Today, the director of IT at your company says to you “We’re going to remove all that centralized IPA+2fa authentication from all of our servers, and go back to using Ssh keys, because it takes too long for me (yes the director) to login to a server.” The same auth that you and your team added, for all the reasons. What do you do?

I mean, I get it. I work in IT, so I probably know a thing or two about computers. And I really don't mind helping out.

My problem is that these people usually have absolutely zero understanding of technology or how any of it works. It's usually frustration with their 10-year-old laptop that hasn't had a proper update in just as long, and pretty much everything on it is completely screwed. Now they're finally ready to spend a decent amount of money on a new device that they expect to guarantee stability and speed.

The truth is, almost any reasonably modern device will give you exactly that, and it's actually pretty hard to go wrong. It's also true that every device will eventually become a pain in the ass if it's maintained the same way as the previous one. And while there are some differences that make one manufacturer better than another, It's sort of irrelevant for the your average casual office user.

You don't have to be a genius to recommend some ridiculously expensive, overpowered machine that guarantees great performance, but what's the point of having someone spend a fortune on an advanced laptop if all they're going to do is use Word and read the news?

What I usually do when colleagues or acquaintances ask me is keeping it as simple as it gets: Lenovo ThinkPad, Core i5, SSD. No overthinking, no reinventing the wheel.

Still be prepared to become the scapegoat the moment their new laptop decides to misbehave. And sooner or later, it will, because some people simply aren't meant to own a computer.

We make rack cabinets, so we spend a lot of time thinking about the physical side of IT.

But that physical side has changed enormously over the last fifteen years, and a lot of it happened quietly.

Nobody talks about the last time they burned a driver CD. Or the era when a new server meant a physical trip, not a console session. Setting IRQs. Terminating your own cables because that was just part of the job. Keeping a stack of blank media by the desk. Actually walking to a machine to see why it wasn't responding. None of it disappeared with an announcement. One day you just realise you haven't done it in years.

What’s something you used to do constantly that’s completely disappeared from your work now? And is there anything you actually miss?

Brightspeed has created a nice graph to help you decide if your business needs 8 Gbps internet speeds. 😂

Here's the original article.

Like most other VMware shops we dumped it and moved on due to the appalling way Broadcom has treated both customers and resellers since the acquisition. So imagine my surprise when we got this email recently:

I wanted to follow up regarding your previous VMware environment.

Broadcom has recently authorized a dedicated win-back initiative with aggressive, rock-bottom pricing and terms designed specifically to bring organizations like yours back. I have the direct sign-off to offer you rates significantly lower than anything you saw previously.

Do you have 10 minutes this week to look at these updated incentives and see how much we can shave off your current operational costs?

Rob Williams
Account Director | GovEd
VMware Cloud Foundation, Broadcom

They must think we are complete idiots. Who in their right mind would ever trust VMware again after the last 2½ years of price hikes, legal notices, and generally unmitigated BS they have heaped upon us?

We have a MICR printer that is having static IP issues. I reached out to the manufacturer, because their manuals do not provide any information about static IP setup, and they informed me that because we do not have a support agreement for that serial number on the device, they can't provide any information or do any troubleshooting. The office space scene is real!

I've seen some posts discussing in place upgrades and domain controllers. MS recommends against it for Server 2025.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/upgrade-in-place?tabs=media

Don't use in-place upgrade for servers that run Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). Although an in-place upgrade is technically possible, it doesn't deliver the AD performance and feature improvements included in Windows Server 2025 and later. Instead, use a clean OS install to promote new domain controllers and demote the older ones. For more information, see Upgrade domain controllers to a newer version of Windows Server.

Hey all,

I have been in IT about 4 1/2 years now starting from helpdesk to systems administration. I have been doing the sysadmin part for about 2 years now and have slowly but surely accumulated services over time to the point where I have over 30 different systems I regularly have to maintain. From endpoint management to life safety to VDI to Entra my scope has slowly gotten larger over time. Here lately I keep feeling more and more burned out due to all these services that are supposed to be a temporary re-assignment for a hire that will never come on board.

I have also been looking at other jobs especially in the endpoint management space where I would be making almost double my salary on the high end and a 50% increase in salary on the low end. I do like where I work and I do like what I do its just becoming all too much being a Swiss army knife sysadmin.

To some of you guys who have been in the career field longer or have made moves to other places what signaled to you that it was time to find something else? I realize that I am still early in my career so this may just be part of the job that I am going to have to get used to.

TL;DR: What made you decide to leave a job for another in sysadmin work?

We're working off of a 35 day window between server restarts (and patching). Sometimes we run short like this month and have servers alert that their uptime is greater than 35 days.

What is your server restart window/patching window? How many days between restarts do you allow before you force a restart?

We noticed this morning that ca.archive.ubuntu.com is not resolving to an IP. Confirmed using OpenDNS CacheCheck:

ca.archive.ubuntu.com CNAME us.archive.ubuntu.com

us.archive.ubuntu.com NO_RECORD

Anyone know what's up?

Edit: I see https://status.canonical.com/ says security.ubuntu.com is down as well.

For me they work like 20% of the time 💢

It's so bad I actually use smartphone passkeys now to login to a website on Windows.

I am beyond furious right now. I created 2 OVH accounts a while back. I literally NEVER used them. No resources added, no projects created, nothing. Zero usage.

I decided to just close them to keep things clean, but guess what? You CANNOT close your account on OVH.

Apparently, OVH automatically assigned random services/projects to my unused accounts (like vRacks and Public Cloud projects) without notifying me, and now their broken system blocks account deletion because of "active services."

I’ve been stuck in support ticket hell for OVER TWO WEEKS trying to get these accounts wiped under GDPR.

Here is the circus I've been dealing with:

• Canceling a basic service takes 7 DAYS?? Support told me a vRack service had to be canceled first and that it takes a full week just to delete. What year is this?!
• Their UI is completely broken. The GDPR deletion page threw errors, and the system kept telling me to manual-delete things that I couldn't even delete through their manager interface.
• Their support agents give conflicting advice. One tells me to click links to delete Public Cloud projects, another says they'll delete it manually, another tells me to wait a couple of weeks for a "specialized team" to step in.
• THE ULTIMATE JOKE: Today I finally get an automated message saying: "Unfortunately, despite our efforts, we are unable to delete your account at this time. It looks like some actions are still in progress and blocking its deletion..."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The actual owners and developers of the platform cannot delete an unused account from their OWN system due to "technical issues"?! They literally built the system and claim they are powerless to delete user data!

They clearly don't give a damn about GDPR or basic customer support. I have deleted every possible service, settled $0 invoices, answered every ticket, and I am still stuck in a loop of copy-pasted support templates and automated rejection emails.

Has anyone actually managed to force OVH to close an account, or do I need to go straight to a Data Protection Authority (DPA) complaint at this point?

```

What is changing

Passkeys become the default authentication experience for users currently enabled for SMS or voice.

Microsoft-provided telecom delivery for SMS and voice will be retired. Customer-managed telecom providers configured through the Microsoft Security Store are not affected.

```

So SMS and voice are going to be sunseted. I'm happy with that. Any of y'all got a C-Level who refuses to use anything besides SMS?

I'm still not 💯 onboard with passkeys. My favorite is still TOTP. I've enabled it for a few accounts. Tbh, some of those were on total accident. Because I was just clicking popups without reading (personal gmail account).

I have been in the IT industry for 35+ years as a Systems Admin / Systems Engineer. I fully admit there are some things I do as a matter of being a bit old school… because they work. There were times way back in the dinosaur age where I tried the in-place Windows operating system upgrades and never quite had the warm and fuzzies about things running 100%. I’ve probably done more workstation upgrades and not so many server upgrades (actually had two completely blow up on me) so as a matter of practice I always do fresh new installs and reinstalled applications/roles and migrated user data. I am also one of those that do not mix roles on servers.

I have a project underway to migrate the rest of our Windows Server 2016 servers to 2022 (yes I know 2025 is out and am running it on less critical systems). I have a new guy in the DBA team pitching a fit to anyone that will listen because I won’t let him do an in-place upgrade. The other 2 DBA’s have no problem with it and have fished up their group of servers with zero issues. I am not concerned about shutting him up nor am I concerned about higher ups overriding me (My CIO flat out told the CEO that what I say goes when it comes to our systems). Rather, I am beginning to question if my old tail needs to get with the times. Has Microsoft gotten in place upgrades ironed out so well that it is a non-issue. What say you?

EDIT: One more detail I forgot to mention. While I know it is not as critical today as it was back in the Windows NT or even Windows 2000 days, the previous SA built their golden image template without sysprepping the image. out of the 400 servers we have running, 92 all have the same SID. these are mostly the 2016 servers. I am trying to clear them out.

Seeing as the move to B2B from the old SharePoint sharing has been implemented by MS. We find that the ability for a regular user to create a guest user, gives too much access.

Particularly when a person can invite a guest, and then ANY owner of a teams site could invite that external user to a Teams or SharePoint site and give them access to who knows what. Seems mind boggling to me.

Are we missing some settings, the only thing I’ve found is locking out guests completely from Teams/sharepoint invitation by default and then allowing it when asked.

This seems like too much overhead and that Microsoft haven’t particularly thought this out very well. Or am I the only one thinking this. How are you guys managing guests?

This is a rant but also looking for advice.

We have machines randomly experiencing massive CPU spikes. Not just like running Prime95 though, the CPU spike also renders the device almost unusable. I witnessed it on one of my devices and I could not even open TaskMgr during the event and even the screen redraw is affected.

Pretty certain this will be one of the usual suspects of management/security apps (SCCM, Tanium, Qualys, CrowdStrike), but ultimately this is Windows shitness. How can an OS allow an app to cause what is in essence a DOS. I expect this could easily be abused by a threat actor and go undetected if using signed processes.

As far as analysis is concerned, the WMI activity log is set to 1 MB by default, which equates to 3 hours of events.... What the fk is the point in that.

Is there a way to determine the cause on a device that no longer has the timeframe in event logs?

Hi guys,

Do any of you have any advice for a long time on prem enterprise infrastructure engineer with a wide support skillset covering server, network, storage, DB, VDI, observability, SRE, but now re-entering the workforce after a long time at one legacy company and looking to modernize on things like AWS/Azure cloud, Terraform, CI/CD, etc..

Are there any bootcamps, related training, or guidance that will help land a new job in this modern infrastructure landscape when you have tons of on prem legacy experience, but need to modernize your skillset now.

thank you,

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm trying to understand the practical purpose of setting the Primary Group to Domain Users vs Domain Admins.

https://imgur.com/a/zB5tKDl

email hosted at m365. User received this email, from an actual address inside my org, let's call it [email protected]. There's no sign of compromise on [email protected]. the header shows spf and dkim pass, but verified by mchsi.com, not domain.com. Is this a direct connect exploit of some sort? When I use message trace in exchange admin, it shows the email as coming from [email protected].

some stuff from the header

Message-ID: [email protected]
Reply-To: USER [email protected]
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AuthAs: Anonymous
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AuthSource: YT2PEPF000001CE.CANPRD01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-Network-Message-Id: 14cb0675-1297-4422-62a9-08dee74a69cc
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SCL: 1
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: [email protected]
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-RecordReviewCfmType: 0
x-ms-publictraffictype: Email
received-spf: Pass (protection.outlook.com: domain of mchsi.com designates 34.195.253.200 as permitted sender) receiver=protection.outlook.com; client-ip=34.195.253.200; helo=omta009.useast.a.cloudfilter.net; pr=C
authentication-results: spf=pass (sender IP is 34.195.253.200) smtp.mailfrom=mchsi.com; dkim=pass (signature was verified) header.d=mchsi.com;dmarc=fail action=none header.from=domain.com;compauth=fail reason=601
x-ms-office365-filtering-correlation-id: 14cb0675-1297-4422-62a9-08dee74a69cc
x-ms-traffictypediagnostic: YT2PEPF000001CE:EE_|YTZP288MB1239:EE_|YQBP288MB0762:EE_
dkim-signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=mchsi.com;       s=20240430; t=1784653591;       bh=8DB0fr86BLYD8LBT2zW0NZliR6xoP6XdS6smX2LZX/o=;        h=Date:From:To:Message-ID:Subject;      b=n9SoQyLTMx0wdkt4b7mdmBYDeAbPh+zGZvZGHHNjutw97IkdM44Idfgzc6SfhV2lJ  

thanks!

Hello

I just received the 5th call in three days.

All seem unrelated (different environments, different hardware, no common software except the usual Windows 11, Microsoft Office etc.)

Users can boot, see the login screen, enter their password but afterwards they just end up in a black screen with only the cursor.

- One of the devices I physically got my hands on. After about three reboots it started to behave normal again.

- Another one I instructed the user by phone to reboot it multiple times which also seems to have fixed the issue, at least for now.

- A third one said she had the issue for about a week and she also managed to get it to run by rebooting and waiting, but then the issue would reappear the next day.

Because of the clustering of calls with this symptoms I assume connection to a recent Windows update. But when searching this sub, I could only find similar questions from one or two months ago, whereas all of "our" users said that the problem started for them either this or last week.

Anyone seeing something similar?

Hi everyone,

Bit of a long shot.

We're looking for the latest Oracle NVMe firmware for the following Oracle OEM drives:

• Oracle 7335940 – ICDPC2DD2ORA6.4T → QDV1RF35
• Oracle 7361456 – ICRPC2DD2ORA6.4T → VDV1RL04

The drives are in production in our Amsterdam datacenter, and we're happy to perform the upgrade ourselves. Unfortunately, Oracle doesn't provide firmware downloads unless you're an active support customer.

Does anyone happen to have access to these firmware files through Oracle, a server vendor, or another legitimate source? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Hello, looking for a conference room / AV partner and installer for Manhattan. Ideally, they can help with Yealink, but open to other tech as well. Looking for table top touch screen device + full sound audio video bar for underneath conference room TV in small room setups (~6-7 people).

Thanks!

I've been a sys admin and sys engineer twelve years. Principal in two orgs.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of people being scared to stick their neck out on a problem they don't immediately know an answer to.

I left an org in 2022 because they kept assigning me everything after a merger because no one else would attempt it. I was building out a brand new citrix environment by myself with them dumping 95 hours over two weeks of projects on top.

I'm tired of managing egos and being in the middle. I'm tired of so much more being expected of me for being systems.

I did an interview last week for an infra engineer position and I was already dreading it. I hate technical interviews because they never indicate whether you can do the job. And you often have to pass several rounds. You mail nail two but then not know some acronym in the third and it's game over.

I'm tired of going to interviews for x and them asking my questions from 7 different roles.

I'm tired of working with people who learned one thing and somehow keep gettong hired and having to prop those people up.

I can't do it another 25 years. I'm tored of being the guy every where because I happen to know a wide assortment of stuff.

The week I left my past job, a QA manager and my biss messaged me asking what the powershell execution policy warning meant. They both make significantly more than me.

I got into a local union. I'm going to do that until I retire.

Good luck. If it looks wrong but it's working, don't touch it. Make sure to wait ten minutes before adressing that alert that is just going to clear itself anyway.

Keep your unit on.

> sudo systemctl status byebye