EDIT: I am an idiot. Firewall rules.

I was a complete idiot and incorrectly typed "172.0.0.1" instead of "127.0.0.1" which would explain all my errors over the weekend.

smacks head

I finally found this https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2008-R2-and-2008/ff807362(v=ws.10) which pretty much answers it.

I'm just trying to figure out the "right way" to do this. I have looked this up before but now that I'm upgrading my DC's from 2008 R2 to 2019, I figured I would double check. I see a lot of people adamantly saying that the DC should look to another DC first, then to itself/the loopback, but then I see others adamantly claiming the exact opposite.

Here is how I have set mine up in the past and how I am currently setting the new DC's up:

IP Addresses:
DC1: 192.168.0.10
DC2: 192.168.0.11

TCP/IP DNS Settings:
DC1:
192.168.0.11
127.0.0.1
DC2:
192.168.0.10
127.0.0.1

Or should we be using the DC's own IP address instead of the loopback address?

@Obsolesce said in Foreign B1 Visa employee scam?:

@dave247 said in Foreign B1 Visa employee scam?:

@scottalanmiller said in Foreign B1 Visa employee scam?:

Yup. Its decently well known. Happens in the US too.

What's the scam called so I can learn more?

You going to start selling interview services to people to help them get hired?

Yes yes that's the ticket

@scottalanmiller said in Foreign B1 Visa employee scam?:

Yup. Its decently well known. Happens in the US too.

What's the scam called so I can learn more?

I was recently talking to another IT guy at a kid's birthday party and he was telling me something weird/interesting about some stuff that's apparently going on with foreign workers coming to the US on B1 Visas. The guy works in IT for a retail chain and he said he interviews candidates over Skype who are over in places like India. He said a lot of times while he is interviewing them, the video is intentionally low quality and a lot of people on screen move their mouths but someone else is talking behind the camera to answer IT questions or whatever. Then, if/when they are hired and they make it over to the US to start the job, it ends up being someone completely different than in the video interview. He also said a lot of times they end up not having the skills/knowledge they claimed to have. I only got to talk to him for a few minutes so I didn't get any more details than this.

Has anyone else heard of this?

@DustinB3403 said in Does anyone here work in the banking industry? I'm looking for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance software:

@dave247 I wasn't attacking you or thinking you were being sarcastic. Just providing some more context.

At an old job I worked at we had a software called JobBOSS, and while the OOB worked for a large portion of businesses we spent over $130K customizing it for the way our business needed to operate.

That didn't include all of my time, creating reports that were required for the day to day operations.

No worries. I didn't mean to come off defensive either. Thanks for the input!

@DustinB3403 said in Does anyone here work in the banking industry? I'm looking for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance software:

@dave247 said in Does anyone here work in the banking industry? I'm looking for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance software:

I also asked on reddit and got this amazing response:

"Someone in your position isn't to be looking for software for that purpose. It's not a job for discrete software, for one thing.

Also, "industry vertical" software is niche, low-volume, and typically poor quality. When buying off the shelf, you're rather likely to have as many problems with a new package as you did with the old one, unless you're extremely thorough in your evaluation."

I know they are correct so I may just forget about it..

That response isn't unrealistic. You're looking for software, that very few companies in the world are producing. So finding something that is "off the shelf acceptable" is going to be damn near impossible.

Whereas building your own (or more realistically paying someone to build it exactly how you want it) would be better, but still really expensive, like 3-6 times as much as purchasing something that exists today, but sucks because of <reasons>.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I agreed with that person 100%. Though on the other hand, it looks like there are several options out there (ours is on this list): https://www.capterra.com/aml-software/

I also asked on reddit and got this amazing response:

"Someone in your position isn't to be looking for software for that purpose. It's not a job for discrete software, for one thing.

Also, "industry vertical" software is niche, low-volume, and typically poor quality. When buying off the shelf, you're rather likely to have as many problems with a new package as you did with the old one, unless you're extremely thorough in your evaluation."

I know they are correct so I may just forget about it..

@DustinB3403 said in Does anyone here work in the banking industry? I'm looking for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance software:

@dave247 said in Does anyone here work in the banking industry? I'm looking for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance software:

I wanted to see if anyone else here works in banking and if you have any input on BSA/AML solutions. I'm looking to explore other options as our current software is poorly maintained and quite expensive extremely profitable for the asshats who make/sell it.

FTFY.

Yes yes, that goes without saying. I freaking hate that aspect of all this...

I wanted to see if anyone else here works in banking and if you have any input on BSA/AML solutions. I'm looking to explore other options as our current software is poorly maintained and quite expensive.

@scottalanmiller said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

@dave247 if you want to play at home, you can do Starwind vSAN, Gluster, and DRBD all pretty easily for free just to see how they physically work. Can be a fun experiment.

How/where?

@scottalanmiller said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

@dave247 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

ok so lets say I didn't have a SAN and I didn't want to use vSAN or whatever.

There are basically four possible choices. This isn't about what is good or bad, just what is theoretically possible....

1. Local storage (storage that connects without going over the network.)
2. SAN (storage that connects over the network).

Then of each of those, they can be replicated or not replicated.

So you end up with...

1. Plain SAN
2. Replicated SAN
3. Plain Local Storage
4. Replicated Local Storage

ok thanks for clearing that up.

@scottalanmiller said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

@dave247 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

ok so lets say I didn't have a SAN and I didn't want to use vSAN or whatever. Is there another good method, such as maybe having two physical Windows servers basically serving up mirrored storage via iSCSI or FCoE?

So now that we know you meant VMware's vSAN product...

The big alternative (and assumed starting point for most of the SMB) is Starwind vSAN. It's available for free and in paid versions with support.

Well it's not even that I "meant VMware's vSAN product". I just assumed that's what we were talking about when "VSAN was mentioned", which clearly it is not.

@scottalanmiller said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

@dave247 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

ok so lets say I didn't have a SAN and I didn't want to use vSAN or whatever. Is there another good method, such as maybe having two physical Windows servers basically serving up mirrored storage via iSCSI or FCoE?

You literally just described vSAN. Two servers mirrored up over either iSCSI or FCoE is vSAN. That's what makes it vSAN.

ooh ok I was thinking VSAN was a product own by VMware, and not just a technical concept of VSAN

Judas Freaking Priest.

@DustinB3403 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

An IPOD means you have 2 or more hypervisors with 1-2 switches with a SAN providing storage to your hypervisors.

yes I fully get the IPOD thing. I used to be a SpiceSquirts user and endured the many tedious posts of SAM.

ok so lets say I didn't have a SAN and I didn't want to use vSAN or whatever. Is there another good method, such as maybe having two physical Windows servers basically serving up mirrored storage via iSCSI or FCoE?

@DustinB3403 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

@dave247 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

What was IPOD again?

Inverted Pyramid of Doom

ooooh yes ok. FFS.

@scottalanmiller said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

@dave247 said in I don't really get the point of SAN snapshots:

I get what you mean now about a single storage controller unit not being redundant. And in our case, ours is not as we only have the one. You probably know this by now about my setup, that we have the "inverted pyramid of doom" going on.

Essentially anyone with a SAN has one. Not exactly guaranteed, but almost. It's the key reason SANs are deployed.

Many enterprises knowingly run IPODs because at huge scale, they can be cheap. And while IPODs cannot be as fast or as reliable as alternatives, enterprises also know that performance and reliability are not the end all, be all and that "cheaper" and "fast enough" and "safe enough" can be the right choice.

SMBs tend to copy this, but forget that enterprises make the decision based on scale, and assuming that there must be value, just project that the idea must be fast and reliable. So with the lack of scale, they end up spending a fortune to make their system not work as well. So there are good reasons that it all exists, but they don't apply well to the SMB market.

What was IPOD again? I remember you mentioning that in the video but I thought you were making some analogy to Apple iPods, but now I'm wondering if that's not the case. I did listen to most of the video but it was a very distracting morning with lots of interruptions.