Posts made by Jimmy9008

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@IRJ

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.

That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.

Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...

There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.

You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.

I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.

What did you assume them to be?

Yeah, I am not sure what you were expecting? I am just using a very broad role (windows admin) as an example of how many sub specialist roles you might see in enterprise. I am pretty sure I missed some

Me neither, hence asking

Maybe i'm not a generalist, but just assumed I am. GPOs, Patching, Server Deployments etc, I do all of them... so am I a specialist!? lol

@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@IRJ

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.

That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.

Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...

There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.

You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.

I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.

What did you assume them to be?

As Scott said - the biggest company that I personally worked at wasn't F1000 at the time, So we definitely didn't see that level of separation in Windows admin roles, or any other system. Our AIX team was 2 people for over 100 servers (I wasn't that involved, it could have been over 500 for all I know), and they handled everything on those boxes, setup, tear down, building storage LUNs, etc. But I definitely considered them AIX specialists. They didn't touch the network side of things other than plugging an IP address into their systems.

GPO... Building Servers... Patching... I see these as pretty simple things as a generalist. I cant imagine a team of people needed for any particular one of those just to focus on that one thing (Mind, I've not worked enterprise). Those people would surely do a range of tasks, not just GPO all day. To say - 'I'm a specialist in GPOs' sounds like a really limited job. Even with 1000 servers or workstations or more. It would be boring, and GPOs is mostly easy (for example). Especially once you have setup a test environment.

I always assumed specialist = totally difficult task, hence being a great skill. Not specialist = I just do GPO only all day in a team of people doing GPO all day, but cant do anything else like patching as I don't know (limiting).

Its like a builder. I can hire a builder to build me an extension. Many builders can build me that extension. When the builder finds asbestos stopping the work, they call in specialists to clear it out who have skills and knowledge, and the equipment, to deal with the dangerous material (the difficult, skilled part) an average generalist builder wouldn't have.

I'm not sure, probably wrong. Juts haven't worked in that environment.

@IRJ

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.

That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.

Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...

There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.

You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.

I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.

@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:

@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:

I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.

That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.

Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...

I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.

I also like to be able to take charge and leave the parts that need specialists, to specialists.

I've only worked SMB. I'd like to try Enterprise some day but worry everything would be too impersonal. With SMB, some of them have been like a family. Real nice. I've worked some that were truly nasty though - I'd go SMB, but move until the right SMB is found.

Interesting post.

I'm up at 5:45am. Start running bath, whilst that's running, jump on the cross-trainer in my back room (about 10 minutes). Then stop bath filling, get back on the cross-trainer for another 10 minutes. Then get in bath.

About 6:15, out of bath and get dressed etc. 6:30am -> 7am, mix of news, coffee, or Playstation 4.

7am, leave house and walk to train station 7:15 at train station, get coffee, maybe bacon, then on train at 7:25am. At work for 8:30am.

Work until 5pm, doing whatever comes up and projects that are ongoing.

Evenings are random, maybe go out for drinks in London, or home and cinema with gf.
Usually bed between 10:30pm - midnight.

@dafyre

@hobbit666 said in British Airways Down from Computer Failure:

@Jimmy9008 Yeah heard that this morning too, not seen any reports yet on BBC etc.

Yeah, I get that things can happen. But the report I read said the power issue took out the live and backup systems. Our backup systems/DR is the other side of the country... no way can 1 x UPS or a bad generator in the live site kill both systems...

Were BA running live and DR within the same building, off of the same UPS and generator?...

That's what I mean; I just don't see how a UPS or power issue in their datacenter could have caused the problem. Something else must have been the cause. Or a REALLY bad design/infrastructure engineer designed them.

I've read this problem has been blamed on failure of 1 UPS... Anybody have any detail on that?
I'd be surprised if a company like BA runs servers somewhere protected by only 1 UPS, including the backup servers/systems.

I read that a power surge and a faulty UPS rendered both the live systems, and the backups systems unavailable... that's insane if true.

Hi folks,

NHS in England being hit by cyber attack...

BBC News

I think some sysadmin, somewhere in England, is having a really bad day!

Best,
Jimbob

@Jimmy9008

I'd have loved to just install Hyper-V rather than full blow 2012r2, but they would have sent me back to do it again as nobody else would have known how to troubleshoot it.

@scottalanmiller

They were an MSP. The selling SAN part was only a small part of what they did. Only about 200 customers, so small. But, they had their list of products and wouldn't really change from their supported model - extensive list, but static, and old. For example, the backup solution they sold to customers and installed, then managed, was file level only. Any disaster the whole server had to be rebuilt rather than an image restore. Again, because its what they knew rather than developing and using the latest tech. Makes sense for them, but bad for the tech/development and customers - That was one of the reasons I left...

This really annoyed me; a customers server kept crashing (every few hours/daily). It was their SQL server so when that went all of their applications went down. Old kit, no longer supported by HP(E) anymore. From memory it was a 2003 box. Out of warranty etc, no service, so couldn't get them the latest packs... and no support from MS as its no longer supported. All we could do is force a reboot and wait each time. So, the customer ordered a new server. Great! (They should have anyway as it was not fit for purpose anymore for a number of reasons). They were planning to have their application vendor move the SQL instances/whatever to this new box - but that was months away...

So, the new server turns up, I rack n stack it, and get 2012 r2 installed. Now its just sitting in the rack awaiting the vendor and the other box crashes again! I speak to my team and we agree that I will shutdown SQL server services, p2v the box, and bring up on the new host - great - work done and customer happy no ongoing failures until the vendor can come to site.

A few months later I go back to site - one of our techs had visited when the software vendor were planned, they had turned off the VM, installed SQL Server to the physical box and are using the physical box again! Never learn! I had told them to just create a second VM, and use that. Leave the host alone. But nope! Some people just cant be trusted. I know the vendor is happy to use a VM. I expect that decision was made as the other techs were not comfortable with 'scary VM stuff'.

Well done! Doing some good work! Only wish I could do it!
Years ago I used to hit the gym every other day, swim, run, weights etc and could eat whatever I wanted... but then... work started! Since then... FAT. Hate it!

Thanks for the inspiration.

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in For the love of IPOD...:

@Jimmy9008 said in For the love of IPOD...:

Name the company...

Bring on the shame

I used to work for a small MSP in the UK called FOS.Net. Spoke to them about Starwind before and moving away from the node + SAN approach... they basically said no as "We've not had one fail before, and nobody here knows Starwind, so we will stick with what we know." - I knew Starwind otherwise would not have brought it up at all!

I think they just don't want to train people - hence rarely using VMs too!

Name the company...

Drooling right now! Ohhhhhhhhh, Ahhhhh...

In Windows, Remote Access/RDP etc is not enabled OOB. I assume the same in Linux? Unless you can connect to each through a command line/ssh or something, which maybe needs to be enabled/disabled etc...

Hey folks,

I've got this working using CentOS and HAProxy. I also want to do this with Nginx, so will run with that as a lab next week. More I understand that the better. Thanks for sending me down a good path.

Ok, so, with Linux, what is best practice regarding security?
Using CentOS currently. I assume I need to install an AV, what options do I have? From a fresh install, do I need to close any holes? System update has been done already, but I reckon I am missing lots that is a best practice for Linux?

Like i'e said... totally new with Linux so any pointers would be great. Ive seen the guide to Linux admin posted on this site already and will work through that in the coming weeks... but anything I should be wary of? The 'whatever you do, don't do...' sort of thing...

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in New Project - Thoughts? (CentOS, HAProxy, Load Balance)...:

@Jimmy9008 said in New Project - Thoughts? (CentOS, HAProxy, Load Balance)...:

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in New Project - Thoughts? (CentOS, HAProxy, Load Balance)...:

NGinx and HA-Proxy are fine tools for this, just DO NOT use them as load balancers. No reason for that complexity, it will have no benefits for you, but will have negatives.

Yes, I see this now. Thank you. Wrong terminology from me. My goal then is to have multiple IIS instances running on different hardware (on VMs on different hardware), being routed to through a pair of (somethings?) which will stop routing to any of those sites that are down.

Right, yes, and that's why HA-Proxy doesn't have Load Balancing in its name, but rather High Availability. Because failover is its primary use case.

So NGINX over HAProxy? Or something else?

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in New Project - Thoughts? (CentOS, HAProxy, Load Balance)...:

NGinx and HA-Proxy are fine tools for this, just DO NOT use them as load balancers. No reason for that complexity, it will have no benefits for you, but will have negatives.

Yes, I see this now. Thank you. Wrong terminology from me. My goal then is to have multiple IIS instances running on different hardware (on VMs on different hardware), being routed to through a pair of (somethings?) which will stop routing to any of those sites that are down.