Posts made by dave247

@travisdh1 said in offline, air-gapped backups / backup rotation (looking for hardware & ideas):

@dave247 said in offline, air-gapped backups / backup rotation (looking for hardware & ideas):

In its simplest form, I am looking to add offline/rotated backups to our 3-2-1 backup chain. I just want an offline copy as a final failsafe.

My thought is to get a server or NAS appliance with 2 x 15TB+ drives in a RAID1 which would act as a backup repository for ALL backups, and then have a 3rd drive with which to rotate out with one of the RAID1 pairs. Basically we'd pull out 1 drive and insert the free one and let the mirror complete and then swap it out again the next day, back and forth. This way, there would always be an air-gapped drive with a full copy of all our backups.

The only issues are mirror write-time for ~10TB and actually making sure the mirroring is automatic.

My company used to have a BNAS appliance from Highly Reliable which did just this, and it seemed to do an ok job, except mirror times were pretty long. This was 5+ years ago though.

Any ideas? I'm just trying to get the ideas flowing. I'm sure I could probably do a custom server build for something like this if I have to.

Whatever you do, mucking with the RAID is not what you want to be doing. That is something that would guarantee data loss due to someone entering a setting wrong.

I wouldn't call it mucking with RAID. Its just drive rotations.

@scottalanmiller said in offline, air-gapped backups / backup rotation (looking for hardware & ideas):

If you want a hard drive as your air gapped backup, you need something that can be plugged and unplugged thousands of times before failing. Otherwise, consider tape which is meant specifically for this purpose.

I would even think an SSD setup would be more stable in this situation since write time and life time would be a lot better. I only mention spindle drives since its a big blob of data.

@scottalanmiller said in offline, air-gapped backups / backup rotation (looking for hardware & ideas):

If you want a hard drive as your air gapped backup, you need something that can be plugged and unplugged thousands of times before failing. Otherwise, consider tape which is meant specifically for this purpose.

It wouldn't really need to be thousands of times... its not something so crucial. I'd probably order a couple extra drives to have on hand and replace them as needed or every couple of months or once per year. Theoretically the drives would only be removed M-F, so 310 times per year.

Its more of a low-ish priority type thing where as long as we have some form of recently taken offline backups just in case we have a total ransomware incident, then we're good. I already have multiple backups and replications spread out locally and with a cloud connect storage provider.

@scottalanmiller said in offline, air-gapped backups / backup rotation (looking for hardware & ideas):

@dave247 said in offline, air-gapped backups / backup rotation (looking for hardware & ideas):

Basically we'd pull out 1 drive and insert the free one and let the mirror complete and then swap it out again the next day, back and forth.

This is one of those "being weird" situations that comes up a lot. Breaking RAID to try to do a disk copy is a very bad idea. The software isn't built for this, the hardware isn't build for this. It's something everyone has thought of, and no one that has tried it is happy with the results.

RAID is never meant to be intentionally broken as part of the production process. If you want a full copy, make a copy using copy tools and hardware meant to be plugged and unplugged regularly. Hot swap bays are designed to have drives replaced a handful of times in a lifetime.

Yeah that's kind of the general feeling I get. I hear a lot about having "air-gapped" backups now and I've just been trying to think how that would work without using tape.

In its simplest form, I am looking to add offline/rotated backups to our 3-2-1 backup chain. I just want an offline copy as a final failsafe.

My thought is to get a server or NAS appliance with 2 x 15TB+ drives in a RAID1 which would act as a backup repository for ALL backups, and then have a 3rd drive with which to rotate out with one of the RAID1 pairs. Basically we'd pull out 1 drive and insert the free one and let the mirror complete and then swap it out again the next day, back and forth. This way, there would always be an air-gapped drive with a full copy of all our backups.

The only issues are mirror write-time for ~10TB and actually making sure the mirroring is automatic.

My company used to have a BNAS appliance from Highly Reliable which did just this, and it seemed to do an ok job, except mirror times were pretty long. This was 5+ years ago though.

Any ideas? I'm just trying to get the ideas flowing. I'm sure I could probably do a custom server build for something like this if I have to.

@Mr-Jones said in Exchange 2016 Environment DNS entries help:

So either a firewall issue or your isp may be blocking port 25. Is this business internet with a static ip?

Yes. Time to look at the Firewall.

and check your NAT settings ^^

@scottalanmiller said in Trouble with open files/folders on Windows file server?:

This kind of thing is something where stuff like Nextcloud shines, because it has a check in/check out and workflow process. Sharepoint, too.

Yeah actually we recently went to M365 and have Teams and SharePoint. We haven't grown into using everything yet but I suspect there is a better way to do this with those tools.

There are no other network issues and this problem just seems to occur every so often. Sometimes its multiple times a day for a few days, then its all good for a week. I just wanted to know if there is some good solution I'm not aware of.

I'm running into an issue with user's not being able to move documents and/or folders because they are still open by someone, somewhere.

Basically, users have built a process where they have a network mapped drive that contain a bunch of folders and sub-folders that contain various documents (Word, Excel, PDF, etc). Multiple users access those folders and files as different employees have different parts to do in the process. Then, when everything is done and ready, someone will move files and/or entire folders from one place to another as part of this workflow.

The problem here is that many times users cannot move the files or folders sometimes because they get the message that someone has them still in use. Then, I get a call back in IT to request I see who has the file open and/or if I can close those files.

I have to go into Windows Computer Management > Shared Folders > Open Files and then manually search for the folder path and file and then see who has it open. Many times the user reports that they in fact do not have the file open and then I have to manually close the session.

My question is: is there a reason that the file/folder would still be open by the user or computer (perhaps and unrelease file handle in memory) even though they've closed out, or what? What is the cause of this if the user doesn't actually have it open? Are there any tools or settings I can change on the file server, the user workstation or the Microsoft Office apps to fix this?

Never mind - found out that it was one of the October Windows updates that knocked out Bit Locker to go on USB flash drives...

I just recently found out about BitLocker To Go and encrypting USB drives, so I tried it out on a spare 16GB ADATA drive and it worked well. I just had to start up the BitLocker Drive Encryption service in Windows and then right click and enable it on the drive and set password, etc.

Next, I grabbed a couple brand-new Kingston DataTraveler 100 G3 (32GB) drives and attempted to encrypt those - but to my surprise, it didn't seem to be an option. The Windows 10 BitLocker menu didn't show the USB drive as an option and I didn't have the BitLocker option when right-clicking the USB drive. Strange I thought. So I grabbed a couple more random drives I had laying around and it didn't seem like anything would work with BitLocker.

Finally, I grabbed 2 more additional 16GB ADATA drives and tried those and only one of them showed up in BitLocker and would encrypt.

So now I'm just trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Are there only certain drives that will work with BL? Does the drive need to be normal formatted (not quick format) or anything else? BTW I did try that but it didn't seem to make a difference.

I've tried on 3 different computers running Windows 10 Pro (at work and at home), all connected directly to USB 3 ports on the PC. Doesn't seem to matter.

Any thoughts???

Scratch all this. I just had to reach out to my SP/reseller and have them open a ticket with MS, who got back to them right away with a download link and license key.

@Dashrender said in Can't find where to download System Configuration Manager as an M365 admin:

@dave247 said in Can't find where to download System Configuration Manager as an M365 admin:

e MSVLC but in this case, we purchased M365 through a MSP/reseller and the software does not show up in the portal. That said,

ug, more problems because you bought through a third party...

Who was I supposed to buy it from?

My company recently purchased M365 E3 which includes MECM/SCCM and I am looking to download the System Configuration Manager and relevant licensing so I can setup a primary site server and start using it. Normally I would check the MSVLC but in this case, we purchased M365 through a MSP/reseller and the software does not show up in the portal. That said, our accounts are still tied to the MSVLC but Microsoft support hasn't been much help so far.

I did find this page that says I am supposed to open a case with Microsoft support and reference the internal article ID 4033838. This, btw, seems completely weird.

EDIT: Scratch all this. I just had to reach out to my SP/reseller and have them open a ticket with MS, who got back to them right away with a download link and license key.

@brandon220 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:

The only one I've ever had dealings with starts with an F. I have listened to a few of the others give their "sales pitch" but when you are so heavily involved and invested with the same core for so many years, there is a "fear" among the C-levels that prevent them from wanting to change. Some of the ones we listened to even offered to buy out the current contract, etc. just to be awarded the contract.

My biggest gripe with the above mentioned is the lack of keeping software current and not using legacy programs and software. In 2020, we still are forced to use IE11 for most of the web-based items. If you question it, you are asked to submit a feature request to update a platform.

Yeah a lot of our services require IE11 and they wont even work with modern browsers. Much of the applications we have been using are terrible, slow, clunky and end of life with minimal support from our core vendor.

@scottalanmiller said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:

@dave247 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:

So has anyone here ever worked at or done business with a community bank that actually has consistently good things to say about their core financial vendor? I'm kinda sorta just looking for other companies to suggest we look into at some point..

Nope. And we tend to find the same thing in the small cross section of banks that we talk to - they all know that their vendors are crap but none are willing to really work hard to find an alternative, none will take the vendors to task, and none are willing to invest in or group together to invest in something better.

All the same reasons that nearly any market ends up with bad software - universally the customers just don't take their businesses seriously enough and so their vendors don't either.

@Dashrender said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:

@dave247 said in Anyone here know of core banking vendors that are actually good for small community banks?:

I was just reading this article which hits home a little bit.

Paywall, can't read.

So my own two cents - I'm not surprised by your experience at all. There's nothing stopping them from providing great customer service, but as you mention, you're a small fish, and if they have other options, they don't need to care about you and your needs, and sense it's pretty clear no one else does either, it's not like you can leave them.

Well we can leave them, and we will in the next couple of years. The issue is that we 99% will end up with another vendor that's equally bad unless we can figure out how to sort through the bad ones.

Not sure if this should be in IT Discussion or IT Business....

I work at a small community bank and have talked to several others in a similar positions as me. One common thing I've noticed is that we all have consistently poor experiences with our core banking vendors, weather its Fiserv, FIS, Finastra, Jack Henry, etc.

What it comes down to is that these are big financial corporations that I feel absorb or consume small community banks and sell them expensive contracts and provide pretty poor levels of product support while continually moving away from the products they sell you. They nickle and dime you for everything and don't seem to really care about providing good long term support. Yes there are occasionally individual employees or technicians that are good people and great at their job, but most the support I talk to do not seem to know whats going on and have to reach out to other people and departments for everything. In our case, it feels like our vendor is too big and spread out/fragmented to really be agile enough to effectively meet our needs as a small community bank. We are just a tiny fish to them. So yeah, the overall experience is that they are just using us as one more "vacuum tube" to suck up money from a small community while doing the bare minimum to hold up their end of the contract.

I was just reading this article which hits home a little bit.

So has anyone here ever worked at or done business with a community bank that actually has consistently good things to say about their core financial vendor? I'm kinda sorta just looking for other companies to suggest we look into at some point..

What kind of license do you have? I just upgraded my environment from 6.5 to 6.7 but I used the custom ESXi images provided by Dell. You will want to do that for your brand of server. Make sure you start by upgrading vCenter to 6.7 first - if you have that.

@Dashrender said in Which Nas OS?:

I could have sworn that @scottalanmiller has been against at least FreeNAS - just use a Linux OS and manage the shares. What value does FreeNAS/ReadyNAS, etc add on top of Fedora/Ubuntu/CentOS, etc?

I haven't actually used FreeNAS yet but from what I can tell it has a nice GUI aimed at using the system as a NAS, similar to something like Synology with its DiskStation Manager. I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy way to do what you want to do - unless you're really good with Linux.