Posts made by IRJ

I am still waiting for new seasons of Pawn Stars

@scottalanmiller said:

@IRJ said:

I signed up for the wrong class. The program was called "Wireless Technology" I thought it had to do with cell phone towers not 802.11a and b..... and here I am

Lol. What career were you envisioning?

I was in highschool and had an opportunity to pick a vocational course. I was heavily leaning towards the automotive industry before getting in to IT. The only reason I didnt take the automotive course was the fact that I could not get certified until I was 18.

I am glad I went towards IT, though.

I signed up for the wrong class. The program was called "Wireless Technology" I thought it had to do with cell phone towers not 802.11a and b..... and here I am

@Bill-Kindle said:

I have tried it in the past but never really put it through any paces past the built in packages. I can't get any more into a budget at the moment, blew most of it on a NAS this year.

I feel like I couldn't do my job without it. I saved my company the costs of PDQ with one deployment on the 2nd day after we bought it. Its paid for itself 50 times over for me.

@lance said:

@IRJ said:

@lance said:

@IRJ said:

If you are just backing up VMs look at Veeam and Unitrends. I have used both of them, and both were pretty good. Veeam was the winner for us because of its ease of use and quick restore of VMs

We currently use Veeam and we plan on staying with them, but I was just wondering about backup exec. We used to use BE and planned to upgrade to BE 2012 but when we started using it, it was just sooo bad we moved to Veeam.

We followed the same path as you and couldnt be happier. My IT deportment was all Symantec when I started here. I slowly got rid of all their crappy products... PC Anywhere, BackupExec, and SEP.

When I first showed my boss Veeam, he was in disbelief how easy it was.

PC anywhere was a awesome product back in the day and then it just kinda of went away.

The way we were using it when I started here was the same way, you would use VNC. We only used it on our local network. That was my first project, deploying VNC via AD and removing PCA

@lance said:

@IRJ said:

@lance said:

@IRJ said:

If you are just backing up VMs look at Veeam and Unitrends. I have used both of them, and both were pretty good. Veeam was the winner for us because of its ease of use and quick restore of VMs

We currently use Veeam and we plan on staying with them, but I was just wondering about backup exec. We used to use BE and planned to upgrade to BE 2012 but when we started using it, it was just sooo bad we moved to Veeam.

We followed the same path as you and couldnt be happier. My IT deportment was all Symantec when I started here. I slowly got rid of all their crappy products... PC Anywhere, BackupExec, and SEP.

When I first showed my boss Veeam, he was in disbelief how easy it was.

We still use SEP and I cant wait until we switch. I think that we are going to go with Webroot when we do.

We use Sophos. I absolutely love the AV, but their support isnt that great. The good news is that I only have to contact support once a year or so.

@garak0410 said:

As ignorant as my posts may have looked during this process...now that is complete, it makes so much more sense now...

You cant be that ignorant. You just did a major migration on your own. Sure alot of Mangolassies gave you info, but no one remoted in your server and did the work.

@lance said:

@IRJ said:

If you are just backing up VMs look at Veeam and Unitrends. I have used both of them, and both were pretty good. Veeam was the winner for us because of its ease of use and quick restore of VMs

We currently use Veeam and we plan on staying with them, but I was just wondering about backup exec. We used to use BE and planned to upgrade to BE 2012 but when we started using it, it was just sooo bad we moved to Veeam.

We followed the same path as you and couldnt be happier. My IT deportment was all Symantec when I started here. I slowly got rid of all their crappy products... PC Anywhere, BackupExec, and SEP.

When I first showed my boss Veeam, he was in disbelief how easy it was.

This is different for MSPs, but as an employee I refuse all personal desktop work to other employees. As far as friends, I tell them the same thing. I dont work on personal PCs. The only ones I will work on are immediate family or my parents.

No amount of money is worth helping someone that is going to continually ask you questions. Especially when they are a friend or Uncle and think they deserve the tech support.

If you are just backing up VMs look at Veeam and Unitrends. I have used both of them, and both were pretty good. Veeam was the winner for us because of its ease of use and quick restore of VMs

I was almost afraid to say this because it seems so obvious, but they sounds like a reboot type fix to me. Have you rebooted since you noticed the problem?

@jasonh said:

@Bill-Kindle said:

How well does it work with other software. Lets say I had another app I wanted to push, like Office or some other app?

It works quite well. We use it with a few pieces of software that PDQ doesn't pre-package (GoodSync, ScreenConnect, Sonicwall VPN Client, Scan to PDF, PDF Split & Merge) and it handles them all. The nice thing with PDQ is you can do scripting as part of the deploying, which is particularly useful for software that requires you to uninstall before installing the upgrade. We also use that feature for copying configuration files and changing registry settings after installation.

In PDQ we have a "New Workstation Setup" package that deploys all the packages in one shot. It has made deploying new workstations (and reinstalling existing ones) so much easier; join it to the domain, add it to the security groups, deploy software in PDQ, run Windows Updates, and it's done.

You can deploy MSU(s) with PDQ too. I have several important MSU files on mine.

@Bill-Kindle said:

How well does it work with other software. Lets say I had another app I wanted to push, like Office or some other app?

Its as powerful as you want it to be, Bill. I have been using PDQ Pro for about a year now and its amazing. You have the power to run installs, scripts, etc. I rarely use the pre-configured packages, but they have their purpose, too

You can pull deployment lists from AD, Spiceworks, PDQ Inventory, or text files. PDQ Inventory and Spiceworks allow you to sort by specifics like version of IE, Any PC with Software X, etc.

You can also chain packages and scripts to run through several reboots. I havent found much that I cant do with PDQ Deploy Pro.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@david.wiese said:

i get an access restricted since i don't have the correct level

Me too. @katie can see it I think.

you gave up your spicey pepperness.. is that why you can't see it?

Yes

??? You lost all that hard work?

Our Accounting Dept. is still running Windows XP because they use various different kinds of special software that no one else uses. I grabbed one of their PCs and did a migration using USMT. The profiles copied over fine, but all of their application settings were broken.

I came across Laplink PC Mover Professional's website which boasted that it copied over programs as well as files and settings. I have so many projects going on and I really dont have time to screw around with every single Accounting PC for hours. I decided to try PC Mover Pro and wow I am impressed. I ran the tool and everything copied over including our proprietary programs, and Office 2010. I had to run a repair install on one program, but other than that everything worked flawlessly.

This is a cheap way to migrate PCs quickly if you dont have the time to mess with them for hours. It was cheaper to buy 15 licenses than to spend 5 hours of my time. The rep gave them to me for $35 a license

http://www.laplink.com/index.php/individuals/pcmover-for-windows-8/pcmover-professional-8

@Dashrender said:

Uh.. OK... You can apply the GP to the level about the 'list'. If you're OK with them all being told to install at the same time. That would cut down on the number of GPOs you have to manage.

I staggered the GPOs between midnight and 5am. That was part of the reason I created different deployment groups.

@Dashrender said:

That. Is a lot of groups, why so many?

Different branches and I am an AD Nazi. I like to have alot of OUs

Did anyone mention DFS to you Garak?

During your transition period you could use DFS Replication to keep shares synced up between the two servers.

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-2003/Configuring-Using-DFS-Replication.html

I am changing all the GPOs to 4 - Auto download and schedule the install