Posts made by NetworkNerd

@Hubtech said:

i've had good luck with tp link's little 600vpn router. i wonder if their switches are decent.

The TP Link PoE injectors work great, but I have never used one of their switches.

I'm not sure how I let this happen, but with a call to Drobo tech support yesterday, I found out the Drobocare on our B800i that we use as a Veeam backup target expired several months ago. We have had the unit for 2-3 years, but the price to renew when out of warranty is over $1K for one year. Ouch.

So, is it really worth it to renew? If the device itself fails it looks like I can get another for just over $1K. The problem would be that it happens to be our only storage device at command central outside of the ESXi hosts' local storage.

What would you do?

I like TrendNet for unmanaged. They have some decent managed ones too. I actually really like Zyxel 1910 for managed. They are coming out with 1920s that have iStacking capabilities which we may look at in the future, but I don't go with anything super expensive.

I don't normally get PoE unless we need it for equipment that is PoE capable but not close to a power source (i.e. SIP speakers up on a ceiling).

If the remote offices have servers that use the NAS as their storage, you might consider using Branchcache (built into Server 2012) at the remote offices. Otherwise I'd vote Robocopy or Rsync.

@thecreativeone91 said:

I always just said "Submit a Ticket to remind us about it" it sounds nicer that way. if there is no ticket We don't know about it is the way I look at it.

I completely agree. A ticket means we won't forget about you. And if there is no ticket, it didn't happen.

I was talking to our newest help desk guy this morning, and he mentioned something a user had asked him about when he upgraded the computer of the user in question yesterday. Since this help desk guy works only on his assigned tickets which our dispatcher assigns to him, he wanted to know if the user had sent in a ticket for this particular item. I mentioned I had not seen one submitted by the user and that the issue must not be that important since there's no ticket. My help desk guy then responds with "I guess it really is true what people say. They have to submit a ticket to talk to you."

I don't make people submit tickets to talk to me, but if there is something requiring action on the part of IT, they had better put in a ticket. At least they know proper procedure to get help from IT. In any case, I found this humorous.

@Robin5170 said:

Very true and good advice @scottalanmiller , thanks
@Reid-Cooper thanks for the prompt. Lets see if @networknerd has any info to share!

It seems I have been summoned. I certainly cannot turn that one down. I can tell you where we work the ERP system is what drives us. If it goes down we cannot ship parts, do financial transactions, etc. We use Epicor and have been for years. I am pretty excited about seeing the upgrade from 9 to 10 through to its finish later this year as there will be many new features to utilize and lots of performance boosts integrated just by the fact that everything is .NET.

I'll agree with you about the prioritization in Manufacturing. Production is king because they make the money. If we cannot make parts and transact with the ERP system, we are in some trouble. That is money out the door. We are big on the Theory of Constraints where I work, and every couple of weeks they let us know what area is the constraint. That way we know if they have an IT issue out there that is halting production in some way, we stop and take care of it (treated as almost code red / server down). You could almost say some of the kiosks in the shop are like servers - they go down and all of the sudden we cannot ship product. So yes, it is very important to have a DR plan for these areas or a spare station out there people can use to make it less of an emergency / keeping a spare machine that is setup and ready to go if computer X fails. We specifically keep at least 1-2 spare refurb desktops and laptops to make sure we have something to work with in a pinch to get things moving.

I have also found that some of the software you will find in Manufacturing companies is so niche and custom it can be very difficult to resinstall somewhere else. I have been asking that any new Engineering software be put on a VM and not a physical box to help minimize the DR impact if a computer out in the shops dies.

I remember hearing good things about Jitsi (not specifically on Linux but in general) but have not tried it.

We've made an offer to an internal candidate who has accepted. I wanted to let folks know this is no longer an open position (unless something goes horribly wrong).

To me you're really teaching the person how to think. I do think it is a skill that can be learned contrary to what others may say.

Take a problem you need to fix, and take the person through your thought process. Ask them what they would do, show them what they should be looking for, tell them how it should work, etc. You have to sit with them and make them do the troubleshooting and start coaching them through situations. Teach them questions to ask that can rule out various solutions. Have them suggest a next step to solve the problem based on experience, and talk them through whether it is a good idea or bad idea.

Some simple guides will help, but putting them in the situation and making them follow the mental steps will help cement some basic troubleshooting methodologies.

I found it! I needed to get something from the Microsoft store today, and here she is:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Pro-3-Docking-Station/productID.300191900.

@scottalanmiller said:

Maybe it knows that it had better show them when it is me

Can we call you The Community Whisperer?

@scottalanmiller said:

I rarely look at the notifications so haven't seen that happen yet.

Interestingly enough, I got one when you responded to this post.

I responded to a thread late last night and when logged in this morning, there had been several responses to the thread in question: http://mangolassi.it/topic/1571/ipv4-address-exhuastion-beginning-to-show-signs/3. But in terms of notifications, I received none as you can see. Has anyone else had this issue recently? I realize this was only one specific instance, but I've not missed a notification previous to this instance.

I read an article that said as much the other day. I know it will certainly cause issues with security monitoring services and identifying threats by location.

Speaking of ISPs, I've not had experience with any that have been super strict on handing out blocks of ip addresses 5 at a time for whatever you need. Perhaps they should tighten things up a little and really make people justify their needs.

For those who use it, what is your favorite application of vCenter Orchestrator? I heard folks talking about it at a recent VMUG and honestly have never played with it. But I do know you get it for free with any version of vCenter.

I would really like to hear more from those who have smaller shops since I only have the VSphere Essentials bundle. I'm running ESXi 5.5U1 with 3 hosts and a vCenter instance.

@scottalanmiller said:

@NetworkNerd for work, I assume. Not two for home?

@scottalanmiller said:

@NetworkNerd for work, I assume. Not two for home?

Yes, they are for work. One was for the CFO and the other for my boss. I didn't get one for me.

@scottalanmiller said:

@NetworkNerd for work, I assume. Not two for home?

Yes, they are for work. One was for the CFO and the other for my boss. I didn't get one for me.

@garak0410 said:

Just received verification that it will be here tomorrow, UPS Next Day Air Saver. Looks like a geek out weekend for me.

Yep - I ordered 2 of them and got the shipment confirmations today.

I love the CompuServe plug. I remember when Compuserve WOW was our ISP.