Best posts made by Donahue

I have a simple question. If I am creating a new raid 10 array using enterprise SSD's, Do I still need the battery backup on the raid card? Does it change if I use an SSD that has the capacitors for power loss prevention?

I would argue that most people see the monitor as "the computer", at least the end users themselves. If the computer boots into something like windows, that is a PC regardless of it's physical form. People that do not understand what VDI actually is will assume that whatever physical box is plugged in is "the PC", they are just black boxes to them. How would they know the difference between a thick client box that boot into local windows 10, and a black box that boots straight into a windows 10 VDI? All the user can see is the physical appearance, and PC's come in all manner of physical appearances these days, thick and thin.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Donahue said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

yuck

It was quick to prepare.

so? were you out of time?

Just needed some coffee.

And I hate to waste it.

that is just sunk cost mentality.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I currently have a file server which is a 2012R2 VM sharing roughly 6TB of data. I am looking into replacing this with something more modern, so far I am checking out Nextcloud.

But having read most of the threads on ML dealing with nextcloud, and especially reading about experiences such as @guyinpv had here and here, I think we need to take a hard look at how we share files now, and why we do it the way we do it, and maybe find other methods and philosophies that we could implement for a better overall experience.

In a lot of ways, I can relate to @guyinpv, as his setup sounds a lot like mine. We currently have our VM, with a single share that is applied as a mapped drive using GPO. Inside this share is a number of root level folders, basically one for each department. Inside each of these are the typical level of nested subfolders and files. All of the first couple levels of folders from the share root were created by me, and users are locked out of being able to make changes until they are a few layers deep into their department.

Based on my research and conversations I have had, I think we have a very narrow idea of what a file share should be like, because all we know is how windows operates. As far as we treat the system, there is no one that "owns" any of the files, even though windows records an owner. No one has any sort of personal or private files that they "share" with other users. The files exist in the share that we created, and both users likely have equal permissions to said file.

I would like to expand my horizons, because I don't feel like I fully understand how other companies might use something like NC. If we are to take full advantage of what NC offers, it may require a fundamental shift in thinking by us and I want to get started on that now.

How do other people use NC? Specifically, how are folder structures or other structures, and how does that relate to user accounts? What does the anatomy of a cloud based solution look like when done well? I think I would like to use the sync client in windows, but I have only just started to play around with an online demo.

@Donahue said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Donahue said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I tried to talk someone out of the IPOD on

But they still bought it, right?

They had everything bought before they even started the thread. They don't know how they were going to setup the networking portion yet, but they still already bought the hardware, because you know, its magically redundant.

I've made the mistake of jumping the gun and buying hardware before I knew how I was going to use it all, and ended up having to try and make lemonade out of lemons, so I cant really cast the first stone.

I thought of a good analogy on the way into work this morning, about the difference between redundant compute nodes and redundant storage. In the classic IPOD scheme, the compute nodes are like cars and the the SAN is like the driver. All the value is in the driver and the car is just a means to an end. You can crash a car and replace it rather easily. In a pinch, just about any car would do. But if driver dies, there is no point to the car, so the driver is obviously the most important part of the equation. Obviously the analogy breaks down because you can't have redundant persons IRL, but you get the point.

I currently use teamviewer, but version 9 which is a bit outdated. I use this every day to support my users, especially the ones at our second facility. I have considered just updating to the latest version of teamviewer, but I wanted to know what you guys are using for similar tasks. I need to be able to log into computers and take control of the keyboard and mouse without the user's permission, or more specifically, I don't want the users to have to grant me permissions to remote in or take control. So far I remote into windows boxes only, but we may start to branch out into linux at some point. I also need to be able to connect from iOS or Android (having the ability to remote into iOS or Android would be a big plus). The last part that I want is to have a nice convenient list of computers with pre configured connections so that I can just click on that computer and jump right in.

I just got my new host from xByte.

@scottalanmiller, I read the first 10 posts or so like it was your ships log after you shipwrecked on a deserted island, and you were preserving the record for whoever found your body.

Just watching some nice youtube video's

I can give this answer from an SMB perspective. I feel like I am probably really close to the majority of SMB that try and deploy AD, specifically "because we already have it". In my implementation, we had two locations and two hosts initially, so it seemed a no brainer to use to DC's. However, I would guess that a lot of people that are setting up AD don't really know what AD even actually does. I have confused other things built into windows or NTFS with being AD simply because I manage the from my DC. I am talking about things like group policy, security groups, file permissions, etc. I would bet that the majority of SMB that deploy AD do so because they want to leverage these things and because owning windows servers gives them access to AD which is included.

With all that said, I know that AD's simplicity can be deceiving and there is a high chance that just because you have two DC, it doesn't mean that you have them configured correctly, I know that I don't.

How often does the real SMB actually have people that already know AD and what it actually does, and know that there are any other options in a windows ecosystem? I didn't even know I had a choice until recently.

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@donahue said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@scottalanmiller but you will have to factor in things like speed and distance. gravity and speed to weird things with time.

You just link to earth time as closely as can be calculated and keep them in sync. Only realistic option.

ISNTP -> Interstellar Network Time Protocol?

I am trying to figure out if my setup is less than ideal security wise. I am gathering information to make a case that our ERP must evolve, or we must move on.

I am specifically looking at security from the point of view of a rogue device that is already on my LAN. My ERP application, being a legacy 2 tier design, has a direct connection from every client straight to the SQL database, going over the LAN. All the clients connect using the SA account, and all security and permissions are handled inside the application. What I am wanting to know is if the traffic being sent to and from the database is able to be sniffed and if this vulnerability would go away if we had a more modern ERP. What are the chances that this is all being sent in the clear, over the wire?

I am not well versed in wireshark, so I am not sure how to measure this directly yet. Is this a known thing that DBA's talk about and discuss, or am I making bad assumptions?

TLDR

well hell. I fired up wireshark and I can see the full queries, returns, and everything else in plain text. I cannot seem to find the user name or password, but everything else is there.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Mostly they are used as scanners, not printers. When used as printers, it's normally to make pages for the kids to colour.

sometimes I make large coloring pages for the kids on our 36" wide plotters. They love those!

having no personal experience with full VDI, but understanding the basic principles of it, my question is this. Why does the user need to care if the computation is happening locally or remotely? The average PC user in my experience interacts almost exclusively with the keyboard, mouse, and monitor(s). I see the advantages in VDI, but I don't think it would be common for non-tech users to appreciate the reasons why they are assigned a thin client vs a thick. To me, VDI seems like a decision based on business or IT goals, and the experience, if done right, should be transparent to the user anyways.

I think most of us agree that the OP's requirements seem to eliminate virtually all options, based on the way we interpret the definition of the terms. I would go further and ask where this requirement was coming from? This sounds like the client's management throwing a blanket statement out there because there is a fundamental lack of understanding about modern computing and how intermingled everything is today. The lines between thick and thin, PC and magic box can be very fuzzy.

I have a similar situation at work where my management has historically had a flawed understanding of what "the cloud" is, to the point where it has been a forbidden word in some conversations. Explaining to them that we basically already have a private cloud does not seem to matter to them because they don't want to take the time or effort to understand the technology and realize all the ways that it can benefit us. This type of mentality makes it easy to push through bad requirements that either push inappropriate solutions, or reject appropriate solutions, because of buzzwords or something their buddy's uncle told them.

@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

https://i.imgur.com/subbON6l.png

How come I can't upvote this more than once?

I agree, and that is a good argument. @scottalanmiller convinced me of a similar idea when we discussed my project before I settled on buying a single new host. Here is something to add. If you have two bridges, it's probably likely that you could make the first bridge more reliable for less than the cost of the second bridge. So one strong bridge may be better than two average bridges. It is probably also a good idea to plan ahead and factor in the cost of a a ferry service that could be used in an emergency while the primary bridge was being repaired or replaced. So far this analogy works and has real work equivalents. This is also the reason I decided against HA, as putting my resources into a great backup solution will get me ahead in the long run.

I would never consider dual boot again, thats a relic of the past. It's much simpler to just use virtualization, and allow both OS's to be on at the same time.

I just bought a "new" car. It's an 08 with 160k miles. I tend to buy cars when they are around 10 years old and then just pay cash.