Posts made by AdamF

So I have used Nmap in the past to scan a number of hosts for open ports. What are some good options to scan multiple hosts for open ports? Is Nmap still a good one, or are there better tools out there? The hosts are public facing.

2 more early morning server upgrades complete! Have a great Friday everyone.

@scottalanmiller said in Calendar sharing - Office365 - External users:

@AdamF said in Calendar sharing - Office365 - External users:

These external accounts should be able to see and add to the calendar.

how do you authenticate something "external" to O365? External is a reference to something not authenticated, in this context.

In this case, it is just a shared calendar for a conference room. (who booked the conference room) So even if I had a public link, which requires no authentication, that would be fine. I'd just give the URL to the 2 people who need it and be done with it. The catch is, the link has to allow editing.

@dbeato said in Calendar sharing - Office365 - External users:

@AdamF Yeah, External organization Calendar Editing has always been an issue with Microsoft Exchange and Office 365.

Yeah that is a real shame. And such a simple thing to do! Oh well.

@manxam said in Calendar sharing - Office365 - External users:

@AdamF : Clear instructions here but take note of their caveat. Only Outlook users will be able to edit the calendar. Users using other clients will NOT have this ability.

I saw that article. The caveat is a deal breaker unfortunately. This seem so overly complex for such a simple requirement. I guess I could just use a google calendar instead.

@dafyre I do have that enabled, and I can see the calendar via a URL now, which is a great step. Now I just need external people to be able to edit it.

We have an Office 365 exchange environment. I would like to create a resource (conference room) which has a calendar. That calendar should be able to be edited by internal people, but needs to ALSO be shared to external (non 365 accounts/email addresses). These external accounts should be able to see and add to the calendar.

Is this possible ? If so, what is the procedure? I'm finding a lot of documentation on it, but so far, I can not seem to get the sharing/permissions correct.

@scottalanmiller said in Apple Officially Releases their ARM M1 Powered Lineup:

Even the Mac Mini finally gets a new release...

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/

The M1 really looks to be impressive and finally something out of Apple that really has the chance to knock our socks off. Instead of being a high cost, not very impressive PC, they are finally leaving the PC market and doing something unique. First time I've been interested in checking out their gear again in almost twenty years!

But will it run anything other than MacOS?

@JaredBusch PHP 7 should be a nice improvement.

@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

RHEL 8 upstream for the Sangoma OS and PHP 7.

Nice! When will FPBX 16 be released? Will it be on Asterisk 16 or the new 18?

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

or do you also lock down your firewall to only allow ports 4505:4506 FROM your minion IPs?

No, this would make the agents pointless. Because they'd be unable to obtain a new address and keep working. This wouldn't just make mobile points not work, it would make any site without static IPs a problem, which is almost all of them today.

So the only reason I brought this up, is because of a big vulnerability with SS a few months back. (https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/05/04/saltstack-salt-vulnerabilities/) Specifically the section in the article that states:

“Adding network security controls that restrict access to the salt master (ports 4505 and 4506 being the defaults) to known minions, or at least block the wider Internet, would also be prudent as the authentication and authorization controls provided by Salt are not currently robust enough to be exposed to hostile networks,” the researchers added.

Now of course, an up to date master avoided this altogether, but still.

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

Whoa! VM Ware just acquired Saltstack. https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/10/vmware-completes-saltstack-acquisition-to-bolster-software-configuration-management-and-infrastructure-automation.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vmware-completes-saltstack-acquisition-to-bolster-software-configuration-management-and-infrastructure-automation

I wonder what that means moving forward....

That was over a week ago, lol.

Ha! Just saw it this AM. Does this give you any concern with the future of the open source version of Salt?

No, VMware has little interest in upsetting the balance of things. This kind of tool is already universally open source. Closed source only makes sense when you can dominate the field until some open source option takes over. Open source already owns this field.

Close sourcing an existing product is very hard to do, because you risk that someone else will fork it and keep it open and make your version irrelevant leaving you with literally nothing for the money that you spent.

Makes sense. From yesterday: With Salt, on your salt master, do you rely on the keys for authentication, or do you also lock down your firewall to only allow ports 4505:4506 FROM your minion IPs?

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

Whoa! VM Ware just acquired Saltstack. https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/10/vmware-completes-saltstack-acquisition-to-bolster-software-configuration-management-and-infrastructure-automation.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vmware-completes-saltstack-acquisition-to-bolster-software-configuration-management-and-infrastructure-automation

I wonder what that means moving forward....

That was over a week ago, lol.

Ha! Just saw it this AM. Does this give you any concern with the future of the open source version of Salt?

Whoa! VM Ware just acquired Saltstack. https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/10/vmware-completes-saltstack-acquisition-to-bolster-software-configuration-management-and-infrastructure-automation.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vmware-completes-saltstack-acquisition-to-bolster-software-configuration-management-and-infrastructure-automation

I wonder what that means moving forward....

@scottalanmiller

What is it called?

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

essentially every company has some number of workloads like this and once you have one, you can only use agentless when you are willing to not manage everything, just some things. Agent based is essentially the only way to use one tool for all

That's understandable. So what about if you are not managing workstations, and you would only use this to manage server workloads in various data centers? Would your same thinking still apply?

Depends, is every server open to the Internet and/or on a LAN that you have access to? Mine are not, I have a lot of servers that are like databases and are not accessible from the outside whatsoever. Salt works great and they are super secure. I can do loads of port forwarding and whatnot for Ansible and make it work as their IPs don't change, but it's a huge pain.

And what if you use any kind of scaling, combined with that kind of security, now you have to automate port forwarding and firewall rules, combined with the VMs, in real time, or you get management errors with the wrong stuff going to the wrong server.

Agents are just so much better IMHO in the real world. Not that that one factor means everything, but all other things being equal, I always want the agent.

Also, is the new Salt Gui that you are talking about open source?

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

essentially every company has some number of workloads like this and once you have one, you can only use agentless when you are willing to not manage everything, just some things. Agent based is essentially the only way to use one tool for all

That's understandable. So what about if you are not managing workstations, and you would only use this to manage server workloads in various data centers? Would your same thinking still apply?

Depends, is every server open to the Internet and/or on a LAN that you have access to? Mine are not, I have a lot of servers that are like databases and are not accessible from the outside whatsoever. Salt works great and they are super secure. I can do loads of port forwarding and whatnot for Ansible and make it work as their IPs don't change, but it's a huge pain.

And what if you use any kind of scaling, combined with that kind of security, now you have to automate port forwarding and firewall rules, combined with the VMs, in real time, or you get management errors with the wrong stuff going to the wrong server.

Agents are just so much better IMHO in the real world. Not that that one factor means everything, but all other things being equal, I always want the agent.

That's fair. With Salt, on your salt master, do you rely on the keys for authentication, or do you also lock down your firewall to only allow ports 4505:4506 FROM your minion IPs?

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

essentially every company has some number of workloads like this and once you have one, you can only use agentless when you are willing to not manage everything, just some things. Agent based is essentially the only way to use one tool for all

That's understandable. So what about if you are not managing workstations, and you would only use this to manage server workloads in various data centers? Would your same thinking still apply?

@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:

What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?

Depends. Are you LAN-based, then agentless is nice. Pretty much anything else, agents are essentially the only option.

Can you further clarify this statement? Why are agents the only option in a lanless (distributed) environment?

What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?