I got a great story that goes along with this topic sort of... I'll get to that after I answer your question. About 2 years ago I bought a DID with Oooma to use as my home line. I decided Ooma sucked and ported my number over to voip.ms and connected an ATA box to my analog cordless handset. I think I pre-paided $25 when I switched to voip.ms, and I still have $12.12 in my current balance. There is no need for a FreePBX for your grandparents and parents if you go with voip.ms. However, feel free to set it up if you really want to practice and have something to play and test with.

Now, back to the story. The number I purchased with Ooma was like a business line because it ended with 8000. It was easy to remember, which is why I bought it. About a year ago I started getting calls asking if they are calling a Dentist office. I kept telling callers they have the wrong number. Finally, the owner of a Dentist office calls me and says they had just bought my home DID from Ooma. She explained that the number was already published on all their brochures, insurance documents, and all their phone extensions were based off the 8000 extension etc... They were also opening in 2 weeks. Turns out Ooma never removed the number out of their database when I ported over to voip.ms and then sold the number to this Dental office because they bought Oooma Business phone service. I mean there was only two people that called my home #, my mom and my dad. And this business was screwed. The cost to change the DID on all there brochures, documents, etc... would probably cost them a good amount. The Dental office ended up making me a $$$ offer for the DID and I released it to them. The owner was also a Dental surgeon and offered to do any Dental surgeries for my family with no out of pocket costs after insurance pays. Turns out my wife needs gum grafting surgery and we are going to save another $1,000 - $2,000 dollars by not having to pay anything out of pocket after insurance. I mean what luck. I love telling this story. Sorry to side track this thread, but it just reminded my of this.

I’m looking for a solution to allow users to view data from an old ERP system that is running on Windows 2008R2 servers. The company has migrated away from the old ERP, but not all information has been migrated into the new ERP system. Users are still accessing the old ERP system for data that didn’t get migrated. The old ERP system is running on a Windows 2008R2 sever with Pervasive SQL database backend. I will have the ability to export data to CSV files. Can someone point me in the right direction for users to view the archived data? My first thought was to create a new Fedora server with MariaDB installed. I could import the CSV files from the old ERP system into the MariaDB. I would then install some sort of simple web interface like Adminer for users to access the database in a GUI. Is there another solution that someone can point me to that would make more sense, or am I on the right track?

I'm now doing a U-turn and looking at Veeam again. My new plan is to go with Veeam Enterprise. My Veeam repository will be a SAM-SD for local backups. Then for $80 I can install Cloudberry on the SAM-SD and replicate Veeam local backups to BackBlaze B2. Thanks everyone for the insight. Thanks for steering me in the right direction. The Unitrends deal was looking good on paper, and didn't like having to make a decision based on the Unitrends sales rep year end numbers. Let me mention that the Unitrends sales staff are absolutely relentless. Almost as annoying as Know4Be before sales reps.

I like running. Right now I'm at about 10-12 miles a week which is roughly running 3 days a week. It clears my head, relieves stress, burns calories, and is free.

I just wanted to update this thread that I've got my LoveRPi RetroPie Emulation Station Mini Game PC all setup and it's running beautifully. No lag as the marcinoza mentioned his was doing. I'm loving the the setup and playing the old NES games. If you want to set up your LoveRPi with almost any retro game you could ever think of, follow the instructions from this YouTuber. I did everything step by step and everything works great. Enjoy!

Thank you for your comments Scott and Jared. This is what I needed. I will asking about putting some sort of stoppage on long distance calls so they don't rack up like this. This should be turned on by default for customers to prevent this. Unbelievable.

@scottalanmiller said in How do you guys handle counter offers?:

@magicmarker said in How do you guys handle counter offers?:

I’m at the point where it would need to be a 50% raise to even consider anything. My current employer has hinted on looking to accommodate the 50% raise.

You will never have a good situation if they are "willing to accommodate" and not actively happy with the rate. It's good for a little bit, but over the long haul, it's an unhappy situation. They didn't see you as worth that today, they are only going to pay you that under pressure. They will always see you as strong arming them and will resent you. You will not be happy with the situation and resent them. The company you turn down will see you as having wasted their time and not want you in the future. No one wins.

This is a great point. It seems I will be burning 2 bridges.

@DustinB3403 said in VOIP voicemail hacked aka DISA toll fraud:

The documentation for the Cisco Unity system says there are policies that can be set for the voicemail pin, including minimum length, the duration an account is locked, if an admin has to manually unlock an account etc.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/8x/administration/guide/8xcucsagx/8xcucsag160.pdf

After the fraud, the VOIP provider has implemented stronger policies for PIN's now. I will be talking to them about implementing some sort of stoppage on international calls after they hit a certain limit. We are also going to take a hard look at turning off international calling and/or picking specific countries that we need to contact.

I've been working with Veeam support on this. They are telling me that I can use the new Cloud Tier option in update 4 instead of Cloudberry to offload Veeam backups to cheap cloud storage (I plan to choose Wasabi). Since this feature is so new it's hard to know all the cons at the moment. I'm going to try and skip the extra CloudBerry license costs to use the new Veeam Cloud Tier option already built into my Veeam Enterprise license to offload backups to Wasabi. I can update this post after I complete it.
Edit: Here is a link to setting up Cloud Tier with Wasabi if anyone is interested.

I wanted to update this post for anyone searching this in the future. After I actually went through all the devices that would have a hard coded static IP address, I was only presented with a list 15 devices throughout my entire infrastructure (5 branch offices). The list does not include server VM DNS entries though. Updating the DNS settings on the hard coded devices is definitely a better route than what I was trying to originally accomplish by keeping the original DC IP address. Attempting a work around with Active Directory would potentially cause much more chaos. Updating 15 devices and server IP DNS entries is going to take me less than an hour. So take the advice in this post as long as you know your network.

Server 2019 enables by default some Hyper-v feature called RSC. I wonder if this is your issue. Someone had this same issue as me and turned it off and my Read speed went up to the 900Mbps limited by switch speed now.

https://serverfault.com/questions/976324/very-poor-network-performance-with-server-2019

Are any of you doing anything to protect your network/clients regarding the Zoom security flaw in this article: https://mashable.com/article/zoom-vulnerability-windows-passwords/?

If you apply the workaround GPO policy on a domain joined pc, then there will be problems accessing files on a file server or NAS mapped drive the way I understand it.

I've got a great YouTube link for MS Teams training for employees and/or yourself: https://youtu.be/HmzU21JbkjY. Very clear and straight forward training. YouTube link also provides timestamps links for specific training topics.

@JaredBusch said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

Hardware is not worth the fucking time to get back.

If the company thinks wasting man hours on that is a good idea the company is insane

Thank you! I completely agree. Trying to convince my company this idea is difficult for me right now.

@black3dynamite said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

There's Absolute Security. But that's more for securing your devices than obtaining your hardware.
You can lockdown and track the device location but that doesn't mean you will get your equipment back.

https://www.absolute.com
https://www.absolute.com/platform/editions/

From Dell
https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/help-me-choose/hmc-absolute-computrace

Great point. I wanted to look into those programs. The Sophos block policy isn’t going to get me very far in getting the hardware back. At least I feel like I still won since they can’t freely use the laptop without wiping and reloading the OS. My point is that the pc becomes more useless to the employee. They MAY be more inclined to return it.

@travisdh1 said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

@magicmarker said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

@scottalanmiller said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

@magicmarker said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

When they can't open IE, Chrome, Firefox, or Office apps the laptop becomes pretty useless.

LOL, what does that take, five minutes to work around? Not much of a deterent.

We are talking about a standard user with no admin rights. The Sophos policies will block all browsers, office applications, USB ports, and PDF readers on a per device policy. Why would a standard user have a work around for this in 5 minutes? At that point the users only option is hire a tech to slave the drive and copy the data. The Sophos policies just make it harder to use the pc after they are terminated.

Reinstall OS, done. Possibly reflash BIOS/UEFI if that is locked down. That's at the longest possible time. I've forcibly removed a locked down Sophos without benefit of the unlock code before. 5 minutes is a little long for that in my personal opinion.

The user still needs to hire a @travisdh1 to do that for them. It's still annoying to them. Users are not going to know how to slave a drive and re-install an OS. So factor in the users time to find a computer tech and then pay for the work to be done. It's not 5 minutes.

@scottalanmiller said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

@magicmarker said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

When they can't open IE, Chrome, Firefox, or Office apps the laptop becomes pretty useless.

LOL, what does that take, five minutes to work around? Not much of a deterent.

We are talking about a standard user with no admin rights. The Sophos policies will block all browsers, office applications, USB ports, and PDF readers on a per device policy. Why would a standard user have a work around for this in 5 minutes? At that point the users only option is hire a tech to slave the drive and copy the data. The Sophos policies just make it harder to use the pc after they are terminated.

@sully93 said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

We have our employees (office-based and home-based) sign a company equipment agreement upon their hire. It states along the lines that they agree to care for all company equipment they are issued and return in proper working condition upon termination of employment. Failure to do so will be considered theft and lead to criminal prosecution. On the employee's last day they are informed that any vacation accrual they have will be held for payout until the equipment is returned. This usually does the trick for us. I've only had to threaten police action with a former employee once before the laptop magically showed up a couple of days later.

@sully93 I like this approach. I'll leave the whole vacation accrual up to HR and accounting, but I like the failure to return equipment can lead to criminal prosecution company equipment agreement.

At this point, calling the police seems to be a good option.

We don't currently deploy any remote wipe software on home users pc's. After thinking about this, we will be blocking apps and disabling the USB ports on the laptop's with Sophos Central in our off-boarding process. When they can't open IE, Chrome, Firefox, or Office apps the laptop becomes pretty useless. Along with disabling USB that can't transfer files to their jump drives. It may motivate them to ship back the laptop since it becomes a big paper weight as long as they are not smart enough to slave the drive.

@Pete-S said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

@magicmarker said in Obtaining hardware from terminated remote employee:

When a remote employee is terminated how do you handle the collection of the hardware (laptop, docking station, printer, etc..)? In the new company I work for, almost 60% of the workforce is working from home throughout the US. Our HR department is out-sourced, but we have 1 main in-house employee that does HR tasks to help bridge the gap between the out-sourced HR service and internal employees. Employees are typically terminated over the phone by their managers. The IT department is then tasked with the collection of the hardware. This includes contacting the terminated employee over a personal email, or personal cell phone number. We are also tasked with working with the shipping manager to prepare a pre-paid shipping label and box to ship the equipment to the employee’s residence to send back the hardware.

It’s been a major challenge getting hardware back from the terminated employees. For obvious reasons, the fired employees are hard to get ahold of, and are difficult to work with. We are sending 1,2, 3 emails and/or calling the employee multiple times.

When the IT department proposed the holding the paycheck to VP’s until the hardware is returned, we were told it’s illegal. In all my previous companies I’ve never had to worry about this. This was always handled by HR or the fired managers employee. Is this normal? How can I get this task off our plate and worry about more important IT related tasks?

It's really easy. You should just follow the company's written procedure how to handle the equipment of terminated employees.

If the procedure isn't working, management needs to change it or just accept that they wont get the equipment back.

Because why should the fired employee even bother with packing and shipping back the company's used equipment? They don't work there anymore. You need either a stick or a carrot to convince them and right now it's neither.

The company has no written procedure. Can anyone point me to where I can find a template for this?