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[sysadmin] sexy.code = new.underpants.required

Le_GoatLe_Goat Frechified Goat PersonBostonRegistered User regular
Below is a compilation of links we've found to be helpful for Sys Admins (capitalized because we're important, like a towel):

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last updated 11.10.2015

While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Le_Goat on
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    wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    Hey there, can I come administer your systems

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    TL DR wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    Cog wrote: »
    Le_Goat wrote: »
    The entire theory and purpose of a union is beyond fantastic. How some unions totally abuse the power that they have totally goes against what unions were originally intended to be used for. And when you get fucked because job A has to stop because union B says Union A cannot install the glass, so that becomes job B, but because job B was just created, you now have to wait for union B to finally get around to doing job B days later, then union A can finish job B, so now everything is totally behind schedule... ugh, man, shit like that makes you feel like they're all in cahoots to squeeze as much possible out of everyone else, despite what it will do to anyone else.

    There are times when I feel like there should be unions created to protect against other unions. I've seen some dark sides of union shit. It mostly pisses me off because of the abuse of power.

    Most amusing (cause it wasn't me) union story I ever heard was a friend of mine who worked for a staging company, setting up stages and lighting and shit for concerts. At one gig, there were two gaggles of union workers to unload all the shit from the trucks. Union A's contract stated they were to move the equipment to the top of the ramp inside the truck. Union B's contract stated they were to move the equipment from the bottom of the ramp outside the truck to the stage area.

    Nobody's contract covered the actual ramp itself. Everyone refused to do it because if they happened to get hurt moving equipment on the ramp, their union wouldn't cover their medical claim.

    Still, would you want to do work if it meant you could hurt your back or legs and you'd have to pay out of pocket to get it looked at (their health insurance wouldn't cover it).

    A lot of us would hem and haw, some of us would eventually do it because we're a bunch of push overs.

    If a company delivered a server box that weight 100 lbs and it said "team lift" on it, would you lift it yourself when everyone was out that day?

    I mean, I would because I'm a thoroughly-muscled hulk of a nerd, but I understand your point.

    Speaking of job creep, aren't you supposed to be a dev? Get outta here! You're taking a sysadmin's job! Put down that Active Directory this instant!

    Tell me about it.

    If I could join a union I'd be all over that and give the 10 hours a week I do sys admin to someone else, probably get them a full time job out of it too.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    SeidkonaSeidkona Had an upgrade Registered User regular
    Silly string is the best network cable.

    Mostly just huntin' monsters.
    XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Also even if you quit in most states, you can still get unemployment.

    Pretty much the only way they can deny you in NYS is if you did something illegal. Even then, they have to have the paper trail to prove it.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    Le_GoatLe_Goat Frechified Goat Person BostonRegistered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    Also even if you quit in most states, you can still get unemployment.

    Pretty much the only way they can deny you in NYS is if you did something illegal. Even then, they have to have the paper trail to prove it.
    That's not entirely true. You have to quit your job for a valid and urgent reason. You also have to be able to work if a job were provided to you. It's set like that so some shmuck who just doesn't feel like working can collect unemployment benefits.

    While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Le_Goat wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    Also even if you quit in most states, you can still get unemployment.

    Pretty much the only way they can deny you in NYS is if you did something illegal. Even then, they have to have the paper trail to prove it.
    That's not entirely true. You have to quit your job for a valid and urgent reason. You also have to be able to work if a job were provided to you. It's set like that so some shmuck who just doesn't feel like working can collect unemployment benefits.

    There's a limit on how much you can collect per X employment time span, so it's mostly moot anyways.

    At least in my state, she said she didn't really give a shit why I quit, these were benefits I paid into so they were mine to claim unless I did some egregious harm to the company and they could prove it. NYS also said I'd continue to get my benefits until it was determined it was my fault. She said a lot of company's use the "we'll contest unemployment" as a scare tactic.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Can you guys talk me through whether I want to disable cached mode on my two terminal servers? They're on the same LAN as our Exchange box, which is a 2003 VM running Exchange 2007. It's supposed to go away "soon" but that does me no good now - the TS VMs are out of disk space and OSTs are pretty much the only thing to target.

    How can I estimate the potential hit in resources to the Exchange server?

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    Le_GoatLe_Goat Frechified Goat Person BostonRegistered User regular
    I've only worked with cached mode on clients, but I honestly don't think it will impact the Exchange server that much at all. Cached mode is more for ease of access for the client. I'd wait until someone with experience using cached mode on a server chimes in.

    While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
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    CogCog What'd you expect? Registered User regular
    edited April 2015
    How many people get their mail via the term server? Unless the answer is "A lot, and all at the same time", it shouldn't have a massive impact.

    Cog on
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    Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Le_Goat wrote: »
    wires_A_Server_Room_Nightmare-s600x383-12112-5801.jpg

    I'm pretty sure that is a picture of a new hire, just reading his instructional manual on how to commit seppuku, because MOTHERFUCK re-doing all that cabling...

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    TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Le_Goat wrote: »
    wires_A_Server_Room_Nightmare-s600x383-12112-5801.jpg

    I'm pretty sure that is a picture of a new hire, just reading his instructional manual on how to commit seppuku, because MOTHERFUCK re-doing all that cabling...

    In contrast,
    "all this with zero downtime"
    QP4FJEI.jpg

    hnnngggg

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    TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Moving to a new rack entirely is either cheating or brilliance, I haven't decided.

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    donavannjdonavannj Registered User regular
    TL DR wrote: »
    Moving to a new rack entirely is either cheating or brilliance, I haven't decided.

    Why not both?

    steam_sig.png
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    AiouaAioua Ora Occidens Ora OptimaRegistered User regular
    It is, at the very least, not possible with out downtime.

    I'm onto you, random internet liar who is the source of TLDR's link.

    life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
    fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
    that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
    bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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    Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    well, if everything has redundant power supplies and so forth it can be possible, sometimes.

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    LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    It doesn't even look like the same room though.

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    Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    what about with redundant power supplies, portable battery packs and wifi to lan devices!

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    AiouaAioua Ora Occidens Ora OptimaRegistered User regular
    life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
    fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
    that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
    bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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    TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited April 2015
    Yeah the Reddit post says redundant PSUs and long patch cables made it possible, though I'd be curious as to whether that also required some server failover.

    TL DR on
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    I'd rather just have a day of downtime.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    lwt1973lwt1973 King of Thieves SyndicationRegistered User regular
    Odd bug with Sharing Calendars in Outlook. If you put in the cached address then it gives some permission error. If you go the address list then it's fine.

    "He's sulking in his tent like Achilles! It's the Iliad?...from Homer?! READ A BOOK!!" -Handy
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    wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    lwt1973 wrote: »
    Odd bug with Sharing Calendars in Outlook. If you put in the cached address then it gives some permission error. If you go the address list then it's fine.

    Yea I've seen that before. Took me way longer than it should have to figure it out.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
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    CogCog What'd you expect? Registered User regular
    Aioua wrote: »
    It is, at the very least, not possible with out downtime.

    I'm onto you, random internet liar who is the source of TLDR's link.

    As long as all your switching is redundant, it's possible, for some definitions of "downtime".

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    wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited April 2015
    and "downtime" is so subjective. We moved a bunch of stuff around in racks, but we also have a DR/second site for all of our critical functions. We just failed over to the second site, then did the work. There was no downtime to the users. We obviously weren't moving around the switches the workstations were on in this scenario, we did do that after hours, but since the rest was already done, it meant only about an hour of off hours work.

    wunderbar on
    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    "Hi this is Bowen from IT. We will be performing system upgrades on Saturday April 11th, 2015. Network shares and server resources (Email, IM, Web access, VPN, Remote Desktop, etc) will be unavailable during this time. During the maintenance, I will be unavailable to assist anyone directly or accept phone calls, as I will be expediently upgrading our systems to decrease the length of downtime. Expect downtime to be approximately 8 hours."

    This whole "everything must be up at all times" is nuts. If someone had to audit your department back in the day, you just shut it down for the day or week and that's just how it worked. Whoever promised "oh there'll be no/minimal downtime" just shoots themselves in the foot.

    Even Blizzard shuts down servers when they patch.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    Le_GoatLe_Goat Frechified Goat Person BostonRegistered User regular
    I love when you give that announcement and users act mystified why the systems go down, screaming that they didn't know.

    While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Yeah people will call my extension directly even though they've been reprimanded for doing so.

    I tried explaining it to them that if 20 of their coworkers call me one after another and it takes me 2-5 minutes a phone call, they've easily eaten 1/8th of my day that I could've gotten the upgrade done. There's a really good chance that I could've done the 8 hour maintenance window in that 1-2 hour time span, too.

    But nope, fuck you, all 8 fucking hours. I actually finished an upgrade in the first hour or so. I had the switch disabled and on a remote power strip I could power on or off from my phone. So exactly at 5:00 pm on that Saturday, I powered the switch back on.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    lwt1973lwt1973 King of Thieves SyndicationRegistered User regular
    I love being in middle of upper management power struggles.

    Oh wait, no I don't.

    "He's sulking in his tent like Achilles! It's the Iliad?...from Homer?! READ A BOOK!!" -Handy
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    CogCog What'd you expect? Registered User regular
    lwt1973 wrote: »
    I love being in middle of upper management power struggles.

    Oh wait, no I don't.

    The problem with company politics is if you refuse to play the game, it will chew you up.

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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Cog wrote: »
    lwt1973 wrote: »
    I love being in middle of upper management power struggles.

    Oh wait, no I don't.

    The problem with company politics is if you refuse to play the game, it will chew you up.

    Def.

    You immediately become a target for both groups of people.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    rwextremerwextreme Registered User regular
    I guess I'm one of those who enjoys performing major overhauls without downtime, better read as minimal downtime (often unnoticed) to the end users. Unless it's a swapping out a core switch/router/firewall it's generally not too difficult to avoid downtime and even then with some planning you can reduce that downtime to minutes rather than hours. Recently had replaced our core switches, iSCSI switches and top of rack switches while also upgrading two of our ESXI hosts and replacing our UPS units. All of the work was performed with no perceived downtime. Using Multichassis Link Aggregation on our switches along with running our SRXs in a cluster made it easy to bring new switches into the environment and transition our servers and other network infrastructure over with the only impact being on the available throughput when a single link in a 2-4 link aggregate was moved. The ESXI hosts were obviously pretty straight forward using vMotion, I did shutdown non-critical VMs that wouldn't impact my end users who were on at the time but that could have also been avoided if needed. For replacing the UPS units there wasn't much of an issue there as most of our equipment has redundant PSUs each to a different UPS and the equipment without redundant PSUs are connected to a series of automatic transfer switches so we can still source power from two UPS units for those devices. End users and printers of course would have had downtime in the amount of time it took me to relocate their patch cable but we keep enough room in our racks to not run into issues where we can't fit a new switch below an existing switch so that wasn't much of a problem either.

    I see it like this. I have a choice when I schedule maintenance or equipment upgrades. I can choose to plan for downtime and blast an email and/or voicemail out a dozen times, which will get ignored a dozen times and end up sending calls to the helpdesk, my extension, my cell and so on regardless. Or I can stick a little more thought into planning the maintenance/upgrade and have my workflow mapped out ahead of time and my users will never know. I'll always choose the path that's less stressful, which is almost always the path of less interaction with users - the extra time spent planning and doing the work with minimal to no downtime is worth its weight in gold when my phone isn't ringing.

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    wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    see, for me the decision about doing no downtime upgrades literally comes down to that I'd rather do a no downtime upgrade during the day than have to come in on the weekend if I have to take something down to do it.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    If I work on it in the middle of a normal day, and something goes wrong, I'd rather just not deal with it.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    rwextremerwextreme Registered User regular
    I'd love to do work day upgrades, that's pure fantasy where I'm at now though. When it's you, one other IT guy and a girl who triages calls you can almost guarantee you'll have nothing but distractions anytime you plan to get anything done. I enjoy what I do, but yea there are those nights where I just don't want to come in and wish we had more staff to deal with things during the day but there are also some nights that I come in and don't have to worry about the phone or door buzzer and can just dive into something and enjoy it.

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    TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah people will call my extension directly even though they've been reprimanded for doing so.

    I tried explaining it to them that if 20 of their coworkers call me one after another and it takes me 2-5 minutes a phone call, they've easily eaten 1/8th of my day that I could've gotten the upgrade done. There's a really good chance that I could've done the 8 hour maintenance window in that 1-2 hour time span, too.

    But nope, fuck you, all 8 fucking hours. I actually finished an upgrade in the first hour or so. I had the switch disabled and on a remote power strip I could power on or off from my phone. So exactly at 5:00 pm on that Saturday, I powered the switch back on.

    Oh my god you're worse than Joffrey

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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    The best part was I was at home playing minecraft so I VPNed into work, browsed out to the power strip's web interface, powered that switch back on.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    Custom SpecialCustom Special I know I am, I'm sure I am, I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered User regular
    xpost from Programming because I don't know how to thread good:
    I think this is the right place to ask about this. PowerShell scripting counts as programming...right?
    I'm updating a user+mailbox creation script and I'm using a switch inside a variable to have the creator enter the office location of the new user, then each appropriate response has an OU,DC path to drop the newly created user into the correct office/user folder.
    I've tried ordering it OU>DC, I've tried DC>OU, I've tried using a filepath name, I tried checking if I should use single or double quotes, and I can't for the life of me figure out what is stopping it from deploying correctly. Everything else that I have variable entries for works and the user gets created, it just gets dumped into the top Users directory and not nested down into the OU tree where it should go.

    Anyone have experience with this?

    More specifically the switch I'm working on (abridged):
    Function GetInput {
    $Office = read-host "Enter Office Location"
    Switch ($Office){
        'office1' {$Office = "OU=Users,OU=Location1,OU=Network Folder,DC=Company,DC=local"; break}
        'office2' {$Office = "OU=Users,OU=Location2,OU=Network Folder,DC=Company,DC=local"; break}
        (et al...)
        default {GetInput}
        }
    }
    GetInput
    

    All the rest of the script works fine. I'm plugging the $Office variable into -OrganizationalUnit if that matters? I swear it worked once upon a time, so I don't know if it's a possible issue where a small configuration change on the server broke it, or if I'm just doing something wrong.

    XBL: F4ll0utBP | STEAM | PSN : CustomSpecial | Bnet: F4ll0ut#1636
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    bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    You should send hourly updates 2 days before you do that.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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    CogCog What'd you expect? Registered User regular
    Your mistake was obviously announcing you would cut on April 1.

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    InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    xpost from Programming because I don't know how to thread good:
    I think this is the right place to ask about this. PowerShell scripting counts as programming...right?
    I'm updating a user+mailbox creation script and I'm using a switch inside a variable to have the creator enter the office location of the new user, then each appropriate response has an OU,DC path to drop the newly created user into the correct office/user folder.
    I've tried ordering it OU>DC, I've tried DC>OU, I've tried using a filepath name, I tried checking if I should use single or double quotes, and I can't for the life of me figure out what is stopping it from deploying correctly. Everything else that I have variable entries for works and the user gets created, it just gets dumped into the top Users directory and not nested down into the OU tree where it should go.

    Anyone have experience with this?

    More specifically the switch I'm working on (abridged):
    Function GetInput {
    $Office = read-host "Enter Office Location"
    Switch ($Office){
        'office1' {$Office = "OU=Users,OU=Location1,OU=Network Folder,DC=Company,DC=local"; break}
        'office2' {$Office = "OU=Users,OU=Location2,OU=Network Folder,DC=Company,DC=local"; break}
        (et al...)
        default {GetInput}
        }
    }
    GetInput
    

    All the rest of the script works fine. I'm plugging the $Office variable into -OrganizationalUnit if that matters? I swear it worked once upon a time, so I don't know if it's a possible issue where a small configuration change on the server broke it, or if I'm just doing something wrong.

    1) You don't necessarily need to break, since the conditions are unique and shouldn't evaluate more than one of them.

    2) I'd recommend assigning to something other than what you're switching on (if you switch on $Office, don't change it mid-switch by assigning to $Office, assign to something separate like $OU).

    If your function just needs to return it right away, and your switch is the last statement of the function, you don't need to assign anything at all actually. Looks like you might be trying that, or half-trying it right now?
    Function GetOfficeOU {
      $Office = read-host "Enter Office Location"
      Switch ($Office) {
        "office1" { "OU=Users,OU=Location1,OU=Network Folder,DC=Company,DC=local" }
        "office2" { "OU=Users,OU=Location2,OU=Network Folder,DC=Company,DC=local" }
        default { GetOfficeOU }
      }
    }
    

    The switch gives you the OU or calls itself to query again, ultimately unwinding and returning the correct OU once you enter a valid input.

    OrokosPA.png
This discussion has been closed.