From an admin perspective one of the best things to lab out is setting up a standard SMB server stack, which is 2x domain controllers, 2x DHCP servers, a file server, and a couple of desktop VMs, then practice setting it up to be nicely locked down like in a standard corporate environment. For example:
redirect user directories to the file server and set permissions so only the user, admins and departmental managers can access files
setup departmental directories on the share with departmental and managerial permissions
setup group policies to lock down the desktops so that users just get a standard experience
But also make sure to set this up both in Windows Server with the full "Desktop Experience" as well as on Windows Server Core, and try to do so while following best practices with redundancy, network segmentation, etc. you could even get fancy and setup a remote site with redundant servers and replication to the remote site as well to experiment with how that works.
Then of course, once you have your virtual SMB network setup, try to break it. Fill up some of the VMs so it's out of disk space, corrupt one of the VMs and try to recover it, power off the servers when you shouldn't, cut some important virtual Ethernet connections and leave them severed for a while, or degrade the virtual ethernet connection and see what happens, delete the only domain controller and see what the best path to business continuity is, etc.
This covers a lot of the tickets and critical failures you'll see on a standard SMB network and will give you a good amount of exposure to a lot of what you'll work with in the "real world"
A real world cursed config a friend who works at an MSP told me about is a domain controller with HyperV setup on it. You read that right, the DC is on the HyperV host. Apperently they've been wanting to fix it for a few years but haven't gotten the go ahead on the hours or downtime to fix it
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.
OK, and compared to what? "Less" is a comparison, but you didn't specify what you're comparing Debian to.
Out-of-the-box RAM usage is a pretty specious metric because you're not installing Debian (or any other OS) just to have sit there in its out-of-the-box condition. Do you think a Debian server running Apache with 1000 vhosts will use less RAM than a RHEL server running nginx with 10 vhosts?
Debian uses like 200MBs of ram for a basic fresh install. That’s negligible.
Unless you’re deploying 500 virtual machines on a single server, that all run a single simple basic task the base ram usage of the OS shouldn’t even be a factor.
I think this is a fairly common use case. Maybe not the most common, but I’ve definitely seen this at multiple shops.
Density of RAM on hosts is often a limiting factor for scaling. Not every app is CPU hungry. Some just need to be available, and running a whole is for isolation is the way it’s done in a lot of shops.
Honestly I’m surprised that they aren’t targeting us markets more. It seems like a market that they could get into if they partner with the right companies
Immutable/offline backups. If you backup to local physical media (HDD/tape), physically disconnect/eject it and store it somewhere safe. If you back up to cloud storage (S3, etc), many of them have immutability options. If configured properly nobody (not even you) can delete or modify the backups (within the specified time period).
Ironic that AWS was trying to push their own productivity solution (WorkMail, WorkDocs, Wickr, Chime, Connect). I guess they’re just going to let that die on the vine.
Well Idk but they are always talking about a network for apps. But what I want to see is a decentralized storage. Nothing less nothing more. Thats what IPFS is supposed to be. What other build on top is a whole different story. I think we should put our efforts together instead of trying to reinvent the weel.
Ok this sounds a lot better now. As you explained it Vailid can also be used for storage purposes only? Like a distributed public file storage? And if apps can access this storage this is more than welcome. But I’m more concerned about the foundation.
The worst thing is that they haven’t figured out how to update their help pages to reflect changes they make to their products in any kind of adequate manner.
I just received a request to deploy a new VM that is going to be used for managing and provisioning switch ports on some new networking gear. The vendor has provided a document with their minimum requirements for this. 24 vCPU’s 84GB of RAM 600GB HDD with a minimum I/O speed of 200MB/s
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