need to be able to restore from 1 day ago, 1 hour ago?
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May 16, 2018 15:55
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Internet Explorer posted:I don't know, I'm pretty sure my predecessor was just a loving moron.
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May 16, 2018 15:56
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Internet Explorer posted:Eh, it's fine for baby's first ticketing. I've heard osticket is fine? idk I spend money on helpdesk software.
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May 16, 2018 16:00
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NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:I've heard osticket is fine? OSticket is, ok. I've fallen in love with Jira Service Desk. But some people might not fit into that mold.
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May 16, 2018 16:02
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Just pay for Zendesk
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May 16, 2018 16:30
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I've heard good things about https://www.jitbit.com/hosted-helpdesk/ But I've never used it.
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May 16, 2018 16:33
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Thanks Ants posted:Just pay for Zendesk yeah just beware the "Essentials" version has barely any reporting functionality so if you need to use that tier to get in the door make it clear you're gonna need to bump up to the higher plan after a few months
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May 16, 2018 16:37
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One of my peers ended up going with freshdesk and I don't know how that's going but that's another saas one to look at
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May 16, 2018 16:37
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NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:if windows: take advantage of your ample free time to learn powershell for your next job What do you do if you actually hate IT and you're only doing it to pay the bills before you sweet side gig totally takes off? Don't actually answer that. I already know the answer 
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May 16, 2018 16:53
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A little bit more than the worst member of your team
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May 16, 2018 17:28
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What team! Its ok i'm sure i'm just going through a midlife thing.
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May 17, 2018 10:28
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Awhile back we acquired another agency that was on the brink of bankruptcy. The sysadmin from that agency was let go last week (he knew it was coming for a couple months, he was given ample time to look for another job) and I was finally able to remote into their network to have a look at how they're set up, etc before we migrate them over to our AD domain. Ooooooh, boy is it a mess. SBS2008, users have local admin rights, random non-IT executives are domain administrators, user accounts from people that left years ago are still active, workstations have flash and shockwave installed and there's even still some XP workstations. They only have about 50 workstations and I don't think that two of them are the same model, no standardization whatsoever. But here's the worst part, I was looking through the old admin's email to get a sense of his workload and the type of issues he dealt with, and I find out this POS was making 15% more than me 
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May 18, 2018 20:06
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nice thread title
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May 18, 2018 20:13
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We are in the process of acquiring 2 existing store locations. I got to take my first physical look at their equipment. There isn't a single computer less than 7 years old at either locations. And I think some of the laptops are even older. Bonus: They have some Windows XP machines. Each location has exactly one ancient HP branded 802.11b only access point, using WEP. And 10/100 HP switches. There is no domain. There are some thin clients connecting to a 2003 R2 server. Some of the employees browse the internet on them... using Internet Explorer. Basically it's all getting trashed and replaced. Also at this point I am questioning if I can call us a "small shop" anymore. Though I may still qualify given that I am the entirety of the IT "department".
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May 18, 2018 21:32
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Found out the current VM setup has the data store for critical VMs on the same storage device as the backups for those VMs. With no offsite backup. The storage has encrypted drives that we don't have credentials for. So now my weekend is backing all that up and resetting it. 
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May 18, 2018 22:40
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stevewm posted:We are in the process of acquiring 2 existing store locations. I got to take my first physical look at their equipment. There isn't a single computer less than 7 years old at either locations. And I think some of the laptops are even older. Bonus: They have some Windows XP machines. Each location has exactly one ancient HP branded 802.11b only access point, using WEP. And 10/100 HP switches. This is definitely one of those times I'd be tempted to look at deploying Chrome with Citrix or those little PCoIP boxes that are just dumb clients for Amazon WorkSpaces.
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May 18, 2018 22:47
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CampingCarl posted:Found out the current VM setup has the data store for critical VMs on the same storage device as the backups for those VMs. With no offsite backup. The storage has encrypted drives that we don't have credentials for. So now my weekend is backing all that up and resetting it.
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May 18, 2018 22:57
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On similar lines, I was doing an audit of our asset management system that also handled storing various account details. The master password for that system was stored in its own database.
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May 18, 2018 22:59
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Aunt Beth posted:they just couldn't comprehend that the lovely HP Lefthand array could fail. Oh the stories I could tell. Adding a +1 for backup data on the same storage as production data. See thread title.
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May 18, 2018 23:01
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TBF putting local backups on the same appliance in a separate storage pool is totally ok as long as youre still pushing it off site somewhere. Not all storage appliances are fetid garbage.
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May 18, 2018 23:07
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Digital_Jesus posted:TBF putting local backups on the same appliance in a separate storage pool is totally ok as long as youre still pushing it off site somewhere. Not unless your RTO is the same for offsite as it is for onsite. And this being the small shop thread, that is doubtful.
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May 18, 2018 23:09
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