I still don't know why there isn't a TTRPG session at SpiceWorld.

@dashrender said in What Are You Watching Now:

@kelly said in What Are You Watching Now:

Finally watched Black Panther. So refreshing after The Last Jedi.

Seriously? What movie where you watching? Don't get me wrong - TLJ was bad... but Black Panther was definitely no winner.

It wasn't a jaw dropping movie, but it was a solid movie imo. I'm not a movie critic, so I don't go very deeply into the acting or cinematography unless it is really bad. I'm also not a comicbook fan, so I don't have any original content to compare it to like with Star Wars. I just enjoyed the movie. It wasn't terribly deep or complex, but it was fun. TLJ, however, goes into the "Worst Movies I Have Ever Seen" category.

@scottalanmiller It doesn't seem like you're interested in discussing my comment in good faith. Your progressive inflation of costs in response to my posts is an interesting rhetorical technique, but not a great way of doing a discussion based on the merits. If you have a basis for the costs you're postulating, then let's discuss them.

Scenario: SMB that depends on AD. Has one VM host. Typical SMB configuration would have DNS and DHCP running on the same Windows install as AD. At that size you could go either way for IT support, but for the sake of discussing costs on the lower side we'll say that they have someone in house with sufficient skill to install and manage Windows, AD, DNS, and DHCP. We'll set their wages at $25/hr. We will also assume that they are currently maxed so that any emergency is an additional cost, and not just absorbed by their daily responsibilities. (Feel free to dispute my assumptions with justifications)

Second DC:
Server license: MSRP $699.99 (probably find it for less, but we'll go with this)
Hardware: $1,000 (If all you need is a failover DC then you could run this on old hardware, a desktop, etc. for easily less than $500, but we'll go for an upper bound)

So, the upper end of costs for a second DC in my scenario is $1,700 and then say, 8 hours of labor (probably less), so another $200. Total cost to purchase and implement is $1,900 at the most.

If we assume that this is a typical SMB, sans the @scottalanmiller touch, then DNS and DHCP are also running on the DC VM. If the hardware suffers a catastrophic failure what is the cost to restore it? We won't factor in any replacement costs because those are the same whether we have a second DC or not.

So, backups. Here is where we may differ a bit. If there is a backup solution that is up to the task of backing up AD and restoring it without any additional issues then I would postulate that the business would have room on that hardware to run a second DC running as a Core install. However, if we are wanting to see the most extreme comparison would be, we will assume that there is a good backup of AD to restore, but not the hardware to run a second DC. This keeps our costs for a second DC still at $1,900.

VM host suffers hardware failure taking down AD. From this point it is speculation. If there aren't sufficient resources to spin up a second DC then there isn't anything to restore the back up to either. This means that there is no AD, DNS, or DHCP until something is put into place. Since every business class edge device can handle the latter two, we'll assume that they get moved over by our on site person. The time to do this is extremely variable. Let's grab an hour as the lower bound. So $25 to get DNS and DHCP up and running so that there is external access, plus employee labor impact. DHCP will continue to be fine during that one hour unless a lease comes up. DNS, however, means that most modern devices will stop functioning right away. A business of 10 employees averaging $15/hr means that there is a cost of $150 for that down time.

At this point, all internal services are down until AD is restored. Another variable that is difficult to account for. The most prevalent one of these would be printers. Impact will vary from business to business. If we say that of those 10 employees, 2 require (whether from felt personal need, or actual professional need it doesn't matter) a printer multiple times per day. How does 5 times sound? There are work arounds. Our enterprising technician goes to each machine to edit their hosts file to allow the users to print. Between getting all the information, figuring out the changes, coordinating with employees, and actually doing the work we'll say it takes an hour, so another $25.

So, our loss of our only DC has cost the company a minimum of $200. These costs can skyrocket depending on the number of employees, their pay rates, and the numbers of internal services. If this is our baseline then almost $2,000 is probably more than a 10 employee company should spend, so I agree with you. If the curves fluctuate much at all (lower priced/repurposed hardware), more employees, more costly employees, more internal service, then the cost/risk ratio approaches 1 very quickly.

Yes, you can defray or reduce almost all of the points of impact, like configuring your DNS scenario the way @JaredBusch suggested, but that is not a common approach. Implementing it and other things to negate potential impacts of down time (scripting system capable of pushing out a new hosts file to clients reducing down time to less than 1 hour, etc.) have their own costs inherent to them, and are also not common in SMB, so I don't think that including them in the comparison of the two approaches.

@scottalanmiller said in Handling DNS in a Single Active Directory Domain Controller Environment:

By now, hopefully everyone knows that in the SMB having only a single Active Directory Domain Controller, for those companies that truly need AD in the first place, isn't just acceptable but is the most commonly correct approach, since AD failover often has almost no value, but a second DC generally is expensive (there are exceptions to both cases, of course.)

Do you have a reference for your "most commonly correct approach" statement aside from something you've written? Running a second AD server isn't all that expensive. You have a server license and (potentially) hardware, so $1,500 to $2,000 USD if you don't already have a second set of hardware you can run it on. If you run it in core configuration it requires very little in the way of resources. Given the premise of handling DNS failover scenarios it seems like having two DCs would be better, but I'm open to being convinced.

Edit: The $1,500 to $2,000 might seem like quite a bit, but those costs are pretty minimal compared to down time and repair costs if you do suffer a catastrophic failure.

We had to have one, but it was because of CJIS (FBI) requirements.

Fundamentally they're for when you compliance requirements force you to treat DC employees as untrusted.

Finally watched Black Panther. So refreshing after The Last Jedi.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Because of the way that image is cropped it could be a shot from a Potterverse promo picture.

@emad-r said in Android - Can you pin a group sms to your screen?:

@kelly

I have something to mirror all your android screen efficiently to your screen, without any adware or image tearing.

It needs some steps to set it up.

https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

That looks interesting. It doesn't quite get me where I was wanting to go with this, but it has some interesting possibilities.

@scottalanmiller said in Android - Can you pin a group sms to your screen?:

From what I can tell, no.

That is what I was thinking, but I was hoping that I was wrong.

This is moving more towards the power user end of questions, but I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to pin a group sms to one of the screens? I know you can do a single person via the Direct Dial widget, but I was wondering if there is a way to do it with a group.

@momurda said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Why would anybody go to the kwikemart, buy lottery tickets with their own money, then put them in the company Mega Millions pool?

That was my thought.

The golden age of MUDs and the like.

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly This is only the IT team. I'm not giving it to anyone else. Different departments within IT. Desktop Support, Helpdesk, Health Information Systems, etc

Oh, that makes much more sense. I totally misunderstood your aim. Well, you can disregard a bunch of what I said

In that case I would look at which one has the most API integration for your tools. It is great when you can have all your logging alerts in your chat agent as well.

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly This is only the IT team. I'm not giving it to anyone else. Different departments within IT. Desktop Support, Helpdesk, Health Information Systems, etc

Oh, that makes much more sense. I totally misunderstood your aim. Well, you can disregard a bunch of what I said

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

If you're storing important information in your chat you're doing it wrong imo. You might receive important information that way, but none of them are going to be great for sorting and filtering information in a retrieval scenario.

It's not that I want to use it as a wiki or ticketing system, but I would like to be able to reference something someone said at some point. "go here, do this, explain this concept to this person, take pictures of this" etc. I can talk to 15 different people at the same time and I'd like to not need to search through every 5 minutes of conversation to reference something they said in skype for business.

Wouldn't most of those conversations occur through direct messages rather than channels? I agree that having to sort through requests or information within general channels would be a headache. I encouraged my users to talk to one of my team directly. In a larger environment I might have a "Helpdesk" channel, but I would discourage "chatting" in that channel in general.

On another note, why are you looking at getting off of SfB/Teams? If you're not moving off of O365 entirely that is an expensive decision.

We aren't entirely O365. Everything here is Hybrid and I hate it. Our entire IT team hates our communication tools. I do want the ability to talk in channels because it allows us to discuss things as a group as well as let people know what is going on at certain sites. Instead of reaching out to us to find out they can check the channel for that site. At least if they have questions we can answer them directly there so when someone else checks it they don't need to ask it again. There's a lot of communication breakdown here.

Teams is roughly the equivalent of Slack/Rocketchat/Mattermost in terms of functionality. I'm not trying to dissuade you from using Rocket, just adding to the options for something you don't have to support and maintain the infrastructure on.

As for hybrid, are you using AD Sync or whatever they're calling it now? I found that it takes most of the issues of having local AD and Azure AD out of the equation once you have it up and running. On the Exchange side of things, I haven't found much need for local Exchange. In two different orgs I just handled all the mail functions in O365 either via Powershell or the web UI. There were some annoyances, but most of the "unsolveable" issues originated with users that were trying to use their email for something it was never intended to be used for.

Channel sprawl/exhaustion is a thing. At first people may like having things sorted out, but over time (sometimes very quickly) those additional channels will become a ghost town because people don't like having to maintain all of the different avenues of communication, and will just dump things into the most convenient channel. For example if you have an IT channel and then you have Site A, Site B, Site C, etc. over time people without your vision will stop using the site specific channels and just dump them in the general channel. This is one of the reasons why chat is terrible for documentation and reference.

Did you make any headway with the wiki project? It sounds like that is what you need more in general, perhaps with the ability to take notes on a given job as an adjunct so that the next person can see what was done and who was talked to. Notes should probably be in a ticketing system, so that they're tied to a task and a site.

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope that is helpful. I'm not trying to shoot you down, just trying to see the bigger picture and let you know what I've experienced in the past as successes and failures.

I appreciate your advice. You can wall of text me anytime. I am in the testing phase of all of this and I want to beta test some of these with my team and get their impressions on whether or not they think it's useful. I have a nextcloud instance and rocketchat currently. The next things I build will be Bookstack and wiki.js. I want to compare the two. A wiki would definitely help of course.

There will not be a general IT channel for that exact reason. It will be broken down by site but I also have to separate departments to keep everything relevant. I could create each instance as department.domain.com to accomplish this.

How big is your org (sites, departments, and employees) and your IT team?

We have 50+ buildings right now, some small some huge. We will have 120 sites within one year. Expanding nation wide. IT team right now is around 35 people. Part of this is planning for the future obv

At the stage you're at I would approach this from a functional and organizational perspective rather than a technical one. Given your size and apparent growth, your layout will be dictated by how the non IT people use the tools. If they have to fire up a second client to chat with you all than what they use for their team then they aren't going to chat with IT. If they need to communicate with people in ways that are not supported by your design, e.g. across functional teams, sites, departments, etc., then they will default back to the easiest/most familiar way. Finally, if they do not have input into your design they will not buy in to it either unless it is forced on them from the top.

Were I in your shoes I would locate key people in the fewest number of functional groups that will give you an influence approaching quorum and get them together for a video chat/conference call. Start with the basic problem, e.g. communication is hard, especially across teams/sites/etc. Then ask about what works well with SfB, and what could be improved. Then ask for wishlists and who their teams need to communicate with on a semi regular basis. Have someone with you to take notes because this will probably be very eye opening to you if you haven't done anything like this in the past.

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

If you're storing important information in your chat you're doing it wrong imo. You might receive important information that way, but none of them are going to be great for sorting and filtering information in a retrieval scenario.

It's not that I want to use it as a wiki or ticketing system, but I would like to be able to reference something someone said at some point. "go here, do this, explain this concept to this person, take pictures of this" etc. I can talk to 15 different people at the same time and I'd like to not need to search through every 5 minutes of conversation to reference something they said in skype for business.

Wouldn't most of those conversations occur through direct messages rather than channels? I agree that having to sort through requests or information within general channels would be a headache. I encouraged my users to talk to one of my team directly. In a larger environment I might have a "Helpdesk" channel, but I would discourage "chatting" in that channel in general.

On another note, why are you looking at getting off of SfB/Teams? If you're not moving off of O365 entirely that is an expensive decision.

We aren't entirely O365. Everything here is Hybrid and I hate it. Our entire IT team hates our communication tools. I do want the ability to talk in channels because it allows us to discuss things as a group as well as let people know what is going on at certain sites. Instead of reaching out to us to find out they can check the channel for that site. At least if they have questions we can answer them directly there so when someone else checks it they don't need to ask it again. There's a lot of communication breakdown here.

Teams is roughly the equivalent of Slack/Rocketchat/Mattermost in terms of functionality. I'm not trying to dissuade you from using Rocket, just adding to the options for something you don't have to support and maintain the infrastructure on.

As for hybrid, are you using AD Sync or whatever they're calling it now? I found that it takes most of the issues of having local AD and Azure AD out of the equation once you have it up and running. On the Exchange side of things, I haven't found much need for local Exchange. In two different orgs I just handled all the mail functions in O365 either via Powershell or the web UI. There were some annoyances, but most of the "unsolveable" issues originated with users that were trying to use their email for something it was never intended to be used for.

Channel sprawl/exhaustion is a thing. At first people may like having things sorted out, but over time (sometimes very quickly) those additional channels will become a ghost town because people don't like having to maintain all of the different avenues of communication, and will just dump things into the most convenient channel. For example if you have an IT channel and then you have Site A, Site B, Site C, etc. over time people without your vision will stop using the site specific channels and just dump them in the general channel. This is one of the reasons why chat is terrible for documentation and reference.

Did you make any headway with the wiki project? It sounds like that is what you need more in general, perhaps with the ability to take notes on a given job as an adjunct so that the next person can see what was done and who was talked to. Notes should probably be in a ticketing system, so that they're tied to a task and a site.

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope that is helpful. I'm not trying to shoot you down, just trying to see the bigger picture and let you know what I've experienced in the past as successes and failures.

I appreciate your advice. You can wall of text me anytime. I am in the testing phase of all of this and I want to beta test some of these with my team and get their impressions on whether or not they think it's useful. I have a nextcloud instance and rocketchat currently. The next things I build will be Bookstack and wiki.js. I want to compare the two. A wiki would definitely help of course.

There will not be a general IT channel for that exact reason. It will be broken down by site but I also have to separate departments to keep everything relevant. I could create each instance as department.domain.com to accomplish this.

How big is your org (sites, departments, and employees) and your IT team?

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

If you're storing important information in your chat you're doing it wrong imo. You might receive important information that way, but none of them are going to be great for sorting and filtering information in a retrieval scenario.

It's not that I want to use it as a wiki or ticketing system, but I would like to be able to reference something someone said at some point. "go here, do this, explain this concept to this person, take pictures of this" etc. I can talk to 15 different people at the same time and I'd like to not need to search through every 5 minutes of conversation to reference something they said in skype for business.

Wouldn't most of those conversations occur through direct messages rather than channels? I agree that having to sort through requests or information within general channels would be a headache. I encouraged my users to talk to one of my team directly. In a larger environment I might have a "Helpdesk" channel, but I would discourage "chatting" in that channel in general.

On another note, why are you looking at getting off of SfB/Teams? If you're not moving off of O365 entirely that is an expensive decision.

We aren't entirely O365. Everything here is Hybrid and I hate it. Our entire IT team hates our communication tools. I do want the ability to talk in channels because it allows us to discuss things as a group as well as let people know what is going on at certain sites. Instead of reaching out to us to find out they can check the channel for that site. At least if they have questions we can answer them directly there so when someone else checks it they don't need to ask it again. There's a lot of communication breakdown here.

Teams is roughly the equivalent of Slack/Rocketchat/Mattermost in terms of functionality. I'm not trying to dissuade you from using Rocket, just adding to the options for something you don't have to support and maintain the infrastructure on.

As for hybrid, are you using AD Sync or whatever they're calling it now? I found that it takes most of the issues of having local AD and Azure AD out of the equation once you have it up and running. On the Exchange side of things, I haven't found much need for local Exchange. In two different orgs I just handled all the mail functions in O365 either via Powershell or the web UI. There were some annoyances, but most of the "unsolveable" issues originated with users that were trying to use their email for something it was never intended to be used for.

Channel sprawl/exhaustion is a thing. At first people may like having things sorted out, but over time (sometimes very quickly) those additional channels will become a ghost town because people don't like having to maintain all of the different avenues of communication, and will just dump things into the most convenient channel. For example if you have an IT channel and then you have Site A, Site B, Site C, etc. over time people without your vision will stop using the site specific channels and just dump them in the general channel. This is one of the reasons why chat is terrible for documentation and reference.

Did you make any headway with the wiki project? It sounds like that is what you need more in general, perhaps with the ability to take notes on a given job as an adjunct so that the next person can see what was done and who was talked to. Notes should probably be in a ticketing system, so that they're tied to a task and a site.

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope that is helpful. I'm not trying to shoot you down, just trying to see the bigger picture and let you know what I've experienced in the past as successes and failures.

@wirestyle22 said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

@kelly said in What makes RocketChat appealing to you?:

If you're storing important information in your chat you're doing it wrong imo. You might receive important information that way, but none of them are going to be great for sorting and filtering information in a retrieval scenario.

It's not that I want to use it as a wiki or ticketing system, but I would like to be able to reference something someone said at some point. "go here, do this, explain this concept to this person, take pictures of this" etc. I can talk to 15 different people at the same time and I'd like to not need to search through every 5 minutes of conversation to reference something they said in skype for business.

Wouldn't most of those conversations occur through direct messages rather than channels? I agree that having to sort through requests or information within general channels would be a headache. I encouraged my users to talk to one of my team directly. In a larger environment I might have a "Helpdesk" channel, but I would discourage "chatting" in that channel in general.

On another note, why are you looking at getting off of SfB/Teams? If you're not moving off of O365 entirely that is an expensive decision.

Random internet quote of the day: "Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning: 'I can't configure Debian'."

If you're storing important information in your chat you're doing it wrong imo. You might receive important information that way, but none of them are going to be great for sorting and filtering information in a retrieval scenario.