Best posts made by Jimmy9008

I'm really considering getting a 2012R2 license, creating a VM, and running from the laptop. Least it costs way less.

@scottalanmiller said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:

This "defence source" definitely goes against the claim that a new OS was just created for this: "A defence source told the newspaper that some of the on-boar hardware and software "would have been good in 2004" when the carrier was designed, "but now seems rather antiquated"."

Indeed. But with most things, its outdated as soon as you ordered the kit. Probably spinning disks, rather than SSDs - gets hit by a wave in the wrong place and the head on for a few platters move... warship dead! But hey, they are cheaper - just like a particular type of cladding.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@jimmy9008 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@jimmy9008 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@jimmy9008 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Relaxing at home following an interview earlier in the day.

How did it go?

Seemed to go well. Was supposed to be 30 minute face to face, but ended up 1h 30min... so, I take that as a good sign. We'll see. Not that length is anything to go by of course. Thanks for asking

Yeah, that's definitely a good sign.

Had a phone interview the other week with an Infrastructure Lead that run a similar amount of time and didn't get taken forward on that role... so who knows. The Lead said 'You've not used x software, and I won't have time to show it to you.' - fair do's, even though I disagree. I guess he didn't take in to account that i've not needed somebody to show me anything so far and have used my own willpower to learn what I need to know - but hey, if that is his way of thinking I wouldn't want to work with him anyway...

(I still sound bitter on that one, which is fair - he could have saved me over an hour and some battery life on my phone if he ended the phone interview at that point).
#want_my_wasted_time_back

Maybe HE doesn't know how to learn things on his own and doesn't understand that other people do, or, more likely, he's afraid of people that don't need hand holding because they will pass him up.

Yeah, probably. Or some sort nepotism where he already has a family member/friend targeted for the role and is just going through the interview process to satisfy politics/Law.

Either way, was far more pay and lots of benefits. Still, have a job that's decent pay so no bother really.

Ok, so i'm going with a VM. Development will cut the databases loaded in to memory down to 12/13GB, but for demo purposes, its fine.

Thanks folks,
Jim

Who is the document aimed at?

@dafyre said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@dafyre said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@wirestyle22 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Folks, is 10% fair for a promotion in London from Systems Administrator, to manager of the customer helpdesk (not IT helpdesk but customer helpdesk, 2 staff, customer facing), and training manager (not internal but customer training, 2 staff again, and customer facing)?

In this case its going from 45k to 50k. From what I can see, a generic manager level job in London i in the 50k range. To go from doing what I do to management of those two teams, is that raise fair for London?

I mean, I've seen service desk managers get 5k bonus for hitting their targets... 5k seems low for taking on the actual jobs entirely x2.

That sounds incredibly low

Thats what I thought. What would you think is fair? I was expecting mid 50s in all honesty.

Don't take the promotion if you aren't happy with the salary they plan to offer you.

Wont it look bad to refuse? 'Not a team player' type of thinking?

Possibly. But you can explain that you are not looking to move in that direction. To me, that seems like a step down, not a step up.

You can always negotiate your salary too.

Thing is, I want to move in that direction. I'd enjoy filling that role - i'm just not sure its worth doing for only 5k extra pay. I'm pretty sure it isn't; 10k, sure - 5k, nope.

If they were to recruit, its probably 5k in recruitment fees. Then they have to train the person, get them up to speed, pay them 40k - 50k, plus pension and employer taxes etc... surely its worth throwing 10k a year, rather than paying all the above.

@JaredBusch said in Anyone Looked at HubSpot CRM:

@StrongBad said in Anyone Looked at HubSpot CRM:

http://www.hubspot.com/products/crm

It appears to be a free, unlimited CRM product. Is anyone familiar with it? If so, any feedback?

I have not, but it looks like their money maker is their marketing application. So it is a complimentary piece of the puzzle designed to get you to buy the rest.

Solid choice of business model.

We use this for the marketing. Spend around £17,000 per year. Not sure if its any good though as it is for the marketing department. But, we do use it.

I agree with Scott here. The wording doesn't help. They mean to have a DC outside of cluster storage, incase of cluster storage issues etc. That doesn't mean it has to be physical. It just has to be off of the csv and can still be a VM. Bad wording.

Even if different hardware entirely from the cluster nodes and storage, the DC could still be a VM on that other box.

@dashrender said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@dafyre said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@dashrender said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@wirestyle22 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@wirestyle22 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@wirestyle22 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Folks, is 10% fair for a promotion in London from Systems Administrator, to manager of the customer helpdesk (not IT helpdesk but customer helpdesk, 2 staff, customer facing), and training manager (not internal but customer training, 2 staff again, and customer facing)?

In this case its going from 45k to 50k. From what I can see, a generic manager level job in London i in the 50k range. To go from doing what I do to management of those two teams, is that raise fair for London?

I mean, I've seen service desk managers get 5k bonus for hitting their targets... 5k seems low for taking on the actual jobs entirely x2.

That sounds incredibly low

Thats what I thought. What would you think is fair? I was expecting mind 50s in all honesty.

If you're actually a Systems Administrator you should be making a lot more than that, so I'm really not sure

That's decent for an SA in the UK. That's not US dollars.

65k in pounds right? Still on the low end here, but I guess it also depends on where in the US you are working

That's $88K at the current conversion, but that's not a fair comparison. Think of it more like $110K USD. All British wages are heavily suppressed because of the Brexit.

45000 GBP is 60827 USD.

This position would also still keep me doing my current system admin job. Its not a move to the helpdesk and training manager only. Its a 'heldesk + training manager + system administrator (which I currently do)'... why would that be bad?
I think I would enjoy the additional roles, but not worth doing for 5k.

In that case - OH HELL NO, I wouldn't take that new responsibility for only £5K more.

Exactly I think 10k makes it worth doing. But 5k isnt worth the extra stress. I see 5k as a really nice payrise, not a pay adjustment for taking on a lot of duties and oownership of two departments. Even 10k is low, but I thought realistic. Was suprised they said 5k.

I wouldn't take on the extra responsibilities of managing not one, but two different sets of people for less than 15k.

I know here that wont be possible. Ideally, yes - I agree. But I have to be realistic. I think pushing them to 10k would be possible. Maybe add in some sort of bonus based on KPIs too, but a 15k jump just wont happen.

5k would be hard to say yes to, but if for taking the experience then moving in a year - that is something I may be able to accept...

£15K bump with on experience (or do you have some?) would likely be unreasonable. But an up front conversation about where you expect to be in 1-2 years based upon that experience then might be valid.

I have experience of being a manager from a previous job of two people. Like I said, I dont think the work/role will be an issue at all... its the only '5k' that I dont like. If they value it so low, why should I...

Can you ask HPE if you can remove the kit list and just pick out your own that totals $60k? If its not useful to you, then what is the point.
I didn't take part in the contest as its US only. Quite often these things are US only. But, I just assumed when I quickly ready the post on SW that you 'had a budget of $60k' to buy what you want from them...

Sucks to be told a list which is useless to you.

After they remove the mark up, I doubt this comes close to $60k anyway. Its probably just an order of kit they had which got cancelled so they gave away...

Pfft. If they don't let you sell it, say you are going with Dell as the free Sh*T is useless to you.

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

Thanks for all the feedback guys! I got on a live chat this morning with xByte and will be getting a quote later today. Can't hurt to at least see what they have to offer and get a price ;).

I've always found that Dell beat xByte when its their end of quarter and end of year; you then get all new kit rather than refurbished. Of course you do have to haggle. From memory, Dell operate Feb - April = Q1, May - July = Q2, Aug - Oct = Q3 and Nov - Jan = their end of year... if you can wait until the last week of each you get great sales usually where they hit low prices to nail their targets.

@wirestyle22 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 That doesn't make any sense. if they can pay an entire salary to someone you can get more than 5k

I expect they are just trying to pay as low as they can and save on not hiring. Its just extremely skewed towards being good for the company, but bad for me. It looks like most say its fair to push back on this. 10k was where I think 'fair' is...

What firewall do you have? What are the goals? I get all of that through my WatchGuard with Security Subscription.

@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

Thanks for all the feedback guys! I got on a live chat this morning with xByte and will be getting a quote later today. Can't hurt to at least see what they have to offer and get a price ;).

I've always found that Dell beat xByte when its their end of quarter and end of year; you then get all new kit rather than refurbished. Of course you do have to haggle. From memory, Dell operate Feb - April = Q1, May - July = Q2, Aug - Oct = Q3 and Nov - Jan = their end of year... if you can wait until the last week of each you get great sales usually where they hit low prices to nail their targets.

Only for new, and he should not be considering new here, only refurb.

At these times of year, if you haggle well, you can get new for the same price as refurbished... why only consider refurbished here if you can get new?

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@jimmy9008 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

10K is a lot more than 5K. Maybe 8K is a better number?

I think asking to meet in the middle is sensible, but i'm not sure the middle is worth all the extra work. Its a huge amount of work, on top of what I already do, saving the company loads...

That's the hard part. You really just have to think about what the value of hte work, experience, and money are to you.

Well, more than 5k for sure
Lets see what happens.

I may take it for the experience and jump ship in a year.

Hi folks,

Is £53,574 GBP (pre VAT) a decent price for the following kit from Dell? I'm use to using the kit, not ordering...

The list meets business needs/goals, so not going in to those details, i'm more concerned as to if the price is a good price for the hardware, of if Dell are trying to overprice the quote/rip us off...

• 2 x N2048 Switch with Stacking Cable and 2 x Redundant Power Supplies
• 1 x 42U Rack
• 1 x KMM
• 1 x KVM
• 7 x SFP+ to SFP+ 10GbE Twinax Direct Attach cables
• 4 x T630 Servers EACH having:

2 x Xeon E5-2667 v4 procs (8 core/16 thread)
24 x 32 GB RDIMMs (totals 768 GB RAM per box)
16 x 800 GB SSD using PERC H730P 2GB NV Cache
2 x Broadcom 5719 Quad Port
1 x QLogic 57810 Dual Port 10 GbE
Dual hot plug 1600W PSUs
iDRAC 8 Enterprise
5 Year Pro Support

The going list price online is £100k + for all of this pre VAT, but when has the online price ever been the real price?!

Negotiation with a Dell rep has got me to the above price at top of post... but is that still too high? What would you expect that kit to have been worth really? Windows Server will be licensed separately on these (so not included)...

Just to explain what the plan is with these units:

• N2048 stacked (obviously).
• Each server has 1 x SFP+ to 1 x Switch SFP+ (total 4 x cables). This will be for Hyper-V Switch/VM Network access to LAN
• Each server to have 1 x 1 GbE to the LAN for host LAN access
• Each server has 1 x SFP+ to the next server SFP+ (A -> B -> C -> D) using 3 x cable (dedicated for hyper-v replica by edit of host files)
• Two of the T630 will be Raid 10 and will run production workloads (backed up on site and off site)
• Other two T630 will be Raid 5, used for hyper-v replicas from production (replica for some VMs), and used for dev team to run new VMs, to develop on, before moving the release to the production hosts (a cycle). If Raid 5 dies, its all backed up on site and off site, so we will just restore, hence not Raid 10.

So, a good price? Excluding Windows Server 2016.

Thanks,
Jim

@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

Now that you are in the UK, that's huge and that's why xByte doesn't make sense. They have to ship there. In the US, the price difference is huge and we get so much more from xByte.

We need a flag on ML saying country of origin...

Well, US or UK, these are probably coming from China or something anyway. So, both have shipping costs.

Would be great to see a third quote for somebody US based for that exact same xByte quote above... Just to see how much extra we are being charge over here compared to you...

Still, over here that 30k or so adds up, so when I say it can make sense to go to Dell at certain times of the year, it's based on my knowledge of the UK market. Most of the year, that Dell quite would be much higher and xByte probably makes sense. But their end of quarters, for us at least, can be 30k less than xByte.

A month before that Dell quite, their price was around double. It's because it was close to their end of year and their sales want to nail targets.

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@jimmy9008 I think it's salt + sand + gravel.

I think you should do some research and verify all the exact ingredients... then see if you can replicate it. Then... and only then, look at Sage.

@travisdh1 said in Dell Quote... good price?:

@Jimmy9008 For all new equipment, that seems to be a good price. Trying a different vendor/retailer will probably net you a higher price at this point because of how most OEM handle quotes. No idea if Dell is one of those or not because I haven't bought new in years.

That's what I think, but wanted to check. Rarely get budget here to improve things. We have a budget and the board expect us to spend it all. If not, I don't get it again for a long time. I think its a fair price, but just checking. If somebody said nope, that's 10k too much... i'd go back to Dell asking for more off for example, then with the price dropped, add more hardware

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

I have an update on this thread, and more questions, lol. First of all, I got a new quote from xByte:

• Dell PowerEdge R730 Server 3.5" chassis with up to 8 drive bays (1)
• Intel E5-2620v3 2.4GHz/15M/1866MHz 6-Core 85W (1)
• Dell PE R730 Heat Sink (1)
• Dell 8GB DDR4 (2)
• PERC H730 Mini Mono Controller 1GB NV Cache (RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60) (1)
• 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
• Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card (1)
• 4 PCIe Slots, 3 x8 and 1 x16 (1)
• iDRAC8 Enterprise (1)
• Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails (1)
• Dell 750W Power Supply (2)
• Windows Server 2016 Standard 2-Core OLP (8)
• 5 Year Dell NBD Onsite Warranty (1)

Total with tax and shipping: $6360

My boss had me ask the xByte rep about the hard drive brand/model, and this is what the rep said:

"We have several to choose from, but the one we have most of are cobranded Dell/Toshiba hard drives. The Toshiba model # is MG04SCA60EE."

My boss then had me contact CDW to ask for a quote from them. Here's what I told the CDW rep:

"We're looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server to act as a storage server. We were initially thinking of an R730, but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:

• A 8-12 bay (3.5") chassis
• A single Xeon 6-core CPU with heatsink
• 12GB or 16GB of RAM
• One PERC H710P RAID controller with 1GB NV Cache (or equivalent)
• At least eight 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS drives
• One Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb NIC (or equivalent)
• iDRAC7 Enterprise
• Dell "sliding ready rails"
• 2x 750W PSUs
• Windows Server 2016
• 3-5 Year Warranty

Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"

Here's what he replied back with:

"I have the pricing back and am over 10K with this config. I know you said the budget was 6k.
Where can we cut back? The 8 6tb drives are almost 6k alone."

I told him we got a quote from another vendor and said that the CDW quote was considerably higher.

The CDW rep said:

"Is it apple to apples or did xbyte use third party memory and drives? We are dell's largest partner so it should not be a large difference if truly apples to apples."

I'm not sure what to think of all this right now....

How much time have you put in to this now, including your higher ups time? At some point, you have to just move on and buy the thing...