Best posts made by JasGot

@hari We have many customers like this. A few are using G-Suite (that way before we took over). I have to say, the new G-Suite sync tool, totally eliminates and problems I had years ago between Google apps e-mail and Outlook. I actually like it now. E-Mail and Calendars are seamless.

In an office like this, my baseline would be a 24 or 25u cabinet on casters with a Dell R540 beefed up and running Hyper-V with the Domain Controller in a VM, and Application server in another VM (like Timeslips, QuickBooks, etc) and another R540 for the DB application and SQL. (ie; Summation by AccessData) I would split the DB server if volume were expected to warrant it. I have no interest in managing SharePoint (too many headaches from 15 years ago) So I recommend Hosted SharePoint with AD integration. We use ClouberryLab or BckupAssist to backup to local media (Synology NAS RAID10 - RS2418RP+) AND S3 with full encryption, then we use Cross Region Replication with versioning for fail safe.

As for the server, once you get to the bigger R series of the Dell servers, it really comes down to drive bay capacity. Just make sure you can accommodate additional drives in RAID 10 if your capacity needs increase.

I hope this get your mind moving in the right direction. Please ask for details if you need anything more.

J

I kind of felt tricked into clicking the link. Thought I was getting an explanation, not a go fund me page.

We have a customer whose timeclock just dies. They are asking if we have any suggestions for a replacement or a Windows Software based option.

Anyone have a positive experience with a time clock or time clock software?

@Dashrender said in Top Ten Happiest Places on Earth in 2019:

@dyasny said in Top Ten Happiest Places on Earth in 2019:

• Free-ish medicare

You know this doesn't exist anywhere - right? If it's free - it's paid by taxes.. Now that said - I have no clue what the actual typical tax rate is in Europe say compared to the USA ( I know that my tax rate between state and Fed is around 17% - that doesn't seem right, but this is based on my actual pay, not the post standard deductions pay, which would clearly be much higher.

Don't forget the sales tax, gas tax, airport tax, and hotel tax, etc... you probably pay quite often. It all adds up. Americans pay a lot more tax than they think they do.

I'm trying to accomplish a non standard config so I can do some work at my shop in advance of on-site installation.

Here's the scope: I want to setup a new server for a customer while the server is still at my office. Customer site LAN is 192.168.1.0 My Office Lan is 192.168.2.0

I want to set up the new server (physically in my office) with a 192.168.1.x IP and use a Tunnel Interface to give it full access to the customer LAN.

I set up Tunnel interfaces all the time between two firewalls (almost always Sonicwalls) with no problem. In fact we have dozens of tunnel interface VPNs running all the time.

With a basic routed tunnel between my office and the customer office, the two lans 192.168.1.0 and 192.168.2.0 talk just fine. What I can't visualize in my head is how I set up the VPN (preferably without VLAN) so I can have 192.168.1.0 on EACH side and have them talk to each other.

My first thought was to just remove the routes and let the tunnel be a bridge. Would this work? and then I would set my gateway of the new server (on my side) of the tunnel to be the gateway at the other end? And internet access would be through the customer's ISP rather than mine?

If this is right, then it's true, I am simply over thinking this!

@pete-s said in Backblaze published stats on SSD vs HDD reliability:

Interesting read but unfortunately they don't have enough SSDs and have not had them long enough to draw any real conclusions.
And their use case is for boot drives - which isn't really applicable to normal server workloads. And they likely use lower spec consumer SSDs too which makes it even harder to draw any conclusions for servers where you normally see standard enterprise SSDs.

They made that clear, and were up front about it.

The other factor we listed was drive days, the number of days all the drives in each cohort 
have been in operation without failing. The wide disparity in drive days causes a big 
difference in the confidence intervals of the two cohorts as the number of observations 
(i.e. drive days) varies significantly.

Your response makes it look like you are disputing the article. I don't see anything disappointing at all in that article. They made it perfectly clear this is what they know now, based on different drive day cohorts. Then they said it would be a a couple of years before they had enough data to form a more clear understanding.

Over the next couple of years, as we get a better idea of SSD failure rates, we will be 
able to decide whether or not to add the AFR to the SSD versus HDD buying guide checklist. 

They never mentioned a use case, only a test case. And they explain why they think the boot drives are a reasonable measure of the drive in the real work load.

In our case, describing these drives as boot drives is a misnomer as boot drives 
are also used to store log files for system access, diagnostics, and more. In other 
words, these boot drives are regularly reading, writing, and deleting files in 
addition to their named function of booting a server at startup.

@bnrstnr said in Tech Support Search choices:

I use duckduckgo also. If it's something I know ML people use or talk about I'll usually run a site:mangolassi.it search terms otherwise I just search it normally on duckduckgo

You can also do site:mangolassi.it site:serverblah.com site:spicewhatevs.com search terms to search multiple sites at once

I still don't trust the nodebb searching for whatever reason... probably irrational

We have an internal app with a search box, in addition to some added site: options we also append this to EVERY search:
-brothersoft-com -softwarepatch-com -softpedia-com -topshareware-com -freewarefiles-com -fanhow.com -tutcity.com
it cleans up the results pretty well.

I need some help sorting out the exchange connectors on a server.

We were called in to figure out a spam problem. It's not severe and during our exam, we are trying to check the configuration of Exchange and get mail test tools to be happy.

Right now we are getting: Reverse DNS does not match SMTP Banner from mxtoolbox.

This is a simple MS Exchange setup; One Exchange server on a domain, people connecting with MS outlook from inside the building on the domain and from outside the building using Ms Outlook, and two copiers that can send e-mail.

The issue is all the receive connectors. It's not clear to me which one mxtoolbox is seeing.

They are:
Client Frontend EXCHANGE
Client Proxy EXCHANGE
Default EXCHANGE
Default Frontend EXCHANGE
Outbound Proxy Frontend EXCHANGE
Scan2EMail

I'd like to know what each one represents. ie; I presume Frontend mean Internet facing, but I'm not sure. Also, do internal MS Outlook users connect to a receive or send connector? (or both?)

Thanks.

We all wear them. Won't be around LED lights without them any more. Me, my family, co-workers, & friends......

I have a long drawn out explanation and theory..... I'll give you the cliff notes version.

We changed some bulbs in the house to LED and it was no big deal. We got a new PC at home with an LED screen and my wife started feeling like there was a migraine in her future, but it never came. Our kid's school went all LED in the gymnasium and after the first visit, my wife left with a terrible headache, and I was sore in the top of my eye sockets.

It took a few weeks to figure it all out, but here is what our conclusion was; everyone has a different level of tolerance for LED lights; and it is cumulative! The sum total of all the LEDs I experience in a day only bother me a little, it only bothers my son a little, but it drives my wife into migraines.

So after some reading, I found these Blue light filtering readers on amazon. I got a pair of 0 magnification for my son, a 1.75 for me and a 1.5 for my wife. We started wearing them only in from the computers screens (home, work, and school). It helped a lot. It stopped my wife's headaches outside the gym, but the gym was still a little much, so she wears them in the gym too.

All the weird head achy feeling I was getting, my wife's migraines that started to flair up again, and my son's sore eyes after computer lab at school, are all gone. I've been telling people about them, and many people are now getting them because when they put them on, and can feel and see the difference.

When I say feel better, I mean, if the LED was having ANY effect on you at all, wearing these really do make you feel better.
If you weren't bothered very much at all by the LEDs, then you may not notice you feel better when you get away from these light until you start wearing these glasses around them. Remember what I said about the cumulative effect? It may take a day or two to realize they are helping.

I hope this offers you some valuable insight. But even more, since you are asking about them, I hope you try them........

Here's a link to the zero magnification:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L0IH4MM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have a small office that has a single server. It has Windows Server 2016 STD installed (full GUI) and has Hyper V enabled.

MS SQL 2014 Standard in installed on the physical server along with some Windows 10 Ent VMs.

I have our application installed on server and also on the VMs. The SQL efforts of the VMs are slower than on the Server OS.

I've had chats with the developers, and they suggest the SQL server and application are all optimized. Leaving me with SQL Query issues in and out of the VMs.

I am looking for some advice on how to troubleshoot this and some suggestions on things I can do to try and get better speed for the end users.

This is a new and significantly more powerful setup than before, but is run slower than before

Alright. You've all inspired me to quit the "hold steady" phase and make another move downward......:)

I won't know definitively until mid morning, but I think I sorted it out. It was the Distributed Transaction Coordinator in the Windows 10 VDI firewall. I allowed it for the domain profile and now the queries are running faster than I can witness.

From 15-16 seconds....to under one second. Holy crap!

I'll report back in a few hours.

@RojoLoco said in American Airlines:

I think the point here is that @JasGot can afford to take us ALL on vacation, first class of course. Where are we going?

How about dinner and drinks in Key West? I would be willing to do that.

@DustinB3403 said in Remote Hyper-V Manager Woes:

There is a guide here by Timothy Gruber which appears to do what you want.

This is the guide that got me past all of the misinformation, and had all the important info left out by MS. This is by far the best write-up out there for a domain connected PC to manage a workgroup Hyper-V Server

I just wanted to say "thank you" to everyone who posts here. Your topics are very often educational and thought provoking.

As an example, I have spent some time in the last few days quietly learning what Runbook Automation is, thanks to Is there a use case for Azure Automation Runbooks?

It turns out we use RBA, I just didn't know its name or how many places it is used in our daily IT lives.

Thanks!

@scottalanmiller said in Managing Windows Local Users with Net User:

...Because of its simplicity, the net user command family is popular over remote shells such as those executed in a remote control application or through tools like psExec.

Net User Reference on Lifewire

---

Part of a series on Windows Systems Administration by Scott Alan Miller

Oh, man...... How true! I don't think I could get through my days anymore without net user and net accounts from a remote shell. They are the first things I do when someone says anything at all about "login issues".

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Discussing Buc-ees... the Texan trailer decor store.

That's too funny! We were just discussing a new bar near us. Tying to decide if we are going to try their wings....

https://buceezpub.com/

@JaredBusch said in Managing Windows Local Users with Net User:

You certainly can, if you setup the command line right and don't rely on independent connections.

We run multiline powershell commands through ScreenConnect sessions all the time to add and remove printers. You just have to paste it all into the windows at once, then hit send.

That's what we do too. If you can do it one line at a time, you can do it through ScreenConnect command. Just need to bump the #maxlength=100000 and
#timeout=90000 as appropriate! (values will differ)

I have to say though, I'm using backstage more and more for the things I used to do in a command.

Typing this to a customer:

"If I ask you to go to Meijer and pick up milk, and your Uber driver keeps taking you to Walmart........ How am I supposed to fix that?"