@bigbear said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@dave247 said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@bigbear said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@dave247 said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@scottalanmiller said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@black3dynamite said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

All these best practices seems to be carried over from the days of physical servers.

The need for two didn't exist then, either. It's never been a best practice, always a complete misunderstanding of HA at best, a sales tactic at worst.

And besides... RDSH in the cloud or bust

I don't understand what you mean here..

I am a big fan of Remote Desktop Session Host on Server 2016, Microsoft officially supports DC on the same box. For $80/month on Vultr plus $16/month for Server 2016 license, and about $100/user one time license fee... you can support 15 to 20 users.

The "or bust" part is that I really wouldnt be interested in doing IT any other way.

oh you mean you have a hosted 2016 RDS server/DC? That's pretty cool... I currently have on-site terminal servers but they are 2008 R2 Enterprise and I have a separate server for the connection broker (I hate this setup). I have been meaning to take a look at going to a 2016 RDS setup but haven't had the chance to dig in as I am a freaking "IT generalist" where I work.

@scottalanmiller said in Pfsense:

@dave247 said in Pfsense:

@scottalanmiller said in Pfsense:

@mroth911 said in Pfsense:

a /23 (the smallest recommended these days)

Really? I never heard of that.. Where is this recommended? (truly curious)

Pretty much anywhere it’s discussed

It’s been the standard in the enterprise since the rise of switching.

Right.. well I feel like you're from a different world or something as you're always saying things that seem very different than what's commonly heard of. That being said, we actually have a /23 network where I work but I've had numerous people comment on it as being a "weird setup". I just assumed they had little knowledge of networking and are used to the very common /24 setups on a lot of home routers and things.

@scottalanmiller said in What are some good true-hardware RAID cards for home server setup?:

Basically the only enterprise hardware RAID makers are Adaptec and LSI. I've found Adaptec to be much better than LSI IMHO.

Oh that made me remember that I do have another system at work with a LSI 9300-8i card in it. Seems pretty good but no battery. I'm looking at Adaptec cards now. They look nice but a bit pricey.

@bigbear said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@dave247 said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@scottalanmiller said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@black3dynamite said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

All these best practices seems to be carried over from the days of physical servers.

The need for two didn't exist then, either. It's never been a best practice, always a complete misunderstanding of HA at best, a sales tactic at worst.

And besides... RDSH in the cloud or bust

I don't understand what you mean here..

@scottalanmiller said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

@black3dynamite said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

All these best practices seems to be carried over from the days of physical servers.

The need for two didn't exist then, either. It's never been a best practice, always a complete misunderstanding of HA at best, a sales tactic at worst.

I haven't watched your video yet but I've heard a lot of people (non-sales) say having only one DC is a good way to get fired.

@scottalanmiller said in Pfsense:

@mroth911 said in Pfsense:

a /23 (the smallest recommended these days)

Really? I never heard of that.. Where is this recommended? (truly curious)

I built a server a while back with a SuperMicro X10SRL-F board which I believe has fakeRAID... I've been searching around for a true hardware RAID card with battery pack but I haven't really found much.

I usually deal with Dell PowerEdge servers for this sort of thing but I wanted something that would work for a home server setup.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a simple-to-use company Intranet? The one we have right now again is passageways which totally sucks and really all we use it for is posting bulletins and adding links. I suppose it'd be nice if it could be integrated with the helpdesk tool...

@scottalanmiller said in any help desk software suggestions?:

@Sodium has a mostly working helpdesk that is coming along pretty quickly. Might be worth playing with and getting a feel for where it will be soon before diving into something else. Fully free, even hosted.

Spiceworks is free and hosted as well.

osTicket you host yourself, but is free and runs on Linux. We've had good luck with that.

Awesome, this is what I'm looking for. Thanks Scott

We're switching from Passageways (absolutely horrible) and my boss wants us to go with something called Track-IT, but is open to suggestions. I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions for a good help desk, maybe something free even.

We basically just need it so users can create support requests for the various departments. Integration with AD for SSO would be ideal.

I replaced the S300 with the H700 (with battery) but I'm pretty sure I broke the hard drive backplane because the fricking B SAS cable was stuck in there so hard it took me forever to pull it out. H700 let me put all 8 drives in RAID10 and install Hyper-V.. but then in the middle of it started yelling about the bad SAS cable.. I'm getting a lot of hardware experience though

@dashrender said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Perc S300

Looks like someone found a work around for that controller - but then others really recommend replacing it.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/906/t/19997714

You can probably get an older RAID card on ebay pretty cheap.

lmao, I figured as much. I do think I'm just going to replace the card as it is a hunk of crap.

@net-runner said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

I would also recommend you not to waste two drive slots for RAID1 OS partition especially if it's a hypervisor host. USB Flash/SD Card/SATADOM/whatever will do the job leaving you with 8 free bays for OBR10 or OBR5/6. Speed all the things up with StarWind (as mentioned above) and you are good to go.

I was told that USB Flash and SD were no longer supported by MS and not to do it that way.

Anyway, I ended up just using 4x 1TB drives in RAID10 but I can't even install Hyper-V 2016 because that OS does not support the Perc S300 RAID card I have in m R510. Looks like I have to use 2012 R2 instead.

@networknerd said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@networknerd said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Spend the $15 to get a USB drive to be the install target for Hyper-V, and then boot the server from that USB drive each time. Like others have said, keep the SSD to give yourself some fast storage to play with and not to run a hypervisor.

If you're only playing with a single SSD you could even leverage it and use the free version of Starwind to accelerate the VMs running on the spinning disk datastore (I think). Someone else may want to verify this specific point.

I do have plenty of extra USB drives. I was considering that also but I don't know if I want a USB drive sticking out of the back of my server.

You can get a really slim USB stick online for cheap.
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Low-Profile-Drive-SDCZ33-008G-B35/dp/B005FYNSUA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1506622655&sr=8-3&keywords=small+usb+drive

oh man.. yes, that would be a lot better. Maybe I will just install Hyper-v on my current USB just for S&G. I've never installed Hyper-v before so I don't mind having to do it again on a different, smaller USB later..

@networknerd said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Did you say what size the SAS drives are (2.5" or 3.5")? I missed it if so. I'm curious if the SSDs will fit in the Dell drive cage chassis properly if they are 2.5" and the SAS disks you have are 3.5".

SAS drives are 2.5" and I have some caddie spacers that let me use 2.5 in 3.5 caddie. I do already have one 2.5" consumer SSD running in this server, waiting for me to finish installing Hyper-V as we speak.

@networknerd said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Spend the $15 to get a USB drive to be the install target for Hyper-V, and then boot the server from that USB drive each time. Like others have said, keep the SSD to give yourself some fast storage to play with and not to run a hypervisor.

If you're only playing with a single SSD you could even leverage it and use the free version of Starwind to accelerate the VMs running on the spinning disk datastore (I think). Someone else may want to verify this specific point.

I do have plenty of extra USB drives. I was considering that also but I don't know if I want a USB drive sticking out of the back of my server.

@coliver said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@coliver said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

4x 6TB drives

That's 12TB usable in RAID 10. Not sure why that wouldn't be a good option.

Because I was planning to not use them for this.. but now I'm considering changing my mind.

Oh I see. What were you planning on using them for? Could you roll that into this via a VM and application?

They are in a different server now, holding some files.

@coliver said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

4x 6TB drives

That's 12TB usable in RAID 10. Not sure why that wouldn't be a good option.

Because I was planning to not use them for this.. but now I'm considering changing my mind.

@dustinb3403 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dustinb3403 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

If you go with SSD's you'd use OBR5.

If you went with 15K drives you'd use OBR6.

Why?

OBR5 is safe (enough) because URE's don't happen with SSD's. SSD's just die. So you'd replace it as soon as it died. They also rebuild way faster.

OBR6 with 15K drives because you have a lot of them, but they are smaller capacity (300GB). So you'd get enough performance and the most usable space from the array.

oooh. I didn't know that about URE's and SSD's

@dustinb3403 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

If you go with SSD's you'd use OBR5.

If you went with 15K drives you'd use OBR6.

Why?