Is the sysadmim reddit still used by people? Get them to switch on over. I don't get why they haven't already. Link this community in the sidebar on Reddit and pin a post saying we moved to Lemmy
Have you done a site survey? How big is the place, and what are the walls made of? If it's easy to cover, you might just get a cheapo Netgear, and set it and forget it.
I'd also look at mesh equipment (but NOT just repeaters). They're pretty good these days.
I hear Unifi equipment being recommended a lot less these days. And I imagine that you want something that's not going to take management and supervision, preferring something that will Just Work, especially if you're not nearby to fix it when it breaks.
You're probably right. The setup they have now is an old netgear nighthawk with an AP to cover the second story. It works fine if it works, but it needs to be restarted when the prepaid internet shuts off and comes back. My dad rewired the AP and then wondered why it didn't work anymore.
There's the option of cameras where they can't make up their mind. If cameras I'd like an integrated system for everything, which is why I was looking for a modular approach. But if I use a Dream Router that's not even the case anymore, either.
I guess I have to tell them - once again - that we have to sit down and make up their minds about what they want. Then I can make up mine about what debugging options I want.
We are. Where I am, the money men are (rightly) scared and we're looking at our options. I'm currently assessing Kubernetes as an alternative. The benefits to containerization are too great to ignore, but if we go that route, the workload to migrate our services is definitely going to sting for the next few months. Thanks Broadcom....
How about Proxmox? It allows containers and VMs. Containers via LXC, but you could set your own VM to run docker/kubernetes etc.
Haven't had many chances to try Kuberbetes myself, so not sure the difference of advantages.
Yeah, I use Proxmox at home and however much I love the product, it's not really enterprise ready. There are too many missing features and 3rd party integrations that come as standard with vSphere. Our future is probably in microservices. The cost saving benefits of auto scaling, while also being vendor agnostic are very attractive.
Ye ol "free" hyper-v as well. Would probably be the next one I consider in a corporate environment after VMware just blew it's brains out. Containers are great, I run kubernetes at one on truenas scale but obviously it's Linux containers which may have some implications if the idea is to move everything off VMware to containers. Like if there are windows vms.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. That's how hyperv has always been deployed. Install Microsoft server, install hyperv role. It's a hypervisor. Does all the fancy things like clustering as well, through the fail over cluster manager where you can view all your hosts, move vms from host to host, configure your witnesses etc. It absolutely is a competitor in the esxi space, never had quite all the bells and whistles but it was good enough for most applications.
The standalone Hyper-V Server was last released for server 2019. Not only was this leaner than Server 2019 w/ the Hyper V role, it was available for free.
If you are using LDAP auth for your hypervisor (vsphere as an example) how do you auth after a kaboom event and your AD server VMs have not auto started.
I remember reading somewhere (prob /r/Sysadmin) that having one bare metal AD server just incase everything goes offline.
You use console to turn on embedded shell then Ctrl+Alt+Fn over to it (I forget whether it's on f1 or f2), then you can use esxcli and all the rest of that to fix it up.
Once you get enough networking/storage pieces sorted out you can get back into the management HTML UI and SSH
Then when you're done fixing, turn shell and SSH back off.
You connect directly to the ESXi host with root. Because you're going to have to boot up vCenter in addition to the DC anyway when you're using SSO. I would use DRS rules to prefer host1 for vCenter and the PDCe for that reason.
Only in the very early days of virtualization (2008-2012) did I recommend keeping a physical server around. I know a lot more now than I did then.
But anymore, I don't recommend using SSO for hypervisors or backup infrastructure. It's better to add another wall in front of an attacker trying to laterally move onto these critical platforms for ransom, data exfiltration, etc.
And in reality, these "kaboom events" aren't terribly common unless you've neglected some other part of your infrastructure.
How to learn Windows? Years of pain and torture of course.
What to learn? Powershell, learn powershell.
Then as you follow along any guides or howtos for administrative tasks, try to search how to accomplish the same things in powershell. Take notes on your own powershell learnings. I keep all my windows administrative powershell one liners, scripts, and notes in the same digital notebook for quick reference and updating.
If you're already experienced with bash, like I was, learning powershell might be tough. As it was for me, I had trouble understanding why PS cmdlets seemed to hide data when piped... Format-table(ft) and Format-List(fl) help tremendously
Powershell remoting is still a pain in my ass in most places, I rarely use it.
YouTube! Don't necessarily look for YouTube powershell windows videos. Just the necessary tasks through the GUI will give you the correct direction to begin converting a process to PS. Learn how other Admins process tasks by watching them. Especially if it's an often repeated task try converting some or all of what they do in the video into PS equivalent.
With all of that said knowing powershell doesn't really help recovering from disasters. Knowing how to install windows and recover data from borked systems is a task best learned through battles. So, absolutely set up VMs and installed all manner of versions you'll be working with...that way you'll have familiarity with when things go wrong in them. I've yet to install windows 11 in a VM but I did try to install a copy onto a surface tablet only to learn the hard way that do ing so leaves the tablet without the drivers necessary for using the keyboard and touchscreen...weird need a custom built image or recovery image, great fun.
Powershell remoting is still a pain in my ass in most places, I rarely use it.
So the big thing with remote Powershell sessions is that you can't hop around like you can with SSH, but it's super useful when troubleshooting complaints of frozen/misbehaving systems with less resource needs than rdp
I love python. Even on windows but I tend to try to learn to live off the land and not prerequisite my admin skills on additional software that may not always be available or an option.
Nah you dont need a special image for the touchscreen and stuff. Check the advanced update settings for optional downloads and also give the surface app in the microsoft store a shot. It actually is not terrible for troubleshooting.
Other than that:
Create your own custom image if you deeply wish to. Here is the help doc:
Not sure if there are any great resources online but there isn't that much you need to know. I'd say just download it and mess around. Here's some random tips:
Windows has its own terminal package manager called winget, it's very useful.
Nobody uses CMD anymore, everyone moved onto Powershell. The new windows terminal is also nice.
Windows has a lot of random features and controls hidden in its registry, which you can access via regedit. You usually don't want to mess around with it but sometimes it is useful.
There are a lot of scripts online to de-bloat windows and quickly default to the best privacy settings. I'd run that if you're setting up a new install. Note that some of it comes back every time you update and you'll need to run the script again.
Just understand the file system well and how to use the control panel and firewall and you'll already be ready to go as a sysadmin
I've been using https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer for debloating my Windows VM (Yeah I forgot to mention I have one installed which I use for some school related activities, mostly Office 365 stuff), but a script would definitely streamline the debloating process.
Winget seems interesting, going to check that out!
Powershell, while it seems like a useful tool, is just gibberish to me. Somehow the syntax is just so weird for my brain to wrap around (this is no criticism towards Powershell, more like "I'm too stupid to understand PS")
I do like Control Panel, as it reminds me of the sweet sweet XP times. And I've fiddled around the registry a couple of times, always blindly trusting what some random blog post advices while having no idea what I'm actually doing. It's kinda daunting, but I guess that's just the way it is. Maybe it gets easier over time :D
Oh and one last thing, you may want to install PowerToys. It's an official program that has a suite of features for power users, things like bulk renaming, easier access to environment variables, checking which files are in use by which apps, and a couple of other neat stuff. I use the color picker all the time.
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