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I hate my current job (office dispatch for a construction company) and I'm looking to get into IT (again?) I have a few questions for you guys about getting started in this: 1. Is there an IT job where all you do is setup and maintain large server rooms? What's it called? 2. Certifications? Which ones are any good? Which ones should I stay away from? 3. Is it worth going to a tech school for this type of thing? Bit of background about what I meant with the "again?" comment: I used to work at a games studio. Initially this started out as a simple QA job, nothing really all that impressive. Then we started a new project that involved (for all intents and purposes) our first large scale multiplayer component. Nobody in the studio (with the exception of the networking programmer) actually knew how to setup up a clean room, how to test for the multitude of technical networking issues that can and do crop up, how to test for bandwidth needs, etc. All anyone knew was that we needed these things. On a whim I volunteered to investigate what it would take to set up a clean room, that quickly turned into me being in charge of setting up and building a clean room, writing all of the test cases, training about 14 dudes on how the hell xbox live, and PSN work and what can happen and how to read network console traces, and then the studio created a position for me out of it. I basically went from "I have a router at home, internet comes out of it" to "I wrote a script to switch everyone's IP between the internal network and the clean room, and tweaks the QOS tables accordingly. Just run it and it'll all go by itself. " inside about a month and a half. It was getting to the point where the studio IT guys were coming to me to ask about issues they were coming across with build farms and stuff.
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Jun 15, 2015 22:36
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Aunt Beth posted:This title sort of varies depending on the nuances of the role, but I've seen it referred to as hardware planner, infrastructure architect, or datacenter manager. They're the ones responsible for the buildout of a computer room, power capacity and architecture, cooling, and generally rack/equipment placement as well one the room is up and running so that proper airflow and so forth is maintained. So for someone with zero experience (outside of that games networking thing), zero certs, and zero professional training. Should I be looking for something like that? or is there a lower level of that job I can get more easily and then learn up and gain experience in the job?
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Jun 16, 2015 00:02
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Docjowles posted:I think you are looking for something more like "data center tech" or possibly "NOC tech". Those are the more entry level positions. Someone else was telling me to do CCNA first at a bare minimum. Thoughts?
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Jun 16, 2015 00:36
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Would it be worthwhile to take a course at a tech school? This is the one I was looking at: http://www.bcit.ca/study/programs/181bdipts Sorry about the litany of questions, but it's hard to know what certificate or course qualifies me for doing cool networking stuff, and what is basically useless and qualifies me for a fulfilling job in a call center.
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Jun 16, 2015 00:52
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CLAM DOWN posted:I went to BCIT, PM me. PM sent.
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Jun 16, 2015 01:02
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I loving hate Citrix.
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Aug 12, 2020 18:27
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Nuclearmonkee posted:At this job they use VMWare Horizon instead of Citrix for desktop/application virtualization and I was hopeful that it was less terrible. My boss asked me what other VDI options are out there and I told him "They all suck and are terrible for different reasons. We would just be trading our Citrix problems for different vendor specific problems"
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Aug 12, 2020 19:52
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(long story short; I got a new job at a bigger company and am discovering a lot of "we grew organically from a small company to a big one and here is all of the corners we cut along the way) So my company is starting to think about making the transition back to the office and they sent out an email blast to the effect of "hey, we all left in kind of a hurry so mark down what office equipment you took home in this spreadsheet." And it was then that it dawned on me that the reason why none of the gear they sent me when I got hired has any asset labels is not because it was a pandemic where they couldn't get into the office, but because they don't put asset labels on anything. Which means this email is their attempt at inventory control. Being the type of person who sees a problem and tries to fix it, I called the IT Manager explained what I was seeing and then offered to spin up an inventory management solution at no cost in an attempt to head this inevitable trainwreck off at the pass. He said no. Given what I have seen so far in this place, I am both shocked and not at all surprised.
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May 20, 2021 22:46
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skipdogg posted:I'm sure this is super jaded me talking, but after 18 years of corporate BS, in my experience don't ever volunteer to make something better. Just shake your head and move along. No good ever comes from volunteering for something like that. Internet Explorer posted:To be fair, having inventory management straightened out is a lot more complex than standing up a tool. If I didn't have inventory management and someone called me up out of the blue and offered to set up a free tool, I'd probably say no, too. Defenestrategy posted:You should buy the IT manager a giftbasket. He stopped you from making the biggest mistake of your life. That is too many people saying the same thing to ignore. Thanks for the advice, I will let it go.
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May 20, 2021 23:49
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I get where you guys are all coming from and you're all correct, I haven't been in this industry very long and I guess one of the disadvantages of being "young, dumb, and full of cum" is not knowing when to walk away from a clearly broken process because the solution would be worse.jaegerx posted:This is why you post before you call your boss to offer to help. Ok here's one from a month ago when I was just starting at this place. My predecessor and I met at the office so he could show me around sort out my keyfob etc.So we go in and he starts giving me a tour around the office. Then he opens the server room door and went "oh what's all of these beeping noises?" Me: "this drive has failed. what is this server for?" Him: "hmm, I don't remember anymore. It's been there for years so I sort of ignored it." So then this guy took the failing drive out, looked at it, went "oh this is an expensive one. And put it back in the server and rebooted the whole loving thing going "maybe it'll stop beeping now" What would you do? MustardFacial fucked around with this message at 00:13 on May 21, 2021 |
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May 21, 2021 00:04
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The Iron Rose posted:It’s cool fam we’ve all made the same mistake once. I did, it was an ESXi 5.0 box with about 10 VMs on it all powered off, and an uptime of 6 years or something. It was literally doing nothing. I checked it over with everyone and deep 6'd the thing and chucked it in the gently caress it bucket. When I pulled that beeping drive out of the chassis it had a manufacture date of 2008. MustardFacial fucked around with this message at 16:48 on May 21, 2021 |
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May 21, 2021 16:43
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I loving hate RDP jumpboxes. It is TYOOL 2021, there are better solutions for getting from Domain A --> Domain G that doesn't involve jumping through 5 RDP portals.
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May 21, 2021 20:36
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Honey Im Homme posted:I loving love RDP jumpboxes, my lovely connection craps out all day and I rarely lose whatever I'm working on I got up to take a piss and all of the nested RDP sessions timed out and locked the screen so now I have to do 5 loving logins on different domains with different passwords. Yes, this is great. What a wonderful use of technology. Truly it is a modern age we live in.
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May 22, 2021 00:34
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Defenestrategy posted:When asked about league of legends 'I dunno,, it sounds like a jank mod for warcraft' "That's the lovely version of Dota right? I might have played it once or twice. It was ok." deedee megadoodoo posted:The correct answer to all of these dumb interview questions is google. I’ve used some version of “I don’t know off the top of my head but I can look it up when I need to.” In every drat interview for the past decade. There’s no reason to memorize trivia. Sepist posted:I've been in networking for about 15 years now and /27, /28 and /29 still require mental gymnastics to convert I am counting on my fingers from the nearest octet and ain't nobody going to tell me otherwise 
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May 28, 2021 22:04
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Cenodoxus posted:block the skid bot that keeps emailing him lemonparty.jpg through the Contact Us form. "Oh sorry sir, I'll turn that off. I was a bit late this morning so wasn't able to get in in time to prevent the dead man's switch from firing."
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May 29, 2021 04:34
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Agrikk posted:“You have one week to build a storage platform that is infinitely scaleable and when you’ve built it, we’ll all retire rich. How would you build it?” "Buddy, if I had that figured out I wouldn't be sitting in this interview."
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May 29, 2021 20:12
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skipdogg posted:I'm convinced almost everywhere is a disaster. I came into my current job thinkin poo poo was all buttoned up, and running smooth, but under the covers it's a shitshow like everywhere else. Same. I just started at a new place as well and, like there are a lot of really smart people here that are doing cool poo poo, but like there is no foundation to any of it. There's no deployment process, there's no secure disposal process, there's no baseline configuration for any of their prod servers. Then they give me poo poo for making "branch office specific policy" and I'm like "I'm happy to follow global corp policy to do these things. Just show me where they are." and they're like "we don't have one for that." Well then what the gently caress do you expect me to do? It makes me think I should dedicate myself to learning programming and get a job as a dev somewhere. Then I can just fuckin yeet my bullshit into the cloud and not have to think about what a nightmare the infrastructure is behind the scenes.
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Jun 10, 2021 04:28
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Man I need to stop drinking so much and get more sleep. Spent 2 hours thinking I had misconfigured a server in VMware. I had vmdks in the wrong datastore, but they weren't showing up in the linux VM. So I'm beating my head against the wall, googling like mad, trying crazy poo poo like looking up disk UUIDs to see if I can manually add the disks to /etc/fstab even though the OS can't see them but maybe if they're in fstab they'll just appear by magic on reboot?  I was seconds away from throwing the whole VM in the trash and starting over... ...And then I realized I was looking at server01 in vCenter but I was SSH'd into server02. MustardFacial fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 23:09
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Does anyone have experience in deploying NAC (RADIUS, TACACS, policy management, the whole nine yards) with Palo Alto firewalls? I've been tasked to come up with a plan for implementing 802.1x everywhere on all devices globally and I'm currently eyeing up Aruba ClearPass since it will integrate with out Palo Alto's and do everything we need, but in looking at the Palo Alto docs it seems I can build a similar (albeit a bit less feature rich) thing with the PA devices themselves and Panorama. If I can gently caress the cow without buying the milk, I'd rather do that. ClearPass looks really good and will integrate with all of our gear while giving us a centralized place for policy management, and reports, and logs, etc. But we don't necessarily require all of the fancy RBAC/magic VLAN poo poo that it does. It's also probably very expensive. On the other hand, I can just straight up build RADIUS, TACACS+, AzureAD auth into the palo alto devices themselves and get us 95% of the way there without spending a cent. Downside being that I have to do it locally on each device (If my understanding from the docs is correct) and policy management, reporting, and logging becomes more of a PITA. I also lose all of the RBAC/magic VLAN poo poo that ClearPass offers. I'm also looking at Portnox, but I'm not super sold on it yet.
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Jun 16, 2021 19:28
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uhhhhahhhhohahhh posted:The issue with just using PA and HIP profiles is that, while you can terminate your VLANs on the PA and control access going out, or to other VLANs, you can't do any microsegmentation. ClearPass, or Cisco's ISE, can do that. ISE can use Security Group Tags also that you can pickup on Panorama for building policies, and you can use profiling to replace HIP profiles if you want. I guess ClearPass has something similar but I haven't used it. Yessssss, this is the good poo poo I came for. Thanks for the info. Looks like I'm going to have to get everyone in a room and bash out some requirements.
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Jun 16, 2021 23:50
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abigserve posted:If you want to implement a proper zero-trust network you need to look into GlobalProtect everywhere (internally and externally) then tie this into the network design. Basically you have the GP client always running and everyone reports their login +network information to the firewalls which then controls policy. Hahaha I'm still trying to get these guys off of flat networks. One step at a time here. The goal right now is just to get some level of certificate-based RADIUS authentication enabled on the wifi network so we don't have discrete password protected SSIDs in each office. The reason I'm looking at ClearPass/ISE/Portnox over just spinning up a simple RADIUS server and pointing it at a DC is so in the future, slowly, bit by bit I can team up with the security team and then go to the higher ups and say "Hey, zero trust networks are good for reasons x, y, and z. All of the equipment we have is capable of doing it, at this point it would just be a configuration change. Is it something we can look into?" But that's like a year or 18 months from now, there is still a lot of other cruft I have to get rid of first.
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Jun 17, 2021 17:06
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Nobody Interesting posted:How would you go about getting some basic logging for a Wireguard VPN? I just set one up for my company (bout 15 employees) and the pres wants some level of activity logging so we can get some optics on what people are using it for. Why are you using wireguard in a production environment? That protocol is basically a tech demo at best right now. Yes, it's really fast. No it is not ready for primetime.
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Jun 21, 2021 21:57
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Twice now these Dell distribution switches have locked up in the middle of the day without warning. And once before to a Dell access switch in one of the branch office. All of this has happened in the last 3 months. I'm starting to think Dell Networking might be a bit poo poo.
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Jul 27, 2021 00:01
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MustardFacial posted:Twice now these Dell distribution switches have locked up in the middle of the day without warning. And once before to a Dell access switch in one of the branch office. All of this has happened in the last 3 months. code:
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Jul 27, 2021 22:38
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Farking Bastage posted:Coming from a longtime network engineer, rip that poo poo out. When gear starts doing that, no matter how high end it is, it will just happen more and more frequently until it completely croaks or is replaced. I say this knowing full well that Dell switches are completely loving useless. Yeah, it's coming out I've already got a replacement coming from Dell. Having not much experience with Dell switches I've always heard that their S-Series and above datacenter stuff was perfectly fine but their access layer N-Series was garbage. Having said that, this one in question is an S-series but all of our datacentre switches are Dell S-series and this is the only one to fail so far. I will say though, in all of my years working on Cisco and Juniper gear, I've never seen a switch act the way this one does so I'm sort of inclined to agree with you, it's just hard to find concrete evidence on which Dell switches are poo poo and which are ok. Plus the cost savings on the Dell gear vs a Cisco Nexus or a Juniper EX means the higher ups are reticent on change. MustardFacial fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jul 28, 2021 |
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Jul 28, 2021 18:16
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MF_James posted:there's something to be said for Dell Servers, Dell SANs, and Dell switching all being together because when the SAN folks claim the issue is networking I can turn it around and say "Ok, then get your networking folks on the call and we can hash this out right now" Thanks Ants posted:My problem with Dell switches is that it's the only networking product they make, more than likely as something to give away free to secure larger server or storage deals, and I can't see them having a support team worth a drat. That might all be untrue but they need to do more to shake that reputation. I think a lot of this has to do with their stance on Open Networking platforms. They know a Sonicwall will never be able to compete with the Juniper's, Cisco, and Palo Alto's in terms of the hottest latest in NGFW tech (they are trying, but when was the last time you saw someone deploy a new Sonicwall? The only ones I ever see are 10-15 years old). So they're looking to have Open Networking be their niche, which is fair enough. The Open Networking landscape can get really confusing really fast when you start pulling in all of these different whitebox switches that all run the same OS, if Dell wants to make that purchasing decision easier by going "All of our switches fit into your existing management plane. You can stop trying to hunt down Mellanox gear and memorizing ASIC model numbers, and we come with support" then more power to them. I think they've shot themselves in the foot with this because their original powerconnect line was so terrible that now nobody trusts the non Force 10 Dell switches, and Dell isn't doing themselves any favours by not killing off the powerconnect line and DNOS6. If they actually came out and made a statement killing the PowerConnect name, killing off DNOS 6, and saying "Force 10 is going to re-design our access layer switches", I'd probably have a lot more faith in them. But again, I don't write the checks so I don't get to choose the gear. MustardFacial fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Jul 28, 2021 |
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Jul 28, 2021 20:55
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Thanks Ants posted:Dell ditched SonicWall in 2016 to some private equity group who have continued to do what Dell did and basically let the range die slowly while falling behind the competition, but your point still stands. There's nothing that a SonicWall is good at and they aren't even particularly cheap, so I have no idea where they are making their sales. The only people I hear from who buy SonicWalls are greybeard admins who used to deploy them in the mid-2000's and have the "this is the way we've always done it" mindset. In any instance where they think a SonicWall would be an appropriate solution I try to pitch a pfsense appliance from Netgate. It does the same job as a Sonicwall, but better for way cheaper with no recurring licenses. Farking Bastage posted:I have about a dozen Enterasys S series blade chassis(24 SFP+per) that started doing very similar behavior in the last couple of years. GTAC would tell us to replace and rollup firmware, but it continued until we physically replaced them. Very similar behavior to yours and I suspect it was a bad block of memory and when the OSPF process would hit that space, the whole process poo poo itself. Not the thing you want happening when that thing's job is OSPF and is your holy grail of core devices because I don't have enough strands for a full VRRP/MLAG setup. I suspect it's a bad flash module in this instance because it's POSTing and booting right up until it has to load the OS image and then it shits the bed. Dell ProSupport tried to give me the "pls update the firmware" and I went "flash is hosed, but sure let's update the firmware" *Enters Bootloader* # show files code:
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Jul 28, 2021 22:11
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Contingency posted:I doubt it was intentional. You run the show mac table command--55 MAC entries are displayed. Run it again immediately, 82 are displayed. Another run? 17. And it's not like the entries were aging out, they just weren't displayed when the command is run. It did not inspire confidence in Dell networking solutions. How long ago was this? I just did it in 3 separate switches and got the same response everytime. Anyways update on the dead switch: Dell sent us a replacement unit and I don't know what their stock is looking like but jesus christ I feel like I've going to get covid just looking at this thing. It's loving filthy, every port is filled with shitloads of dirt and dust and cobwebs, it still has the asset tags from it's previous installation, they didn't send me any fan modules and only one power supply so I guess they expect me to like upgrade, configure, and test this thing in the datacentre? I've fired off an email to the support engineer asking wtf their refurbishment process looks like because holy gently caress this thing looks like it's been running in a smoker's lounge for about 15 years. Going to try to get a replacement for the replacement if I can.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:46
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Got asked to look at a config on an H3C switch this morning. Apparently, the old one died and they got a replacement from the vendor.......18 months ago. Turns out it was around the time covid hit so they just left it sitting there in the box because nobody was in the office so there was no need, and now everyone is apparently coming back so it's a huge panic to get this switch up and running again. The attitude here is mind-boggling.
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Jul 30, 2021 23:41
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Man, I have been too far removed from the nitty gritty of routing and switching and it's really biting me in the rear end today. 2-3 years ago I would've had this problem licked in no time but now I'm staring at this config going "How do port channels work again?" jack of all trades, master of none I suppose.
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Aug 4, 2021 23:16
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This might sound crazy but hear me out: Steam Deck as an ultra portable SSH/terminal mini-PC. Pair it with a USB hub and a small mouse and like a 40% keyboard.
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Aug 6, 2021 22:24
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Thanks Ants posted:Isn't that bigger than a laptop at the point you've added a little keyboard to it? The steam deck itself is about the size of a nintendo switch. So take that, plus a keyboard like this:  That's probably still smaller than my XPS 13 and way lighter and will fold up into a package that can be easily carried in a bag or a large pocket.
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Aug 6, 2021 22:42
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Internet Explorer posted:I hate it. And our dev team manages our self-hosted Jira instance that our entire company uses for ticketing. It's loving awful. And the way they have the project management piece set up, can't even do simple Kanban. Wait, do we work at the same place?
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Aug 10, 2021 20:34
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I talk enough poo poo in this forum that I would be just as liable as you, so don't worry about it.
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Aug 10, 2021 20:46
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I think Jira should be burned down.
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Aug 10, 2021 20:49
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I can't decide between  this place or if there is no point because every company is going to be about this aggressively mediocre.
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Aug 11, 2021 22:46
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Jerk McJerkface posted:seriously, imagine hiring someone for six figgies and you don't actually know what they do. I would love a linux admin job but I'm always reticent on applying because while I can explain to you the details of how LVM works, or how to correctly setup a LAMP stack or whatever, every linux test I've ever taken has always been some form of "what is the command to do this obscure thing". To which I reply "gently caress I dunno dude, that's what man pages are for." and then I fail the test.
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Aug 13, 2021 22:49
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 Do you double dog dare me to hit Enter? This is a message to the CTO btw.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:39
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Internet Explorer posted:I'm mostly just mad at the misspelling of containerization. The dude is at the company HQ which in in Europe. I am assuming it is a European spelling. Americans use a lot of "z" in places of "s" Sickening posted:What does IT fear when it comes to containers? YAML files and the concept of software defined X? Thanks Ants posted:Oh no wait, even lazier is moving things to non-standard ports but otherwise doing nothing. I'm sure your RDP instance is perfectly safe on port 9389. All of my SSH ports 1337.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:07
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bitterandtwisted posted:Recruiters messaging on linkedin are so cagey about salaries. Would it be rude of me to just outright ask what the job pays before I agree to take a phonecall only to find it's less than I make currently? Top 3 questions I ask to a recruiter who messages me on linkedin: 1. What is the salary? 2. Are you hiring for an MSP? 3. What is the WFH situation? I just had an interview with what is probably in all respects a massive step up compared to the company I'm in now. Same salary, but the benefits blow this place out of the water, plus it sounds like they have their poo poo together. But I', ultimately going to have to turn it down because what I thought was a software company is actually the software development arm of a major mining company. And I just can't be part of something that does that much ecological damage.
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Aug 19, 2021 21:42
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