Best posts made by Mike Davis

This whole conversation reminds me of a discussion between a manager and an employee. The employee wanted to go to a conference. The manager wanted a cost justification. The manager wanted the employee to tell him what they were going to learn there. The employee said I don't know what I don't know and won't know about it unless I go to the conference. If I knew about it, there would be no need to go.

@wirestyle22 said in Managing Hyper-V:

How are you managing your non-domain connected hyper-v hosts?

5nine manager. I first had to use it to manager a Hyper-v 2016 box on a network where I didn't have any Windows 10 machines. It seems to work well.

I inherited a network where a few of the workstations are BitLockered. I searched the server and can't seem to find central management. The server is running Server 2008 Standard. I can't even find a group policy related to BitLocker. What should I be looking for to see if it's centrally managed? If they aren't centrally managed, is there something I can load on Server Essentials 2016 to manage them? I looked at MBAM, but doesn't look like it will run on Server Essentials.

I will almost always do stuff with a GPO. I inherited a network where the guy did stuff manually. (like a net route statement) It was very difficult figuring out what he had done by hand and where.

@dave247 said in Anyone know a place that sells booted Cat6 in feet: 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, etc?:

I'd really rather not. I'm not very good at it and I don't have a lot of time.

For what they cost to buy vs make, no one gainfully employed has the time...

From Webroot:

To be compatible with the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creator update build 1709, we have made available our SecureAnywhere endpoint version 9.0.18.44. If you are considering updating to the Windows 10 Fall Creator update build 1709, we strongly recommend updating your SecureAnywhere endpoint version to our 9.0.18.44 release. This will ensure that when you update your system, your security will be compatible with the upgrade.

To install this latest version of Webroot, you can either update your current version of Webroot endpoint or you can uninstall and reinstall using our latest endpoint download available via the Webroot Admin Console > "Resources" tab.

To force an update to the latest version, please use the "Agent Commands" option from within the Webroot admin console. From the "Sites" tab of the console, click to manage the specific site in question > Endpoint Protection > Group Management > Agent Commands > Advanced > Download and Execute a File.

http://anywhere.webrootcloudav.com/zerol/wsasme.exe

You can also use the URL above to download the installer locally on the endpoint via a browser, and run manually.

In case you missed it, Microsoft just issued this:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/security-updates/securityadvisories/2017/4056318

Executive Summary
Microsoft is releasing this security advisory to provide information regarding security settings for the AD DS (Active Directory Domain Services) account used by Azure AD Connect for directory synchronization. This advisory also provides guidance on what on-premises AD administrators can do to ensure that the account is properly secured.

@aaronstuder said in Synology DiskStation DS713+ transfer speeds:

@mike-davis Might be time to replace the 8 port NetGear Gig switch

I've told them that about 3 times. Each time they turn it down. When I came in they had a 10/100 switch as their core and Server 2003 acting as their firewall. I told them they would have to replace a bunch of stuff just to get up to today's standards. They hemmed and hawed about the price, but I told them to look on the bright side, they haven't spent any money on IT in 20 years...

When I started as a MSP I used some of the free tools for some tasks and paid for ScreenConnect and a few other things. Then I kind of hit a wall where the free tools wouldn't let me do things that I needed for some of my more demanding clients. I decided to go all in on the MSP side and start moving away from break fix, so I needed more automation to be more efficient. So far, I'm glad I did.

To answer your question about tools, for a new client, I spent 15 minutes putting an agent on his network. Then later that day I emailed him a report that showed all the machines that were missing patches, running AV or not, running questionable software, etc. Graphs, colorful pictures, etc right out of the box. 20 minutes of my time. Have you ever tried running a report out of Spiceworks?

@tech1 Sometimes it helps to take a step back and evaluate what you're really trying to do instead of look for a product for what is already in place. Liquid mail claims to filter, but clearly it's not working. o365 and gmail do a great job, so why not consider them? It would probably be better to filter it before it hits the client.

Ah, maybe the best approach would be to have two SSIDs. One on a schedule and one on all the time. Then only allow devices you want to connect to the all on SSID.

To add to @JaredBusch 's post, for the clients where I'm not imaging the machines, after the clean install, I have a USB key with a script that runs that installs my remote control agent and then I just fire off a script with a chocolatey script that installs Acrobat, Chrome, etc. You can automate things so it's not a huge time suck.

I just took some computers from no AD to AD. The USMT even grabbed their wall paper. The commands were:

scanstate.exe c:\USMT /uel:30 /i:migapp.xml /i:migdocs.xml /localonly /ui:"sarah"
loadstate.exe c:\USMT /i:miguser.xml /i:migapp.xml /MU:"sarah":"ad.domain.com\ssmith"

You would be doing the reverse of that, but the /MU switch is the one that changes the account type. One that that I noticed is that it seemed to be scanning the entire hard drive looking for docs placed outside the user folders. Since it was going right back down to the same machine, I didn't need that, since it took extra time. If anyone knows what is needed to avoid that, please share.

To answer the original question, you don't have to make it a domain controller.
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2018/09/05/windows-server-2019-essentials-update/

Windows Server 2019 Essentials has the same licensing and technical characteristics as its predecessor, Windows Server 2016 Essentials. If configured as a Domain Controller, Windows Server 2019 Essentials must be the only Domain Controller, must run all Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles, and cannot have two-way trusts with other Active Directory domains.

The poor mans way is to hold a patch cable up to a LED on one end and aim the other end at a piece of paper or something and see if you can see the light.

Fiber typically doesn't have issues. All the times I've been called in to check something like that out, it's because someone plugged something in to the other port of a dual personality port or something like that that made them think the fiber was down. Not saying a backhoe couldn't take one out, it just there are lots of other issues that can take a link down.

@travisdh1 Thanks for saving me from having to read the whole article.

Watching @scottalanmiller pace and talk at MangoCon.

I think the question about how to do you find a good IT company and how do you find a good accountant are very closely related. There are a ton of parallels.

Take the onsite vs remote thing. In some companies they don't want to ever touch a plug, the same way they don't ever want to scan in a receipt. They want someone to show up and do the job. In other companies they have someone with enough IT knowledge to do the hands on stuff, the same way they have someone that does the daily accounting tasks, but needs help with the year end tasks.

In both lines of work when owners are searching for a service provider a recommendation from a friend will outweigh most everything else.

I'm looking for a good option for online backup for servers. Most of them are Microsoft Server Essentials running on ESXi 5.5 free. So far I have used:

iBackup - $120 /year, 500GB
Carbonite - $900 /year, 500GB
Cloudberry + Amazon Glacier - $100 for CloudBerry Software, $0.007 per GB ($42 /year for 500GB + the initial $100)

I'm considering CloudBerry's service provider option. http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pricing-computer-data-backup-services.aspx

I know it can cost more to get data out of Glacier, but this is the backup in the event that the server and the local onsite backup fails, so I think it's pretty unlikely that it will be used, and if it does come to that point, the incremental cost of pulling data out of Glacier will be nothing compared to building a new server and backup.

20 hours talk time and almost a month of stand by time makes it almost worth having since my smart phone can't make it through the day on a full charge.