Scott, I wish you had one of your nice detailed technical articles on virtualization: Hyper-V Server vs Windows Server.
It would be so much easier to throw out that link, drop the mic, and walk out.

@scottalanmiller SWEET write up SAM!

Now I don't have to type it out every time the question is brought up... I'll just link to this.

Will save me so much time.

@scottalanmiller said in Learn to Code Python with Thonny:

@tim_g said in Learn to Code Python with Thonny:

Are you getting into a lot of programming / software development lately yourself?

Me? Yes, I am. I was a developer before I came to IT (dev since '89, IT since '94) and it is great to be back in it again. I've got Visual Studio Code open pretty much all day now! Loving it.

I've done around 100 commits just this week.

I'm thinking about stepping into that realm myself for fun to start. Mostly because I find myself needing good IT software and web interfaces that don't exist. I like the idea of it, but find it hard to get started.

My end goal is to be able to intelligently write bits of software that are able to communicate and interact with APIs like REST API, to display and manipulate data on HTML5 pages.

I'm not sure where the best place is to begin, though I haven't yet done a lot of research because I'm so busy doing and learning IT stuff in my spare time. However, I was thinking Javascript may be a good place to start, and if not, Python.

What would you (or anyone in that world) suggest to start with in my spare time keeping my end goal in mind?

@nerdydad said in How to choose public DNS provider for an ISP:

As some of you know, I am working on building a WISP. One thing that I have decided to do is go all private IP addresses to cut down costs and to protect my system and subs a little more.

One thing I have a concern about is who do I want to point to for my upstream DNS? Default answer is Google or OpenDNS. Don't really trust big companies.

Without beating around the bush too much, should I consider a DNS provider that doesn't track queries but could also be blocking some of the Internet to the subscriber or a DNS provider that gives them full reign over the Internet without concern about the sub's privacy?

I'd prefer one with no tracking whatsoever (to protect privacy), but that also is 100% open (as in no dns blocking). It's not your job to be an malware choke point.

At most, and probably preferrably, use a DNS service with zero tracking, and only potentially blocks known infection vectors.

SURPRISE! All of the big companies you use are secretly collecting data about you and what you do, or are getting hacked for the stuff you do give them.

Update:

I got it working cleanly and smoothly with WinSCP. Thanks for the pointer everyone!

If anyone else who comes by this wants to know the procedure:

• Download and install WinSCP on your Windows Server
• Create a basic Scheduled Task, name it, schedule it --> "Start a program", browse to WinSCP.exe.
• Use the argument:

/log=C:\Users\<userProfile>\Desktop\<logName>.log /script=C:\Users\<userProfile>\Desktop\<scriptName>.txt

• Open properties of Scheduled Task, change to run even if not logged in, run with highest privileges, click OK and enter password.

Script Contents

The <scriptName>.txt file can include what you need to happen. My use case was a simple one, and looked like this:

# Connect
open sftp://<username>:<password>@123.45.67.890 -hostkey="ssh-rsa 2048 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx"

# Change remote directory
cd /var/www/html/pki

# Force binary mode transfer
option transfer binary

# Upload the files to current working directory
put "D:\pki\<name>.html"
put "D:\pki\<name>.crl"
put "D:\pki\<name>+.crl"
put "D:\pki\<name>.crl"
put "D:\pki\<name>.crt"
put "D:\pki\<name>.crt"

# Disconnect
close

# Exit WinSCP
exit

Edit: Fixed formatting thanks to JaredBusch's advice below.

Seems like they are keeping the bloat, and removing useful things... wtf.

@dustinb3403 said in I can't even:

@eddiejennings said in I can't even:

@dustinb3403 said in I can't even:

@eddiejennings said in I can't even:

@dustinb3403 said in I can't even:

What the hell?!

Should I turn off my servers before Hurricane Irma arrives, expecting 4-5 days without power!

Um.. yeah no keep em plugged in and chugging along.. . .

I liked the one response of one dude takes the server and goes X direction and the other dude takes the NAS and goes Y direction. Wouldn't be a terrible thing to do assuming moving it is feasible, and way its being transported won't destroy the equipment. I wonder if they'd take their network equipment as well.

That doesn't make sense, because then if something does happen that poor employee is f***ed by management for "not protecting the equipment" rather than saving his/his families lives.

Have proper offsite backups and fuck the hardware. That is what insurance plans are for.

You're operating on the following assumptions.

1. You assume there are proper offsite backups.
2. You assume there is insurance.

No I only assume that people do the correct thing and not give a f*** about physical hardware. Planning for disasters such as this is the IT and businesses responsibility when they live/work in these areas.

Yeah I wouldn't want to be responsible for computers and data during a disaster. I would rather be focusing on keeping myself and my family alive. I'd rather be jobless than lose someone's life or be divorced.

Honestly, I would return EVERYTHING.

Then I would sit down and design it the right way, using a few R730xd servers, with appropriate specs to accommodate your needs. With that and Starwind vSAN, you can get your HA.

Do you actually need HA? Does the company feel spending the money for real HA is a business requirement and makes financial sense?

Windows Admin Center 1809 and SDK now generally available!

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2018/09/20/windows-admin-center-1809-and-sdk-now-generally-available/

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Today is my daughter's ninth birthday.

Today is my son's first birthday.

@Grey said in Certificate Authority Quagmire:

@Tim_G said in Certificate Authority Quagmire:

I used a procedure similar to the one in the URL you linked, in a production environment. The case I used it in was to completely remove a PKI and create a new one. I know a little different than in your case, but as long as you do not delete anything you need you will be fine.

I have two questions to ask that will determine whether or not I can help you:

1. What command did you use to get that output in PS?

2. For what purposes are you using your PKI?

... and because I can't count
3. Is it the subject name of the certificate that is not correct? Not sure I understand what you are referring to.

• Certutil. Use it on any windows system that's connected to your domain.
• Internal validation, especially on VDI and internal web servers.
• Yes.

You can't change the name on the certificate. You will need to request a new one from your DC which you can do via certlm.msc.

How did the DC get a certificate with an incorrect name in the first place?

Microsoft is in the early stages of a project, codenamed “Anaheim”, that is currently slated to replace Microsoft Edge for Windows 10. Instead of continuing to use the company’s EdgeHTML engine, Anaheim will reportedly be built upon Chrome’s open source Blink engine.

https://9to5google.com/2018/12/03/microsoft-chrome-based-browser/

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just had to explain to folks that a problem with software on a user's personal computer on their home network is beyond the scope of our support.

You could always tell them you'll do an in-home diags/repair for $150/hr

We already threw a bunch out. I think we have another on it's way out. Is yours a 2U? Maybe I could send you the piece you need... here's a pic of the one I have:

Microsoft keeps its Password-less promise and ships native FIDO2 support to Azure AD & Windows 10

@eddiejennings said in I can't even:

I should print the last day or so of this thread, and when presented with the question of "What's the cost of Winodws?" provide the printout.

Capital idea!

Edit: Some background on what I'm doing, for the sake of context:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dpm/2016/10/19/introducing-dpm-2016-modern-backup-storage/

I've got to say, so far my semi-production testing of System Center Data Protection Manager 2016 using Modern Backup Storage method is going well.

This post may be a little early, as I still have a ton of testing scenarios to perform... but I wanted to share my initial results, with maybe some hopes of others who are/have done the same thing could share theirs as well.

Environment

I started the test backing up two sources:

• A Hyper-V Server 2016 host used to build and hold "gold master" images for image deployment (287 GB)
• A real production "main" fileserver(WS2016) (located on a different 2012 R2 Datacenter host) that has a little over 3 TB of data (which already includes one or two already deduped volumes) (3.1 TB)

I have the "gold master" hyper-v host being backed up to 16x 250 GB .vhdx disks in a simple volume (raid0) (F:). No need to raid that as they are located on a physical RAID10 which is formatted as NTFS.

The "main" fileserver is being backed up on to 24x 500 GB .vhdx disks in a simple volume (raid0), also located on a physical RAID10 formatted as NTFS (E: on the backup server host)

So together, they are about 3.4 TB of data. Here's the dedup results on the backup host:

So right off the bat, it looks like all the gold masters are deduping pretty well (73% space savings). I'm guessing because there's a lot of like data, but what I want to test is to see if the smaller .vhdx disks on the back-end make a difference.

The 3.1 TB fileserver backup deduped at 45% space savings. I was hoping for 50% but close enough.

What's it look like on the back end?

I added 3 additional SCSI controllers on the VM, and added the 40x .vhdx disks split among those.

Within the backup VM (serv-DPM), I used Storage Spaces to create two volumes to present to SCDPM, which formats that as ReFS.

I don't have DPM backing up the Fileserver and other gold master host over the weekend because that's when our real backups are done, so I don't yet have any results regarding subsequent DPM backups. I have them set for 7 days retention, and to back up mon,tues,wed,thurs.

I'll post more results later this week. And even more further test results in the coming weeks.