@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@thwr said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@thwr said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@tonyshowoff Microsoft is quite powerful in client management, something I'm missing in the *NIX world. Puppet or Ansible for example could be a starting point, but not a replacement as far as I can tell.

Edit: Sorry, mixed Samba and OpenLDAP. Fixed that in my initial post.

Definitely lacking in client side, though you can use LDAP with KDE's login system if you have X running on boot. That's pretty close, though your GPOs are often meaningless. I always used to hold out hope for ReactOS, it was promising, but the project is too mismanaged and team unmotivated. I've always wanted an NT-POSIX kernel, but I'm afraid maybe that train has sailed.

ReactOS is definitely interesting, I'm following it for years. But it seems to like the HURD kernel somehow

Unlike HURD, ReactOS is actually contributing something and has, primarily back into Wine and other projects, but something. HURD is basically the ghost of Stallman's dream which he now lives vicariously through Torvalds by taking credit for his work. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if it truly is GNU/Linux, then it's also Zend/WordPress, Borland/YourCPrograms, NodeJS/MangoLassi, etc. Give me a break.

That was more or less a joke or an anecdote. But you are right, we have yet to see something from HURD. ReactOS is something to take serious, their problem is just the small contributor/dev base. But building a system which is binary compatible to Windows and even looking like that is just an awesome job.

@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@thwr said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@coliver said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

What abilities are you, theoretically, looking for? Samba4 is a full DC drop in. You can manage Group Policies with a Windows desktop on a Samba4 domain.

Using Microsofts RSAT tools or something like that?

Yes, that's how it is expected to be managed because no one would run Samba as an AD unless you had Windows somewhere, right? So if you do, you have RSAT. So the RSAT make the most sense. If you lack RSAT, you don't need Samba.

Sure, just asked because I wanted to know if you can use RSAT or if you have to use some Samba-made tools. Using RSAT is perfectly fine.

@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@thwr said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

Samba is quite capable of running AD, but what about management options or multi-site environments?

What is the issue with management (the Windows tools should work with it) and what happens with multi-site?

Sorry, didn't see your question because of the formatting. FTFY.

Like I said, the whole topic is just about discussing valid alternatives for the typical SMB / EDU environment. I was aware that Samba 4 got full DC capabilities, at least when it comes to authentication. I did not know about its GPO support and other things like replication between "DC"s or the possibility to use Microsoft's RSAT tools for management.

@coliver (and you) mentioned one can use RSAT for management. That's good and would mean that the Samba4-team is trying hard to get to a high level of compatibility. How to say... looks like a perfect replacement for a real DC.

Back to your question, multi-site (and/or subdomain) is a quite important feature in case you got a branch office, for example.

@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

4 drives in less than 3 years. When I was brought in backups were a big concern to them because the last guy did nightly backups to an external hard drive, but they discovered a quickbooks error and needed to go back a month. He was overwriting the backup every night, so they had nothing useful to work from.

I tried to talk them in to online backups, and eventually went for a USB tape drive because I needed something that work work through ESXi.

I'll have to see if the software will let me swap out USB drives with out re-configuring the backup job each time.

You should take a look at StarWind's free Tape Redirector. Wrote something about that on my blog last month: https://www.windrath.com/2016/05/sas-tape-library-hyperv-vm-starwind-tape-redirector/.

There's also a current SW topic about that here: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1683645-got-a-new-lto-7-drive-now-what-back-up-nas?page=1#entry-5957833. @Kooler (StarWind) made a post there with quite some good info.

Basically, that's a piece of software that will virtually transport your local tape drive via iSCSI. Not sure if that works with USB drives, but it works rock solid and at wire speed for my Overland SAS drive. My backup software runs within a Hyper-V VM, tape drive is attached to one of my HV hosts. No PCIe passthrough available in my version of HyperV (2012R2).

@momurda said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.

I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.

@travisdh1 What software are you using?

@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...

That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.

I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes

Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sure

You spend half your day waiting for restores.

But you will at least get them in case of a disaster. The normal process for tape is D2D2T, so tape is always a last resort. Day to day restore will most probably be from disk.

@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

@travisdh1 said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:

Sweet mother of god I had no idea anyone still used DAT160

How long a period did it take to kill 4 of them? Are you cleaning them regularly? Do you use fresh media every couple of years?

DAT80 was the thing when I first had to deal with tapes. They upgraded that to an LTO2 20 tape robot eventually.

Same here but we went to LTO3 dual head library with dual magazines! They are really a beautiful piece of engineering.

And not even that expensive. Last time I heard about DAT was like 15 years ago. We're using a 24 Slot Tandberg LTO-5 SAS 2U Lib (OEM'd Overland, like virtually everything else on the market) with single mag and single drive, enough for our environment at this point in time. Tape may be oldschool, but they're working like a charm.

Another option could be a VTL (virtual tape library). That's basically a translator between your backup software and an image file.

@MattSpeller said in Shark Week:

@DustinB3403 said in Shark Week:

Does flowbee actually work?

Seems a bit insane..

Keeps the mess down nicely but be careful around your wedding tackle, it really sucks

Another one on my list of words I really don't want to know

Actually there's a special term for injuries that are "happening" with vacuum cleaners: Morbus Kobold. You will need Google Translator, but it's worth the time Basically, Kobold means leprechaun in English, the Kobold was a famous model from the German vac cleaner manufacturer Vorwerk - it was named after this very model.

Musical was great. About a family with next to no income living on the Kiez (Slang for the area around the Reeperbahn, Hamburgs red-light district). Father is a really bad drunkard, first daughter is managing and holding together everything, second daughter with a few weeks old baby (father unknown), grandma seriously sick, a priest having a sexual relationship with one of the sons (since he was 14), the other son had a very special "garden" project (weed) and the boyfriend of the first daughter is working for the feds.

Suddenly, the first daughter got a letter telling her that they will be removed from their poor flat if they don't pay the missing rents within 2 weeks, 7500 EUR total. Her father never paid the rents but bought alcohol whenever possible. After struggling with at least getting some money (like blackmailing different guys about the baby, blackmailing the gay priest, selling drugs, stealing from the drug dealer and so on, old granny won the lottery. A special form very popular here in Germany where you get 7500 EUR free of taxes monthly for 10 years or until you pass away. Great for the family, but granny died a second later. So they had to cheat the notary.

Funny story, good music and singing. We just had a great evening.

@scottalanmiller said in Shark Week:

I use it, you saw my hair. Seems to work, right?

Looking at your post over at the selfie thread, well, the result couldn't be any better if you use a machete for example

@coliver I know, we just need multiple pictures just to verify how bad that works

@scottalanmiller said in Shark Week:

I use it, you saw my hair. Seems to work, right?

We need to discuss that. Could you please post an up to date selfie?

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Strangely our Cloud Flare numbers are way down as of yesterday afternoon, but the site traffic on NodeBB is picking up. I can't figure out these correlations at all.

Maybe no routing through cloudflare? So traffic directly hitting ML? Would mean a DNS issue

Possible, but doesn't seem likely.

That would be weird since I'm assuming CloudFlare is the DNS provider.

Good point

Would keep monitoring it, better safe than sorry

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Strangely our Cloud Flare numbers are way down as of yesterday afternoon, but the site traffic on NodeBB is picking up. I can't figure out these correlations at all.

Maybe no routing through cloudflare? So traffic directly hitting ML? Would mean a DNS issue

@RojoLoco We're currently on the Reeperbahn on the way to a musical. It's Hamburgs famous red-light district. Found this in one of the store's window:

@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:

@Dashrender said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:

In a 100 user environment, $1,400 a month or $16,800 a year. If you need local Office this is suddenly $33,600/yr (damn that's a huge pile to swallow!)

Not as big as not using O365, though. Then you face the cost of additional staff to get similar features and reliability. Then the costs really add up.

@Dashrender I've got a full blown MS environment. SP, Exchange, SQL Server, Hyper-V... Basically everything but Linq and Dynamics. Your numbers may be correct for Open License, but I am on a Select 6. I am not allowed to talk about numbers, but it's way less. The reason for on-site are data privacy concerns, we are managing eye's only and above research projects using SP.

@scottalanmiller I'm totally aware of all the license management overhead and actually that's my primary concern. I just want to figure out if there are valid alternatives available.

@gjacobse said in Portable Mesh Network Project:

This is similar yet different to @thanksajdotcom thread Summer Camp Wireless Network. The scale is no where as large (one acre or less) and only temporary in need use.

Each year Ham Operators do what they are able to do for the community. At the end of June, they hold an event called Field Day, where they spend twenty-four hours making contacts for points. It's a fun way to practice for when there is a real emergency.

Side note: Saturday I listened to the Coast Guard net on 14.300 to a boat in possible distress as they had lost engine power on Lake Eriee.

As part of this contest, we log each contact in a program that helps keep track and filter for duplications. Our group operated in class 5-Alpha (5 radios, non-commercial power). Each station was paired with a computer for the logging, but no network was in place so post event, the logs were merged and filtered. This could be done 'real time' with a small network, and my goal for next year.

I'm looking at options for a small portable low power/cost network Access point / router. In the Google Map below, each Red Star is a operating station. Total over all distance (using Google) is about 450 feet.

However, in a real emergency event, we may have longer distances. So - I ask for ideas. As Ham Radio is 503c - A non Profit, it is most likely I will be footing the bill for this (it is my project after all). Cost is an issue, but reliability and the ability to withstand weather (rain, sleet, snow) is needed.

Let me think about that a bit, sounds interesting enough to contribute a bit (in case I have enough time)

@coliver said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@thwr said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

@coliver said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

What abilities are you, theoretically, looking for? Samba4 is a full DC drop in. You can manage Group Policies with a Windows desktop on a Samba4 domain.

Using Microsofts RSAT tools or something like that?

Well, let's assume we want a full featured domain with two sites connected via VPN with like 100 windows clients. We need things like machine accounts, managed service accounts and so on.

Yes, you can manage a Samba4 domain with RSAT tools. It will also work across a VPN. Not sure about service accounts but those would also probably work.

Will setup a test VM tomorrow Thank you

@coliver said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products: Active Directory & Domain Controller:

What abilities are you, theoretically, looking for? Samba4 is a full DC drop in. You can manage Group Policies with a Windows desktop on a Samba4 domain.

Using Microsofts RSAT tools or something like that?

Well, let's assume we want a full featured domain with two sites connected via VPN with like 100 windows clients. We need things like machine accounts, managed service accounts and so on.

@Breffni-Potter That's the point...