@scottalanmiller said in Greenfield HA environment choices:

Hyper-V is a decent choice if all you want is to protect the platform and not the functionality. If you have real HA, this is useless and will often work against you and at the very least make things more costly and difficult. But if you lack HA and need a platform level alternative, Hyper-V with Starwind is a really good choice. Starwind is the only mechanism I'd consider in that situation.

I was thinking about Starwind. I like what they do. (I like hyper-convergence in general)

@scottalanmiller said in Greenfield HA environment choices:

KVM with Starwind or DRBD will do this, too.

I thought Starwind is NOT available on KVM hyper-visors?

@scottalanmiller said in Greenfield HA environment choices:

@fuznutz04 said in Greenfield HA environment choices:

Doing system maintenance was a breeze, because I would failover all the VMs to the other hosts, perform updates to the node, and then move them back.

If you need to do this, it means you have no HA for the OS. What if the OS needs patched or fails? The platform (Hyper-V) HA would be useless. It would simply protect the failed system.

If you are looking for HA, this doesn't cut it. What you have isn't bad there, but it doesn't qualify as HA because you are only looking at one of the layers and not protecting the stack. It's a "hypervisor HA", but that's not what any business or IT means when they say HA... they mean continuity of the resultant services.

To put it another way... you are looking at HA of the means, not of the ends.

That's a valid point. But let's say you are just looking at hypervisor HA. ( not feasible to move the stack to OS HA anywhere in the near future) Apply the same question.

I've been thinking a lot about what choice to make if I were to go for a high availability system for VMs.

In a past life, I worked for a medium size software hosting company. They were setup with a full Hyper-V failover cluster, including the standard SAN, etc. It was setup before I got there, but it worked great. The hyper-visors were setup correctly (meaning they used Hyper-V server, NOT the Hyper-V role), they used Cluster Failover manager, etc. Doing system maintenance was a breeze, because I would failover all the VMs to the other hosts, perform updates to the node, and then move them back. This was back when I was using Hyper-V server 2012. As of now, a ton more features are available , including cluster aware updating and Windows Admin center which allows you to manage the whole lot from a web browser. Not too shabby.

So, If you create a cluster with Hyper-V server (not the ROLE), and plan to have only Linux VMs on the cluster, thus eliminating the whole licensing downside to MS, what are the main pros and cons of going with the MS solution, VS something else in the Linux world? I'm not leaning one way or another at this point, but I've been so engrossed in the Linux world for the past couple of years, that MS Hyper-V wasn't even a thought in my mind. But now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not really thinking about any big downsides.

Can't wait to get some good discussion going on this.

@scottalanmiller said in ISP & VoIP woes:

@JaredBusch said in ISP & VoIP woes:

not a lot you can do except talk to the provider. if you get super lucky they will listen.

Yup, call @Phil-CommQuotes and maybe get a quote from a different provider. Comcast is known for these kinds of issues, getting them to actually try to fix anything is super hard.

Good idea. Never used him before.

@JaredBusch Yeah, I had this once previously at a client site. Turns out a squirrel was chewing through the wire coating and during times of rain, it would screw up the signal. They replaced the line to the building and all was well.

@Dashrender said in ISP & VoIP woes:

f those customers and replace cabling.
Like you, it was primarily happening only at a given time (for us it was 8-10). I'm assuming some neighbor was watching TV daily during that time - or some other coax usage thing - causing our issue.
Cox told me that the coax cable that most TVs come with today is total shit, and customers hooking up their devices with that cable end up causing a lot of issues.
I would do my best to narrow down specific times it's happening, and then make sure Comcast has a tech onsite 20 mins before that time, and then they can watch the line noise, etc... Hope this helps.

Good tips. I'll watch this daily to see if I can find a pattern. Thanks!

We have a cloud hosted PBX with 3 sites connecting to the same PBX. One of the three locations consistently (but also sporadically) has issues with call quality. Incoming calls seem to be terrible, almost to the point where you cannot hear the person on the other end. During the times that this happens, I run other tests from a phone here at my office, as well as from the 2 other locations. (Keep in mind that all locations connect back to the same PBX in a data center. The location having the issue has a Ubiquiti ER-4. I have UNMS hooked up to it and I can see super high latency during these times where bad call quality is reported. (Normal 30-40 ms latency VS about 400 ms latency during these times)

I am convinced that there is something going on with their Comcast coax connection. Technicians were out to the location, they replaced the modem, checked the lines, etc. They ensured us that there were no issues are drops. (at least while they were testing)

Any tips regarding how I can get them to run a deeper diagnostic or in some way prove to them that there is an issue with Comcast?

@Dashrender I don't have experience with Divi, but I have heard from other people that once you use Divi, changing your site to any other theme is very difficult. No idea if that is accurate or not though.

@scottalanmiller Yeah, they have some decent ones as well. Not as polished as some of the fancier ones, but still ok.

@Obsolesce They have some nice themes. The free ones are of course limited, but probably more than enough for a blog.

I have been tossing around the idea to start a blog to document a hobby of mine. I believe Wordpress is probably the best/easiest choice.

I also use Grav for some internal documentation sites at work, so I could use that as well. But lets assume I go with Wordpress. There are some awesome themes available. A lot are free, but most I have found charge per site.

Are there any good suggestions around here for a nice looking free or inexpensive theme source?

I don't mind paying if I can use a template on more than 1 site. For example, if I want to spin up 2 sites. 1 for blogging, and 1 for some other random website.

@JaredBusch said in FusionPBX - 2020:

They state, clearly, that 10 is supported and tell you where to download it.

So use 10.

For reference, you can look back at my older thread about installing this right after 9 came out.

Agreed. I was just thrown off by their wording on that page. it says 8,9 and 10 ARE supported but then in the very next sentence, they say 9 is currently the recommended OS.

@JaredBusch But 9 or 10?

I want to take a deep dive into FusionPBX to compare it to FreePBX. What is the preferred OS to install on as of right now? Their documentation still says Debian 9, but also says Debian 10 and even CentOS 7 is "supported." (But Debian 9 is recommended.)

That's what I was hoping to hear. The content that they list VS the price you pay seems like a really good value.

Just got this in my email. Udemy has a ton of courses on sale for $9.99. Specifically, I was taking a look at the Python course. https://www.udemy.com/ I have not used Udemy before. Are they worth it?

Morning all! My current workload is preventing me from posting on here as much as I would like. Pesky work.

@travisdh1 Yep, plus it is pretty, so it has to work well.

@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti - Small office Router and WIFI:

@fuznutz04 said in Ubiquiti - Small office Router and WIFI:

I went with the ER-4 and a Unifi AP-Lite. Works perfect, and I'll just have to maintain it.

However, did anyone see Ubiquiti's new release? https://store.ui.com/collections/routing-switching/products/unifi-dream-machine

Like all consumer stuff, who wants this crap in the middle of their living space?

I think the same way. This stuff should be hidden. I don't understand why companies think they should spend resources designing something "pretty."