@rojoloco said in What does your desk look like?:

@dafyre same here. Mine looks like random storage unit contents exploded all over it.

Only interesting things on it are:

• at least 6 spinning rust HDDs
• 2 of the same guitar pedal, both in boxes (IT isn't the only place where spares are a good plan)
• 2 GoPros
• 2 unopened Amazon packages

Mine is mostly trash and things that I need to take some time to clean up and put away, but I keep getting sidetracked by work and just have to carry things to the trahs every time I get up.

I have a 5 port 100 meg switch, and old ipad, a small laptop that isn't used, a regular sized laptop that is used (runs MX Linux at the moment) and a resting board for my keyboard & mouse.

Like I said... disaster area.

@stacksofplates said in What does your desk look like?:

Such a neat looking desk. I'm too ashamed of the disaster area of mine to actually post anything.

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Who left the door unlocked for Monday to sneak in again... ugh.. Not directly ready to be here - and yet - here I am.

Ah well - At least the sun is out (currently)...

AAHHHHh Bright Yellow Face, it burns us!

Damn it,.. I told my son to delete that photo he took of me... I'll get him for that..

Oh, it's too late for that. It's on the internet now. We all know what you look like.

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Who left the door unlocked for Monday to sneak in again... ugh.. Not directly ready to be here - and yet - here I am.

Ah well - At least the sun is out (currently)...

AAHHHHh Bright Yellow Face, it burns us!

@pete-s said in VDI Options - Modernization:

That's what I mean about overconsolidation. Just because it's technically possible to put everything into one box, doesn't mean you always should.

This is a valid point. Our current infrastructure is migrating to more "smaller" servers, rather than a few beefier ones. (We're going from 2U ESXi hosts to 1U hosts with more CPU and RAM). Our Storage Systems are largely staying the same, unless we need to add more to it.

It gives us the ability to shuffle things around more for host maintenance / hardware replacement, etc.

@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@scottalanmiller

I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.

I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.

If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)

Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.

Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind

More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.

I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.

Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.

As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.

Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.

You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.

Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!

You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!

You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.

You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.

So, are you even considering basing things on Scale or Starwind as your underlying solution, or are we just ignoring half of what I say?

If you're serious about checking out other platforms, I can vouch for Scale. I had them at my last job, and they now have two x 3 node clusters and the guys there are extremely happy with it.

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Tomorrow seemed quite far away in September (proposal date). Wedding ceremony is 24 hours and 30 minutes away

Congratulations!

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Tomorrow seemed quite far away in September (proposal date). Wedding ceremony is 24 hours and 30 minutes away

*your phone rings

Boss: You're going to be at work tomorrow, right?

Has VMware + VMware Horizon View been considered?

If what you have is working well and you can't find any decent competitors, why not consider just staying with your current setup and making sure you are on the latest VMware and Citrix versions?

@stuartjordan said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@wrcombs Need a powerful witch doctor to get rid of the spam lol

I recommend this guy:

@dashrender said in Free Hosted Help Desk?:

I gave up on Freshdesk - just didn't like it.

I am currently using Spiceworks hosted version.

Edit: As long as it works for what you need, I call it a win!

@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scotth said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scotth I started off on this crazy journey as an electronics tech, spent everyday using a cro of some description.

i can remember one time, i really wanted to work in the r&d area of this company where I worked, they were looking for a junior tech/engineer & I really wanted the position.

I got the spot and I still remember day 1. They sat a huge Techtronix cro on my bench, this thing had more buttons and knobs that anything. I reckon it took me 10 minutes to find the on/off switch.

It is so 'Star Trek'. I can imagine how intimidating it would have been. The more switches and buttons, the better.

I was extremely fortunate in my young life to be hired as a corporate flight attendant. I was cabin crew on an executive airliner -- BAC 1-11 401AK.

I was permitted to help with maintenance, preflight, attend training. The boys would teach me how the systems worked on the airplane. And yes, I have sat in the right seat during flight.

I quit college and landed this job through sheer luck. Although college would have benefitted me orders of magnitude more than this job.

I can honestly say that I don't regret the opportunity. I was 19 and would sit in the jump seat during any/all operations of flight. I lost that job when I was 27. An entirely other lifetime ago. Dare I say that I'm 62 now?

Major geek moments!

Awesome stories! But... Maybe I should get off your lawn now?

Hahahahaha. No stay there, I'll bring the mower over & you can be useful.

As long as it's one of them new fandangled ones with the batteries. Me and the mechanic ones just don't get along. (Read: I get tired of yanking the chain to get it to start).

@scotth said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scotth I started off on this crazy journey as an electronics tech, spent everyday using a cro of some description.

i can remember one time, i really wanted to work in the r&d area of this company where I worked, they were looking for a junior tech/engineer & I really wanted the position.

I got the spot and I still remember day 1. They sat a huge Techtronix cro on my bench, this thing had more buttons and knobs that anything. I reckon it took me 10 minutes to find the on/off switch.

It is so 'Star Trek'. I can imagine how intimidating it would have been. The more switches and buttons, the better.

I was extremely fortunate in my young life to be hired as a corporate flight attendant. I was cabin crew on an executive airliner -- BAC 1-11 401AK.

I was permitted to help with maintenance, preflight, attend training. The boys would teach me how the systems worked on the airplane. And yes, I have sat in the right seat during flight.

I quit college and landed this job through sheer luck. Although college would have benefitted me orders of magnitude more than this job.

I can honestly say that I don't regret the opportunity. I was 19 and would sit in the jump seat during any/all operations of flight. I lost that job when I was 27. An entirely other lifetime ago. Dare I say that I'm 62 now?

Major geek moments!

Awesome stories! But... Maybe I should get off your lawn now?

@dashrender said in Microsoft Universal Print - worth it?:

I went looking for a solution like this for a client of mine. I started out pretty happy about this - cool, I'll be able to deploy printers via Intune - this client has zero legacy Windows infrastructure.

Then I saw the printing. The base license only includes 5 prints per person per month- WHAT? What good is that?

You can purchase add-on print packs in 500 ($25 or $0.05/print) or 10,000 ($300 or $0.03/print) lots.

We do around 30K pages a month - but I don't know how many print jobs that is. It's probably no more than 15K jobs (most prints I see around here are 2+ pages). For me that would 1 x 10K ($300) + 6 x 500 ($25) = $450/m on top of our current printing expense...

So the question is - is it worth it?

I think - No.

I agree. Seems like what that cost is more for a pay for convenience sake.