Posts made by frodooftheshire

Hi everyone,

I have a non profit client that asked me yesterday about sending/receiving sensitive information (SS numbers for example).

Currently when they're looking for volunteers data is sent from the volunteer's email address to an employees account (in charge of finding volunteers & using Google Workplace account) and then to the director's email address (Again Google Workplace account).

They were looking to implement DocuSign to more securely handle this process but I wanted to see if anyone else had any other recommendations.

Hi guys,

A client informs me he's having printing issues with his HP M477fnw printer. He tells me that certain PDF files wont print. We schedule an appointment and I find out the issue is not with his PC, but instead his phone.

He commonly prints vendor PDF invoices from the Apple Mail App to the HP printer and all of a sudden he says that invoices from this one vendor just wont print. So we start troubleshooting. First I look at the size of the PDFs that wont print - nothing weird here - 148 KB. Next thing I did was update the firmware on the printer.

I then have him attempt to print one of the troublesome PDFs - no go. I then had him download the Gmail App onto his phone just in case it was something weird going on with the native Mail App. No dice - same issue - most PDFs print, but not from this particular vendor.

I then had him send one of the PDFs to me. I have a Samsung laser in my office and it prints the troublesome PDF just fine. Having said that, I notice that the margins on this PDF are slim to none. I then hypothesize that maybe the vendor recently updated the layout for the PDF and the HP printer doesn't like it.

Then he tells me that his identical printer located at his home has no problem printing off the troublesome PDFs. Also, not that it totally matters but his PC is able to print the troublesome PDF file just fine.

At this point I'm totally befuddled. The only other detail is that this customer uses third party toner cartridges and he received some sort of corrupt memory error shortly before the problem started.

This is a really strange one for me. I'm trying to make sense of it. Can anybody shine some light on what could possibly be going on here?

Yeah he's using local word. You're correct - online word does exactly this. Considering having him start documents there....

Hi guys,

Is there a way with OneDrive/Word that once you create a word document it automatically saves to OneDrive with a name of "document1" so that the "auto save" feature is turned on and already working? A great example is how Google Docs works - I create
a new "untitled" document and before I "save" or give it an official name it's already saving changes to the cloud in real time.

I have a customer that starts work on multiple world files without remembering to save. He has a tendency to then lose said documents when his computer does windows updates/crashes/etc. I've convinced him that he can't trust the Auto Recovery system. I thought there was a way with One Drive that the file gets created by default in OneDrive so it's automatically saving as you go, even if it's saving as "document1," but I can't seem to make this work. One option is to right click in the OneDrive folder, select new word document, not rename (use default which is "New Microsoft Word Document") and then open it...but that's kind of a weird work flow.

NVM...I'm looking more into it and it seems that it has dedicated ports for Data/management. It seems I should be able to plug Comcast gateway directly into "data" port and on the other end plug that data port directly into my router's WAN port and configure it with it's static IP.

I guess my preference would be to keep the router in the new office because it's got multiple DHCP ranges/VLANs for various networks, and if the PTP went down, nobody would get an IP for local LAN network resources.

Hi guys,

One of my clients recently finished construction at a new office building less than a mile from their existing location. Comcast was supposed to complete installation of the new circuit at the new office already, but now things have been delayed with no ETA of installation.

We're now looking at Ubituqiti's AirFiber 5 solution (perfect line of sight) to make a point to point network. At the new office I have their new router in the rack and now I'm trying to decide if it should stay there or be placed at the original office where the Comcast circuit will reside.

Their existing Comcast gateway has a local 10.0.10.1 LAN IP and a static IP (96.89.X.X). Can I configure Ubiquti Airfiber device A (located at Comcast) to have 10.0.10.2 IP, Airfiber device B (located remotely) with 10.0.10.3 IP, and plug the receiver directly into the router's WAN side with the 96.89.X.X as if it were plugged directly into the Comcast gateway like usual? Or, would it be better to relocate the router to the comcast circuit and have the AirFiber devices use LAN IPs from the router itself (10.1.10.1) so it would be like 10.1.10.250 and10.1.10.251 for example. Or does it even matter?

I appreciate everyone's help!

@scottalanmiller I'm not sure I'm following. If you mount it horizontally/level and you "unlock" the server via the front levers the server should stay right where it is vs if it's face down gravity will do it's job and the server will slide on it's rails outward (probably pretty quickly). Are you saying that you would screw in brackets in front of the server that would prevent it from sliding outward/down? If the stock rack ears used screws instead of levers I would feel a little better about mounting it front down.

@DustinB3403 That's what I'm thinking. Still better cooling than having the top up, but a little safer when it comes to maintenance.

@scottalanmiller said in Vertically wall mounting Dell R640 Chassis:

ou risk little circles of air where

My only thought about mounting it front down is that the weight of the server is being held in place by those plastic levers in the front - if anyone was to release those without supporting it correctly it would shoot down on the rails. The room is supposed to be temperature controlled but I'm now thinking horizontal might be the safer option.

@JaredBusch I'm guessing this is for cooling reasons? Again, sorry for my ignorance, but I've always only rack mounted these.

@scottalanmiller The wallmount rack is the way I decided to go and it's on the way. Apparently I'll be using the stock Dell rails (according to Rack Solutions support). I'm having a hard time imagining how tricky this is going to be to mount given that I'll be installing it by myself. If I'm installing it with the front facing down I feel that might be a little trickier but maybe I'm wrong. Also, this particular server is using SSDs.

@DustinB3403 I agree - horizontal sounds preferable to maintain things. That means I would probably have to go with option 1 for sure.

@Pete-S Actually these racks are meant to hold servers - I was looking at the 3U model (in case we wanted to mount anything else down the road) and it's rated to hold over 100 lbs....and the R640 is 48 lbs so I should be more than fine.

Hi Guys,

I have a client that's moving into a new building. The IT closet was supposed to be large enough to house a proper 4 post rack, but now it looks like things have been downsized considerably and I now have to look at wall mounting the R640. Historically I always use 4 post racks with Dell's rack rails so I'm a little out of my element and I'm not seeing a lot of people talking about vertically mounting these servers.

I've been looking at two different racks at racksolutions.com:

1. https://www.racksolutions.com/wallmount-rack.html

2. https://www.racksolutions.com/wall-racks.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAk53-BRD0ARIsAJuNhpvM0JnX3ZfdWs8ccBpNznxFSfk9mokI6HvUTDQCJiAJ9q3jPsrTo6AaAgJAEALw_wcB

The problem is...neither one of these solutions show up as compatible with Dell's servers. Has anyone wall mounted of these servers before? Can I just use some cage nuts/m16 screws the the generic bracket (option 2)? I just know that the front fascia is designed for Dell's rails - don't recall if there is space for screws on either side.

@IRJ Wow. So I'm guessing I would need to wipe these machines and put on Windows 10 Enterprise 1809 to go a. get compatibility and b. make sure these devices continue to get security updates? But when I check 1809 EOL is May 11 2021???

I may just have this client work directly with a third party to manage all this as I don't imagine this will come up again, and I'm not sure it's worth the time investment to really get a grasp on everything and what's involved.

Hi guys,

I have a client that has 8 or 9 laptops (not connected to a domain) that need to meet FIPS requirements due to a grant received from the federal government. The laptops themselves are Dell latitude laptops so I know they have a TPM. Also, from what I'm aware I can modify local group policy to enable the "Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption."

Does anybody know if this can be handled by intune? If not, what would the process be for backing up the recovery keys? USB?

Also, I think I read somewhere that with FIPS you had to use smart card? If true, and the laptop doesn't have a smart card reader what would we need to do there?

Anyways, just looking for any general insight on this and what to expect. From what I've learned it's a PITA.

Hi guys,

Wanted to see if anybody here has found a way to sync team appointments (exchange) to a G Suite user's calendar without publishing the calendar (sync times too slow).

If you're using a third party tool like automate.io have you been happy with performance and what plan are you using?

Someone here was able to get something working using a subdomain:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/microsoft-teams-invite-problem-with-gmail/m-p/1282103

I've configured a subdomain in G Suite, but I've not had the same success. I can get the calendar invite email to G Suite, but G Suite fails to fetch the calendar data because the email addresses for Microsoft/G Suite are the same.

@dbeato Hmm...I didn't think Office 2013 users were affected. No calls from any clients on 2013 - all my calls were from 2016, 2019, and click2run.