Nebula VPN routes between hosts privately, flexibly, and efficiently
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/nebula-vpn-routes-between-hosts-privately-flexibly-and-efficiently/

"Last month, the engineering department at Slack—an instant messaging platform commonly used for community and small business organization—released a new distributed VPN mesh tool called Nebula. Nebula is free and open source software, available under the MIT license.

It's difficult to coherently explain Nebula in a nutshell. According to the people on Slack's engineering team, they asked themselves "what is the easiest way to securely connect tens of thousands of computers, hosted at multiple cloud service providers in dozens of locations around the globe?" And (developing) Nebula was the best answer they had. It's a portable, scalable overlay networking tool that runs on most major platforms, including Linux, MacOS, and Windows, with some mobile device support planned for the near future."

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@wrx7m said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@wrx7m said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Google Cloud gets a new family of cheaper general-purpose compute instances

As soon as someone mentions Google Cloud in News, I assume that they are shutting it down to pursue other projects.

Yeah. I usually look at these in terms of how it moves the whole cloud industry forward (and making it less expensive).

For sure. I just keep expecting Google to forget that they do this and shut it down with little warning.

Quite possible. It has happened to many of their higher-profile "products".

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@wrx7m said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Google Cloud gets a new family of cheaper general-purpose compute instances

As soon as someone mentions Google Cloud in News, I assume that they are shutting it down to pursue other projects.

Yeah. I usually look at these in terms of how it moves the whole cloud industry forward (and making it less expensive).

Google Cloud gets a new family of cheaper general-purpose compute instances
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/11/google-cloud-gets-a-new-family-of-cheaper-general-purpose-compute-instances/

"Google Cloud today announced the launch of its new E2 family of compute instances. These new instances, which are meant for general-purpose workloads, offer a significant cost benefit, with saving of around 31% compared to the current N1 general-purpose instances.

The E2 family runs on standard Intel and AMD chips, but as Google notes, they also use a custom CPU scheduler “that dynamically maps virtual CPU and memory to physical CPU and memory to maximize utilization.” In addition, the new system is also smarter about where it places VMs, with the added flexibility to move them to other hosts as necessary. To achieve all of this, Google built a custom CPU scheduler “with significantly better latency guarantees and co-scheduling behavior than Linux’s default scheduler.” The new scheduler promises sub-microsecond wake-up latencies and faster context switching."

Veeam Offers Native backup for Amazon EC2 instances
https://www.veeam.com/blog/amazon-ec2-native-backup-recovery.html

"...fully featured free edition, however the strongest value comes in the capabilities explained below. Read on to discover why this is a must-have for anyone running Amazon EC2 instances.

• AWS-native
• Automates Amazon EBS snapshots for frequent backup and fast restores
• Copy to Amazon S3 for long-term retention
• Policy-based protection
• Deployed from Amazon Marketplace with simple web-based management UI"

@stacksofplates said in When should I use a Bastion Host?:

The whitelisting is probably a lot easier with Okta. But if you set up your SSH config for your profile you can use the bastion host automatically so it's probably 6 and half dozen.

Is this with Okta Advanced Server Access?

@Obsolesce said in MS Windows 7 SP1 Full Screen Alert:

I don't know of any home users still on 7. Nobody keeps a device that long, and would have something later than Win7.

My Dad does. He also refuses to stop using his even older Windows XP computer for some offline tasks.

@Florida_man said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:

@Dashrender said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:

@flaxking said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:

Many of the sysadmin jobs I've been applying for want repo links. So when you have a family, and a job where sometimes you have to work 100 hour weeks - and that doesn't let you open source your configuration as code, you have to pick your battles.

And then there's the homework assignments, one job had me submit an architecture design even before I had an interview with the recruiter.

huh - did you send them an bill? That does seem unreasonable - you produced work, you should be compensated... who's to say they aren't just using you for free architecture design?

Yes. Being able to explain it in an interview totally acceptable, but providing finished document before interview unacceptable

I have a friend who is a trainer for a larger tech company. When she was interviewing for that job (or another one), she had to do a training presentation on something as part of her interview. I know it isn't quite the same, but still similar.

Object storage in NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4
https://www.veeam.com/blog/object-storage-new-office-365-backup-v4.html
*Object Storage support

Starting from version 4, you will be able to leverage Object Storage to offload your Office 365 data. You can choose from different providers such as Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob, IBM Cloud or S3 compatible object storage providers or even on-premises object storage.*

@PhlipElder said in RDS 2019 Setup and RDS License Role:

@wrx7m said in RDS 2019 Setup and RDS License Role:

When using UPD, is there anyway to access various users profiles' folders and files from the RDS server file system?
Example:
C:\Users\Bob\Desktop

Edit: I found that I can path to it via UNC (\ \server\c$\users\Bob\Desktop), but get permissions error when I go locally, from C:\Users\Bob\Desktop. Also, the Bob folder is only a shortcut (LNK file) in the users directory.

The path is there in the form of a symbolic link. So, no. It's one way to limit exposure to ransomware.

If there is a need, the user can be logged off and one can mount the .VHDX file to gain access to whatever is needed.

Yeah, I fairly often have to copy files into a user profile here and there. I did notice that the disk is only mounted for the duration of their session and obviously would prevent interaction with it if the user is logged out. But, mounting the VHDX isn't that bad... if I had to do it when they were logged out. I would have to revisit a tool I just saw somewhere that allows you to quickly match the VHDX file with the user, since it only uses the SID in the file name.