Hey Sn,

https://webfx.co.uk/

I'm doing a lot of work with these guys at the moment. One of the owners is based in Australia so could be a great fit.

Small team, really committed, I can PM you with details if you like.

@fuznutz04 said in Xen Orchestra 5.4 has been Released:

Just updated now using the script. Update worked great, thanks!

Awesome, good to know that it is still working.

@fuznutz04 said in Xen Orchestra SMB Remote problem:

So circling back to this, I was determined to add an SMB remote backup share. Instead of adding a remote SMB backup share through XO, I just mounted the SMB share through Ubuntu where XO is installed. In this case, I mounted to /Backups. Then setup a "local" remote in XO that points to /Backups. Backups are now running and being stored on a remote computer.

Awesome.

@stacksofplates said in Xubuntu 16.10 Issue Detected:

@scottalanmiller said in Xubuntu 16.10 Issue Detected:

@stacksofplates said in Xubuntu 16.10 Issue Detected:

@scottalanmiller said in Xubuntu 16.10 Issue Detected:

@stacksofplates said in Xubuntu 16.10 Issue Detected:

Right, until he gets the internet working.

No, it's not that. The wifi is just for the initial setup. The laptop is actually going to be used offline. He has many posts going back for months about this. He's stuck working in an offline situation all of the time.

Ah I didn't see those. Well then never mind. I thought he was just offline because he didn't get the cell dongle working.

That's his reason for the moment. But the dongle was after we told him that having some way to get Internet would make installing drivers easier because he was doing complicated things offline making them so much worse.

Ya I didn't have any background context so I was just going off of what was in that specific thread and one other where he was having issues with the cell dongle.

His info is spread out all over 🙂 He tends to hit a lot of topics all at once, then wait a bit, and a lot again. It's hard to keep track.

@black3dynamite said in Chrome Browser in Ubuntu 17.04:

Installing Google Chrome automatically add the Google repo. So no worries about huge attack surface and it's kept up to date.

Good to know, I did not know that the deb package added that for you.

He means currency.

@John-Nicholson said in Adding a New Hyperconverged Cluster to Your Existing Network:

Of course, there is always the option to keep the old infrastructure indefinitely. This can be an excellent choice if the old infrastructure is purpose designed for a specific workload, such as perhaps VDI, and the HC cluster is designed for more general purpose needs (or vice versa, of course.) Using each tuned for specific use cases is absolutely viable, but does require knowledge of and support of two different clusters each of a unique type which creates IT overhead, but remains a very realistic option.

I'd argue dropping the skill sets to maintain legacy clusters is one of the main appeals to HCI. (I Personally want to FORGET about HBA Queue depth management, and FC Zoning). The problem of running old gear indefinably is the hardware support costs, environmental costs, and lack of support for new hypervisor versions and other things eventually catch up with you before you realize it.

Yes, it's technical debt for sure and in most cases, you want to head towards phasing it out. But whatever skill set you had for it, you will still have at the time that you begin replacing it and can slowly reduce the dependency and the skills related to it together.

I'm afraid not.

Very interesting, will check that out.

@frodooftheshire said in XenServer7 time sync DC/PDC emulator:

@coliver I configurd XEN to pull time from us.pool.ntp.org, and I guess I'll just go into the primary DC and tell W32time to sync with the same server

I'm trying to recall but @JaredBusch has had issues with the US NTP pool. He may be able to comment further. Otherwise this should work fine.

@Lakshmana said in Wine for Ubuntu 17.04:

@Reid-Cooper I accept both Scott and Reid Advise not to use the Wine in Future

Our job here is done 🙂

Seems like ZeroTier really took over the work that Pertino was doing. Not directly, but in a sense.

@coliver said in Vinyl printer for large graphics and signs?:

@Minion-Queen said in Vinyl printer for large graphics and signs?:

So I talked to someone who does this. The training for one of these printers in usually around 10-15 hours to learn to use them depending on their proprietary software. So knowing Vector Graphics is a very tiny piece to it. That being said the printer companies do usually provide this training when you purchase the printer so might be worth it to them.

The printers are quite a bit of money in initial purchase and maintenance. Although $15,000 may be about right for an entry level one.

Sounds about right for what I have seen. That will be very entry level, but viable.

Not a bad idea, the price is good and would make it easy to have a hosted ticket system. I like it.

I agree with @JaredBusch reasoning for not pointing at DC's only in DNS, though his newly proposed solution is pretty cool - assuming the ERL will flip back to the primary as soon as it's available.

As for the secondary DNS server, assuming you have a standard Windows license, it's really kinda six of one, half dozen of another if you should setup a second VM as an additional DC. I see both sides, can't say that one way or the other is really better. I suppose it's a matter of resources.

@BRRABill said:

@scottalanmiller said

I have a feeling that that doesn't actually count.

Hmmm, you may be right. I just realized all the product keys are the same. Hmmm.....

Well, whatever. I am doing all I can. 🙂

Doesn't it balk then?

@JaredBusch said in Tell me about how HP deal registrations work:

@Carnival-Boy said:

Exactly, Breffni. That's why I wrote earlier "So one of my main criteria for a "good VAR" is that when I order something, the right product turns up at my door at the right time."

In many ways, I find the Account Manager more important that the VAR. A good account manager will do lots of chasing for you to make sure everything is ordered and delivered prompty, and know the right people to talk to if you have any queries or problems. Several times I've ditched a VAR because the account manager leaves and I don't like his replacement.

The account manager IS the VAR for all intents and purposes. If they suck you tell them to piss up a rope and get you one that has a brain or you will take your business to a different VAR.

And good VARs work hard to maintain good account managers, keep them with their clients and give them the tools to be successful.

@chrisnbrooks said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:

Thank you for voicing so eloquently what some of us have been trying to wrap our heads around. I personally come from a frugal era of IT and will always scout free solutions before coughing up the cash or subscribing to a (shudder) recurring licensing fee. We used to buy our modem banks by sniping eBay auctions, and that was at a tri-state telecom. I realize you need to spend money to make money, but unnecessary expenditures should still be avoid if possible, imo.

You're welcome 🙂

@BBigford said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@BBigford said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@BBigford said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@BBigford said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@scottalanmiller said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

@BBigford said in Hyper-V with Smart Card not working:

saves from pasting a lengthy document, plus a few images.

Posting images is fast and easy. And what takes five seconds for you to do, saves each reader of the page many seconds for forever.

The re-formatting of 5 pages into copy-paste took longer than just attaching the document. I did a straight copy-paste in the OC.. haha it was real bad.

I know it takes a bit if you are coming from a huge rich Word doc. But it is what it is, Word docs are definitely not something we are comfortable hosting. That puts ML on the hook for malware hosting. It's a huge deal. The whole site could get blocked in a split second because one newbie doesn't scan a document that they upload.

If it were only PDFs, it could be considered. But there are so many ways to host and link those things today that I'm not sure that it is a big deal. You can link it when really necessary and, whenever possible, it's best to get text and/or images instead.

It is what it is. I added stuff to the OC and will spend some time formatting the copy-paste. There's some good stuff in there for readers, and can explain what is going on and what I'm seeing... I thought it would be helpful.

If you output to text from Word, does that help?

I'm doing this from a Chromebook now and just did it within Google Docs. Doesn't have the ability to export our mess with output since it's a pretty basic tool. I'll have to try that a bit later when I jump on my laptop. I added the images.

Check out this tool:

https://word-to-markdown.herokuapp.com/

Completely locks up on a Chromebook trying to paste. Switched to a Windows 10 workstation with some more horsepower, all rendering/copy/paste goes through quickly. Copy to Clipboard appears to not work at all. Formatting looks terrible. But I'm done spending more time on that.

Well that sucks, it looked interesting.

@KOOLER said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:

@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:

So the good options are....

If you want high availability from your storage, which doesn't make a lot of sense since you have only one blade chassis, so no failover should it have any issue, you would likely get an HA SAN which would either be something like a 3PAR or something like a dual Proliant Starwind cluster. @KOOLER

If you don't want high availability, but are just going to add reasonable low cost storage to make the blades have some place to store VMs, then a single Proliant based SAM-SD running CentOS or FreeBSD is perfect.

Easy! I'm pushing really hard to release now pre-built ESXi, KVM and Xen Virtual Machine based appliances to get this done free of charge and with as small traction as possible!

That's awesome. Can't wait to see that in action.