When you have different accounts on the same websites or services, it can often become a hassle. The reason is that your browser can only save one set of cookies and local data for each domain. So if you use different accounts you need to login repeatedly as you switch between them. You can also use a private / incognito window but you still have to login every time you close it.
To solve this problem permanently you can use profiles in your browser.

Profiles in Firefox

In Firefox open the site: about:profiles
Add a new profile there while still keeping the default profile the same.

If you want to start a browser using your new profile use:
firefox -P new_profile

If you want to create a shortcut on windows, the target will then become:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P new_profile

You can add several profiles and each profile will be completely separate, have its own UI and browser settings and also use it's own set of cookies and local data.

Profiles in Chrome

In Chrome you can add a new profile (aka user) by clicking on the person icon (You) on the top right and select + Add.

Here you can also switch profiles. When you add a profile Chrome asks if you want to create a shortcut on the desktop (Windows).

The target will look like this:
"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1"

Profiles in Microsoft Edge

Basically the same as Chrome.

Target will be like this, e.g.:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1"

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

Hi all,

I am being asked to find a storage solution for our video editing department. They use various Adobe tools on Mac clients.

They have around 40TB of files they use, with the largest files being RAW files of 300 GB - 400 GB. Average file sizes are 10 GB - 20 GB.

1/2 of this is archive and can be stored on cloud storage for pull down should they require again. Leaving around 20TB live data and 20TB in archive.

Originally, I was looking at proposing a 20 - 30 TB NAS populated with SSDs in the local office, with 10 Gbps NIC. This would provide high speed local access over the LAN to 6 marketing users.

Marketing said speed was the main concern. Accessing the large files is currently slow causing many delays. They have so far been sharing USB 3.0 devices between each other, without backups.

Our CIO is now pushing for cloud only solutions for the storage where marketing can check in/out the files they need, killing my NAS idea. I have concerns on this but am open, so would like some advice. What have you used or what would you suggest to use to provide this?

I am concerned that when an editor wants to do something with the 300 GB file, that will have to pull down from the cloud, bringing our WAN link to a crawl until the download finishes. Then, once they have finished editing, they have to upload the end product, again causing bandwidth issues. This is exacerbated shoudl multiple editors be pulling multiple files at the same time. Even at 500 Mbps with no overhead that is around 1.5h of time to sit and wait for a 300 GB file whilst everybody else is affected on the same WAN link.

I assume the'video editing' cloud storage providers are like OneDrive or DropBox, where each machine has a local cache so do not have to pull from cloud each time. But, wouldnt that mean that our video editing workstations all need to have a 20 TB local drive to store this local cache?

Kind of all over the place on this one, any ideas folks?

You need to present the math for the CIO.

It's unrealistic to assume you can use your entire bandwith for one download. It's also completely unrealistic to assume you can get 500 Mbps sustained from whatever cloud storage you have.

I would say you're lucky to have 100 Mbit/s sustained. So 10MB/s of data and a little over 8 hours for a 300GB file. 50 Mbit/s is however a more realistic number.

Next up is the maximum file size limits on cloud storage. Microsoft for example is 250GB maximum on Onedrive and Sharepoint. In other words - you can't store your video files there.

Using cloud for archival storage you may never need is fine. But for working files that the editing team is sharing, you must have those files on the LAN.

You should run a test. Sign up for a cloud storage solution and take one of those 400GB RAW files and upload it. And then download it. See what happens and how long it takes.

I'd cut down or remove the "Part Time Instructor | National College of Business and Arts" section.

Only thing I can think of when reading that, is what kind of real job you had if you could work part time simultaneously.

I'd also put your education last in the list because as an employer I would be more interested to check your skills and where you worked (what kind of projects did you do, what kind of clients) before looking at your education. Just the principle of showing your strongest selling points first. But maybe that's just me.

@dustinb3403 said in Recommendations for Cameras:

@pete-s said in Recommendations for Cameras:

Of course you can't have Ubiquiti IP cameras. Can't have "home" equipment when you're talking about a serious installation with 80-100 cameras in two locations.

hahah. . . but Wyze camera's were considered. . .

This will be next!

Hello guys,

Nice to be here! I work primarily with industrial IT.

First real network I worked with was Novell Netware in the 80's. Today it's a mixture of proprietary systems, linux, freebsd and windows.

Hope to learn more about everything, especially new technology and solutions.

If it's slow in Android it's probably slow on every slow device there is. The problem isn't Android, it's the website.

Lots of inefficient javascript, lots of css and verbose html increases the amount of RAM and CPU the browser has to use to show the webpage. You will get away with it on a PC but not a slower device. It's a frontend problem.

@EddieJennings

Nobody mentioned it afaik but I would consider removing everything music related. That could be covered elsewhere. It's not relevant to IT unless the company is involved in it somehow.

It depends on what you are. If you are a consultant, in the true meaning of the word, you would charge for every hour. If you on the other hand are bidding on jobs then the answer is no, you wouldn't charge for that. That's overhead costs.

@dashrender said in My first computer:

But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.

oh - I forgot that Scott loves to jump on the "PC is an architecture" bit. Not saying he's wrong, just that most people don't talk about it that way.

Well, it's true but it sure doesn't matter much. You would need IBM PC compatible hardware for it to be a PC. That meant a BIOS, all DMA and interrupt circuitry, 8042 keyboard controller, ISA expansion slots etc etc.

I remember I had a book detailing every hardware aspect of the PC and another book detailing all BIOS functions into minute detail. I was writing device drivers in assembler at the time which was really in-depth stuff.

@jaredbusch said in Need some PHP help for this script:

What you're building looks a little like what you have in 3CX. They also show ip address, mac address and the user name and some other minor stuff. As options besides reload (called reprovision) and reboot, they also "firmware update" and also a direct link to the phones webserver.
Maybe some of that would make sense to add to your php script?

PS. Checking the input from the form is relatively easy. Make sure the form tag in the generated html uses post <form method="post"> . Then when you receive the values into the php script you can do print_r($_POST); and you'll see how everything looks. Then it's just a matter of going through the $_POST array and picking out the extensions you selected.

It's the name of the checkboxes in html that will appear in the $_POST array. So when the html table is generated use the extension number as name for the checkboxes, for instance ext_101, ext_102 etc.

A customer ask you for a solution to a problem. You have knowledge about the customers systems because they are a repeat customer. You present a solution and give them a quote.

The customer decide to go with another company instead.

After some time the customer comes back and ask if you can offer some pointers to get the guys from the other company going forward with the implementation.

What are the options? What would YOU do?

@travisdh1 said in Flicker-free LEDs?:

@Pete-S said in Flicker-free LEDs?:

@JaredBusch said in Flicker-free LEDs?:

@Pete-S said in Flicker-free LEDs?:

Take your finger or a pen and wave it under the light source.
If you see more than one finger/pen then it's flickering.

I can wave my finger in front of my face outside in daylight and see that.

Nope, you can't. You need a stroboscopic light source for that. And the sun ain't that.

If you can see individual fingers it's because the light is going on and off and on and off etc. If you try under the sun you will just see one blurry finger.

Unless someone is getting a headache from the things, who cares?

I am, so I care. Some people (most?) don't notice.

It was the same with CRTs. Some people could work fine with 60 Hz refresh rate. I though it was freaking horrible.
With LCDs it's the backlight that might be a problem on some monitors. Not so much anymore though.

@jaredbusch said in Comparing 15k SAS and SSD:

@pete-s said in Comparing 15k SAS and SSD:

@obsolesce said in Comparing 15k SAS and SSD:

@travisdh1 said in Comparing 15k SAS and SSD:

@obsolesce Nice to confirm what most of us have been saying already.

Yeah its nice to see the numbers.

There is also the reliability rate to consider. SSD drives have 3 to 4 times lower annualized failure rate.
And you're more likely to use more 15K drives and do RAID 10 instead of RAID 1 with SSD.

Regarding SAS/SATA SSD they will all disappear soon. NVME drives in the U.2 format have superior performance and a small price premium per GB compared to the same drive in SATA.

As far as I'm concerned SATA/SAS SSD should be bought for legacy use only.

That is totally not useful as the server manufacturers are not manufacturing servers to use those generally. Once that changes then I would recommend switching to those.

That might have been true in the past. But just looking at Dell Poweredge servers with one or two sockets, the following support hot-swap NVME drives : R6415, R7415, C4140, R440, R740xd, R640, R7425.

Say you had a customer who wanted a VM hosted in the cloud and he wanted to run some open source software, for example nextcloud or something.

What would the ballpark monthly cost be for him to have an MSP manage the server for him?

Not including any setup and installation costs and not including any monthly costs for the actual cloud VM.

But making sure it's running, do security updates, manage backups, keep the open source software updated etc.

$100? $200? $300? $400? $500?

@hobbit666 Not what you asked for but if you are running predominantly Windows in your environment, I'd use xcp-ng on the server and run xcp-ng center from whatever windows computer you have.

As a tool, it's a lot more refined and capable than virt-manager. But only for windows.

@bigbear Just boot with another live linux distro and then write over the mbr with dd or delete all partitions. Make sure the USB device is set as the first bootable device in BIOS.

@scottalanmiller said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

@dashrender said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

This is where the lay person (and myself included at times) gets totally wallooped. The lay person has no idea what's needed - they only know they have a problem and want it fixed...

Exactly, even pretty seasoned IT departments may have little to no knowledge of what is needed here. IT should know that software engineering is needed. But beyond that, there is nothing in the IT realm that should help.

Sure, IT should know something about database options and that SQLite is likely their preferred solution for lots of reasons (I know IT should know this because it's in the book I just wrote last week, lol.) But will SQLite handle the data best for the application? IT can't know that, because IT doesn't know how the software is written, what drivers are used by the framework, and so forth. IT can't know enough to be useful. Not doesn't, but can't.

None of the decisions, like language, database, framework, hardware, etc. can be talked about individually, it's one large decision that has a lot of factors. So talking about them before the engineering team is engaged might be interesting, but pointless.

I agree with everything you say.

Wearing my software engineering hat, there is another dimension to this as well. IT should understand, but for some odd reason seldom do, that custom software has a life cycle too.

IT have no problem understanding the need for patching an OS, migrating to a new OS, upgrading old hardware etc, etc. But often fail to understand the need to do the same with everything custom built they manage.

So getting a bespoke solution is not a one-time project or a one-time expense. Software needs to be taken care of from the cradle to the grave. As the OS is updated, packages deprecated, frameworks have become obsolete, etc - the software needs to be updated as well. Even if no new functionally is added or removed.

This is also come of the consideration that goes in to selecting what technology to use.

@DustinB3403 said in How to Install Desktop Environment to a Fedora Server:

While this is an option, this isn't what he is wanting to learn to use. His goal is to setup KVM and learn it, and how to administer KVM.

While I would generally agree XCP-ng is a great option for a lot of people it's not doing @hobbit666 anything to learn the same things he's already done.

The simple solution here would be for @hobbit666 to create a Fedora Workstation VM on his KVM hypervisor (through cockpit or the CLI) and use Virt-Viewer to access this VM.

From this VM, use Virt-Manager to manage the Hypervisor.

If one wants to learn it makes sense to install a lightweight desktop environment on the server, like xfce, and run virt-manager there, just like SAM mentioned. The "cost" in memory/cpu/storage of doing that is minimal. For sure less than installing another VM. And if he decides later that he doesn't need it, he can just uninstall it.

For learning, it makes sense to try all management options. He should try administering with virsh too.

When you don't know the password to login on IPMI on Supermicro servers the only solution is to reset the IPMI to factory default settings. Then you can login with user ADMIN and password ADMIN.

Supermicro has a utility program called IPMICFG that can be used for this. It's available for Windows, Linux and DOS. The most straight forward way, with no dependencies, is to boot into DOS and use the DOS utility.

Easiest way to accomplish this is to create a bootable FreeDOS USB memory stick with Rufus (Windows required). https://rufus.akeo.ie/
Just select FreeDOS and Rufus will create a bootable USB memory stick with FreeDOS on it.

Next we need the IPMICFG utility. It can be found on Supermicro's site.
https://www.supermicro.com/SwDownload/SwSelect_Free.aspx
It's a zip file and one directory called DOS contains the DOS utility.
Take the DOS directory and copy it to your USB stick.

Then take the USB stick and insert it into your Supermicro server. Boot to the USB drive (might have to change BIOS settings for this).

Then run the IPMICFG utility to reset IPMI to factory default settings:

ipmicfg -fd

Program will respond with "Reset to the factory default completed."
IP settings should be unchanged from before and you should be able to login now.

A couple of other command that can be useful are:

Show IP and MAC.
ipmicfg -m

Set IP addr
ipmicfg -m 192.168.56.78

Set subnet mask
ipmicfg -k 255.255.255.0

@dashrender said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

@pete-s said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

IT have no problem understanding the need for patching an OS, migrating to a new OS, upgrading old hardware etc, etc. But often fail to understand the need to do the same with everything custom built they manage.

So getting a bespoke solution is not a one-time project or a one-time expense. Software needs to be taken care of from the cradle to the grave. As the OS is updated, packages deprecated, frameworks have become obsolete, etc - the software needs to be updated as well. Even if no new functionally is added or removed.

This is also come of the consideration that goes in to selecting what technology to use.

Really? This is not an IT issue, but likely generally more a company/business issue. The chances that IT is what is preventing a rewrite are damned near zero - why do I say this - because it's not an IT spend, or at least shouldn't be viewed as an IT spend. This is a production spend - This solution is specific for something in production - no different than a million dollar printer is in a printing shop. They don't want to replace those printers anymore than they want to replace solutions like this OP is asking because production doesn't want to spend money on it.
It's likely that IT would LOVE to see this shit upgraded to modern solutions, making them possibly more reliable, or at least modernly fixable.

Who pays for it is an internal accounting problem.

It's IT that is responsible for making their internal customer understand that there needs to be yearly maintenance costs on their custom software. Just as you would have with any software licensing or service agreement. There is no technical difference between software that the company themselves have commissioned and software that is stock from Microsoft, Oracle, vmWare or whoever.

It's because IT fails at this, they end up with a mess after X number of years. Because each year the software will get more and more out of date. Eventually it will prevent IT from running the latest OS, or updating the database or similar.

And I'm not talking about big upgrades or complete changes to the functionality. I'm talking about maintenance - keeping it working the same while the OS is updated, the database is updated, the software library/APIs/frameworks/whatever are changed.

I'm sure that there are companies that have this figured out and understands that they of course are responsible for keeping their own software current. I just haven't seen it much except in situations where it happens naturally. For instance when new functions are added.