Best posts made by dave247

We run a SonicWall NSA 3600 where I work and I am staring to look into upgrading to the new 6.5 firmware (6.5.0.2-8n). I have heard of some issues with the last two updates, and wanted to get more input if anyone has any to give..

@scottalanmiller said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@dave247 said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

In my case, I have a Power 720, which is obviously a physical system, but I thought it was also referred to as an "i Series" (previously Series i) but also referred to as AS400.

Power 720 is the server name. Power is the architecture. Series i is the name of the operating system. AS/400 hasn't existed since the 1990s and is the name of the hardware that ran OS/400 that turned into i Series. AS/400 should never be used as name for anything as it is specific hardware that was dead almost twenty years ago. People calling things AS/400 have no idea what the words that they are using mean.

So I'm not really running AS400 at all... I'm running iSeries. I will need to make sure I remember that and try to correct everyone I work with who calls it that... lol

@scottalanmiller said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@dave247 said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@scottalanmiller said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@dave247 said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

I will need to make sure I remember that and try to correct everyone I work with who calls it that... lol

They'll just be confused. If they are calling it that, they are pretty lost and are just repeating things they've heard and have no idea what it really is. Most people don't know the first thing about them and call them that. Avoid those people

mmm yeah well that is the lady who's in charge of the main application for which the iSeries is the back-end of. She does not know anything and calls it AS400 on the reg.

Well... yes, the people who know nothing always call it AS/400

Well it is confusing as shit how IBM has changed names and stuff.. I did have it all explained to me by someone once, how stuff used to be AS400, then iSeries, the Power.. etc... I'm just so unfamilliar that it's easy to get mixed up. i need to draw out a timeline or something.

@scottalanmiller said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@dashrender said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@scottalanmiller said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

@dashrender said in Disaster Recovery as a service companies that support IBM iSeries / AS400 systems?:

The owner not knowing ANYTHING about IT, said - um ok.. and bought it. end of story.

Knowing something about IT is irrelevant. It's knowing anything about BUSINESS that would protect him.

I'm not sure how you know this leap?
assuming he knows nothing - and hires someone to do it, because he knows nothing.... how does he know the hire (be it internal or external) is doing a good job? Who can he hire to audit the first guy/company and know those aren't crappy people too?

There is no leap at all. The leap is thinking that a CEO needs technical knowledge to know what an ethical business practice looks like. You don't have to be a cop to know what a holdup is, you don't have to be an accountant to know what taking bribes is, you don't have to be in IT to know what an unethical business deal is. It's all just basic business.

The CEO's job is to hire someone and make sure that they are doing their job. The issue here isn't doing a bad job, it's not doing the job at all.

Honestly it seems like nobody really knows what they are doing -- and not only that, but everyone seems like everyone who thinks they know something, loves to claim that situations/setups/installations/other things are set up incorrectly/improperly by the previous other people.

I posted this over on the sysadmin subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8e4oli/is_there_really_a_var_kickback_system_that_it/

Not too many people agree with or like the post...

@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:

@dave247 said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:

@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:

Look at the example here, three tiny hosts (I know it's just a theoretical learning example, but it's how people do it) with six CPUs where three would be cheaper and have better performance, and three hosts where two would be cheaper and have better performance.

Look at the cluster size, it's a total of 36 cores. You can do that better and cheaper using two, single socket servers with 18 cores each! If you needed a little extra during a failover, go for two at 20 cores each or whatever.

I'm not that knowledgeable with hardware, including processors and things.. but are you saying that single socket with x number of cores is better/faster than multiple sockets with x number of cores?

All other factors being equal, yes. The same power with fewer cores, fewer sockets, fewer procs is ideal. It's not very often you can get it apples to apples, but you can get pretty close with processors and cores in this range today.

A single 16 core X processor at Y speed is faster than two 8 core X processors at Y speed for nearly all things. This is because it gets all of its memory from a single source and doesn't need to pass as many workloads back and forth between processors. There is overhead to that that you can avoid.

And a single processor of double the cores is generally quite a bit cheaper than two of half as many cores.

ok, this is pretty much what I was assuming.

I just purchased MS Exchange 2016 for my company as we are upgrading from 2010. Up until recently, only Server 2012 R2 was supported for running Exchange 2016 on but now I see 2016 is supported. Despite reading some MS tech articles, guides and requirement docs, I'm still not quite sure how well it works on 2016.. just being a bit cautious I guess.

I just wanted to see if anyone here is running Exchage 2016 on Server 2016 and if you have any issues or anything. I don't mind installing it on 2012 R2 if I have to, but I'd really rather deploy to Server 2016 if I can.

@dbeato said in Anyone running Exchange 2016 on Server 2016?:

@dave247 said in Anyone running Exchange 2016 on Server 2016?:

I just purchased MS Exchange 2016 for my company as we are upgrading from 2010. Up until recently, only Server 2012 R2 was supported for running Exchange 2016 on but now I see 2016 is supported. Despite reading some MS tech articles, guides and requirement docs, I'm still not quite sure how well it works on 2016.. just being a bit cautious I guess.

I just wanted to see if anyone here is running Exchage 2016 on Server 2016 and if you have any issues or anything. I don't mind installing it on 2012 R2 if I have to, but I'd really rather deploy to Server 2016 if I can.

So far no issues here, has been running 3 months now.

Cool, thanks. I also checked with some other folks who I know use it and they say the same.

Not sure if anyone here is using an on-prem instance of Exchange 2016 or not, but I'm seeking some advice on this:

I've gone through and set up Exchange 2016 on Server 2016 in my test lab. I've been carefully reading a few different materials, including Microsoft best practice guides, plus I have a Sybex book on Exchange 2016.

From what I've read, it's been suggested to use separate drives or partitions, one for the OS, one for Exchange install, and one for the mailbox databases and logs (or even another drive for the logs). However, I think this might only apply to physical servers and not virtual storage disks -- but I'm not sure.

I set up my Exchange VM with three virtual hard drives, one for the OS, one for the page file and one for Exchange.

In my production environment and in my test lab, the VM datastores are located on a SAN unit attached via iSCSI. Given that the virtual hard disks are actually located on a storage array and I have no idea how the data is actually distributed across the array, it doesn't seem to me that it would matter much (performance-wise) how I apply drives and folders in a VM. Or does it?

If it doesn't matter, I may as well have a single virtual hard disk and use that for the OS and Exchange and it's mail databases and logs.

@storageninja said in Cisco SmartNet:

@dave247 it’s basically a people management platform. Can have a system do a sales manager can tap calls and recordings and do all kinds of metrics they integrate to the CRM. I’d argue avaya is more powerful, but call manager isn’t something you Casual replace with an open source PBX.

Now call manager express (its little cousin) is a basic PBX with unity for voicemail. If you went call manager instead of express I assume someone had some fancy needs.

We actually had an old Avaya PBX for the last 7 years or longer. It was quite simple and did the job.. CCM is a fucking nightmare with how many menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub menus and such.. not to mention all the servers and sub-server-applications involved. You'd think it was designed for companies with thousands of employess, not under 100. OH WAIT.

I'm planning the build on a new server. I originally intended on putting 8 x "900GB 15K RPM SAS 12Gbps 512e" drives into a RAID 10 config using an H740P adapter, but then I saw that there are quite a few options for SAS SSD. I haven't really learned too much about the differences of putting SSD in RAID and how it compares to HDD in RAID, so I wanted to see if anyone here (Scott) had any input on the matter.

Example: Would it be worth putting, say, 6 x "1.6TB SSD SAS Mix Use 12Gbps 512e" drives into a RAID 10 instead? Is there a better approach with SSD in RAID?

@dustinb3403 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

OBR6 would give you approximately 10TB worth of usable space (with the SSDs you listed) where as OBR10 would give you 6.5TB of usable space.

If I did RAID 6, I would only get 5 drives which would give me about 4.4 TB of storage. We really only need about an additional 2 TB or so but I'm giving us about 1 extra TB for leg room.

@jaredbusch said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@scottalanmiller said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@bradfromxbyte said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

It's not a hardware raid. It bypasses the perc completely and goes from the back plane to the proc directly. Any management is done via OS.

oh, well I want redundancy..

1. What does that have to do with the statement above?
2. No, you don't. no one ever "wants" redudancy. That's not a thing anyone should rationally desire. Redundancy is always a tool to achieve a desire, never a desire itself. You should ask yourself what your goal is. We assume you mean reliability, and are using redundancy accidentally as a proxy to mean reliability. But it is REALLY important not to do this, because vendors prey on that mistake left and right and it is amazing how many systems lose data because of that mistake.

oh, so I don't want redundancy? I just want a single 4TB NVMe drive holding all of my data? Ok then -_-

Don't be a dick..

That's my job.

hahaha ... I love you guys. I just get frustrated with stuff when I can't figure out what I'm looking for!!!!!

delete

Hi friends.

I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later.

This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores.

I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet.

First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing.

Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900.

Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course.

Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server.

@phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

Hi friends.

I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later.

This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores.

I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet.

First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing.

Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900.

Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course.

Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server.

Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following:
First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores:

• SQL Server Standard License
• SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users)

Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase:

• SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x)

In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine.

I did not realize that the license + CAL route allowed unlimited instances and/or cores. And we actually have a few other SQL Server 2008 R2 servers that need to be refreshed soon (a few are virtual and two are physical).

I could check with my Microsoft partner, who is actually also our Dell VAR... so I'm probably in need of finding a separate person who is solely a MS Partner and not a salesman.. unless I mean something other than partner.

A SQL Server License covers installation on a given physical server or guest.

This is a good place to start: http://mla.microsoft.com/

Run through Open with no SA to get a base cost for both options.

First time seeing the MLA. Really glad you gave me that link, thanks!

@scottalanmiller said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

Hi friends.

I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later.

This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores.

I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet.

First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing.

Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900.

Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course.

Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server.

Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following:
First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores:

• SQL Server Standard License
• SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users)

Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase:

• SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x)

In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine.

So if you license + CAL, do you have to cover all users AND computers?

If you license by user you cover users. If you license by device you cover devices.

Well what constitutes as a device? I mean, users use a device to connect to the SQL server... so wouldn't I have to cover both? I don't get it.

That is never how Microsoft CALs have worked.

ok, I finally re-read the overview.. makes sense again. We have a pretty even user/device ratio with slight fluctuations in both over time. I suppose we'd just do user CALs..

If you need to even consider device CALs, you'll know. It's not something 90% of companies even need to think about.

And I bet you have a way different ration than you are imaginging. Every device like a printer requires a device CAL. Anything that uses DHCP... even IoT devices like light bulbs technically. So you count devices by "IPs used on the network" to get a rough starting point. It's crazy. Essentially no one can do it.

Count your users, use User CALs. Done.

Ah, that clears up a lot of my confusion. I appreciate the valuable insight.

@travisdh1 said in Question about server hard drives:

@dave247 said in Question about server hard drives:

@scottalanmiller said in Question about server hard drives:

@dave247 said in Question about server hard drives:

I know they aren't actually "from those servers", but they are listed as choices under those servers....

Right, but presumably you aren't attaching them to your server, but to a RAID card, right?

Right. I did also consider that so I didn't think it would matter since it's not directly connecting to the server, but then I considered that maybe there was some firmware that had to do with the motherboard of the server, and thus would still indirectly be tied to that model (or range of models).

I wouldn't put it past most vendors to pull such stunts. I've never had an issue running any sort of drives in a Dell, including those I really shouldn't have been (REDs and Seagate NAS).

Yeah and now that I think of it, I believe one of these relevant things is that if you use non-Dell drives, the LED wont blink on predicted failure, or something along those lines.

Answered my own question from their "Why Refurb" section:

When a Dell customer places an order, the company sends the order to an assembly line to be built, packaged and shipped. Technicians pick the necessary parts and send them to the assembly line, along with parts for the hundreds of other orders being fulfilled that day. If a customer changes or cancels their order, rather than bring the line to a stop, Dell finishes the build and sells the equipment at a discount. When this process happens, the machine is labeled refurbished.

This means that many of the refurbished machines sold by xByte Technologies are not just refurbished, they’ve never been in production. Often times with a refurbished server, you receive the benefit of never used equipment at a significant cost savings by taking advantage of the realities of made to order manufacturing.

@hobbit666 said in Why Are UTMs Not Recommended Generally:

I understand the no need for UTM to block stuff as most routers will do it. But what about things like content filtering? How do you block unwanted websites being accesed?

Yeah that's something I was wondering too but it really comes down to just another service either through a separate appliance on the edge of the network or role enabled somewhere else such on as end-point AV. We use Trend WFBSS where I work and we can do DNS white-listing through that, but it is ideal to have it at the firewall in the event that some device isn't running the Trend AV agent. So yeah, I would have it on the edge, preferably.