People use incorrect terms in almost every aspect of IT all the time, either due to ignorance or whatever. You will have that.

But in my opinion, calling a 1u server a pizza box, now that the original meaning is no longer relevant today, and still makes sense because its so similar, is fine. Most people use it correctly in that aspect, but you will always have people who just straight up call something completely incorrect.

Just like how everyone calls a cable internet box a "modem", even though it isn't... Who cares, we all know what they mean. If someone calls their food processor a modem, im not going to protest that we should no longer call cable boxes a cable modem.

@frodooftheshire said in Looking for best bag/case/box solution for storing cables, HDs, tools:

Thank's Tim. Definitely interested in what your friend uses. The Samsonite looks pretty good, but I'm not sure it would be big enough to hold what I need. I do like the fact that it retains a professional look which is nice. It's a fine line between rugged toolboxes that are used by construction workers, and a more high end professional/leather looking bag.

Again, I might have to end up with two different storage solutions. One bag for laptop, and the Pelican box I mentioned above. The main reason I like the pelican is because the modular compartment design, but it's also somewhat overkill because it's usually used to protect expensive equipment (cameras/lenses/etc) and I would be using it for my drill/patch cables.

I suppose it just comes down to what you do. If you walk inside of some company, sit down at a desk, break out your laptop... do some work, then go out to trace some network cables or wire some up quick... possibly install some switches or work on some servers... that professional look is what you want.

But if you walk in, start tearing out equipment, run wires through walls, need a lot of tools, need a lot of equipment, need a lot of hardware, then you need big cases that can fit all of your stuff in it or you just have to make multiple trips out to your car/truck.

If you perform the best of both worlds, then bet a big bulky box for your big tools, equipment, and hardware, and get one of those professional looking Samsonites for your laptop/charger/mouse, small hardware, rack screws, a few drivers/mini drill, etc... you get my point.

I got the $99 per year. Gives you the whole Office Suite, 5 TB cloud storage across 5 separate accounts, plus some Skype minutes per month.

It's worth it for us.

@scottalanmiller said in Anyone using Let's encrypt?:

@Tim_G you can make a one line script that updates LetsEncrypt through the manual method in a few seconds. Just throw it in crontab and you are all set.

I figured it would be something like that, but i have shared hosting, don't have room for a linux box, and don't want to turn my personal PC into a hypervisor.

Maybe in the future, but it cuttently fits my life much better to go startssl. Nothing against at all, in fact I preferred it.

A consultant I work with has a nice, well not sure what to call it, backpack/computer bag on wheels.

I did a quick Amazon search to see if I could find it, and didn't, I guess because I'm not searching correctly. But I did find something similar, just not as roomy as he has.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsonite-Mobile-Office-Travel-49354-1041/dp/B00D3DACBI

https://www.amazon.com/Targus-Roller-Laptop-16-Inch-TBR003US/dp/B000UE8JWM

Something like those would work excellent, if you could find one closer to what the guy I know has. I'll ask him. You'd be able to fit the below in it, plus cables, and some tools. If you need to carry around a lot, then get two of them or a suit case lol.

For your screws and such, stick something like this in it:

https://www.amazon.com/OULII-Organizer-Container-Adjustable-Dividers/dp/B00UKXOFBC

Just an update...

In the end, I went with StartSSL.com for a free SSL certificate on my personal blog website instead of LetsEncrypt.org.

The first reason was because I have a shared hosting account through HostGator, which means I would have to use the "manual" process through LetsEncrypt.org. I don't want to do that because I don't want to "need to repeat it several times per year as your certificate expires.", as it says on their getting started page. The second reason, their way of setting it up is rather annoying and I just don't feel like doing it that way. Those two reasons by themselves drew me away from it.

StartSSL lasts for 3 years, was simple to obtain and set up, and I don't have to do anything until it expires.

I edited my .htaccess to force HTTPS, and made sure all of the images and such link from HTTPS as well, thus giving me a green lock icon on Firefox.

The only caveat, was that I had to pay HostGator $10 to use a third-party SSL cert. Still better, as it would have been $30+ at least doing it all through them.

@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

@Tim_G said

It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.

Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.

Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.

Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.

My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.

Sure I suppose I can see what you're saying,

So let's say you know what files you need first, you loose the whole server, so you restore those few files first before kicking off the full restore, during which you often have to wait until it's completed before accessing most if not all of that data.

Definitely not an option when restoring an application system either.

Application system doesn't even need to be restored from backup, it can be built fresh.

The application data needs to be restored and that might be the bulk of what's actually being restored and takes a ton of time

This is why I use VMs, and separate the os, data, and application on different virtual disks if possible. In SQL cases, you will by default to follow best practices... Database, logs, etc on different .vhdx's, maybe on different tiers of storage, ssd vs hdd.

OS takes minutes, applications take minutes, then comes the data however you like it.

Typically those kinds of restores are relatively quick. Its usually file server data in SMBs that take forever to restore. Most SMB databases are less than 100 GB. But if the need comes to restore a 10 TB file store because the whole thing blew up, sure that will take a long time unless you have it replicated onsite or can spin it up in the cloud.

@wirestyle22 said in old MSP wants to know what they did wrong:

@Tim_G But he isn't the business owner in this case. You don't ask the person who was hired in your place why you were fired, you ask the people who hired you.

Oh I misread. I thought the owner wanted to know what was going on.

Document EVERYTHING. Pictures if allowed. Then explain away. If I was a business owner paying for things I was not receiving and being intentionally deceived, I would want to know asap so I could take legal action if needed, and to get lost money back to hire someone to do it right.

@msff-amman-Itofficer said in Is PPTP EAP-MSCHAP v2 (128) considered safe and secure for VPN ?:

And it does rely on the Windows Users credentials, thus if I made standard user called VPN and made very long complex password for him, like 128 characters, will that help and increase the security of remote connections ?

PPTP isn't encrypted by the authentication it uses. PPTP is still encrypted with 128-bit, which is not secure, then can be intercepted and modified before reaching its destination.

IPSEC and ikev2 and SSTP does not allow that to happen.

PPTP is a very weak tunneling protocol, even if you use EAP-MSCHAP v2 as the authentication protocol.

I would not use it.

The best practice is to use IKEv2 as the main connection, with SSTP as a backup.

If you cannot do that due to environment limitations, then L2TP + PSK or IPSEC.

@scottalanmiller said in Active Directory for 28+ Million Users?:

@RojoLoco said in Active Directory for 28+ Million Users?:

Which third world country did you sign on to administer????

It would have to be a HUGE one. Most third world countries don't have that many people!

Australia is under 24m.

@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

OK so this thread has covered the backup window - what about the recovery window?

Sure you have 8 hours to backup, but is your company OK with 8+ hours for recovery?

Excellent point. Recovery time is more important than backup time imho.

It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.

@scottalanmiller said in Active Directory for 28+ Million Users?:

@momurda said in Active Directory for 28+ Million Users?:

Ive always been curious how mega-huge orgs do this. China Mobile has 400M+ users. FB over 1B. what are they using?

@momurda said in Active Directory for 28+ Million Users?:

Ive always been curious how mega-huge orgs do this. China Mobile has 400M+ users. FB over 1B. what are they using?

Users, not customers. They don't use AD. They use their own databases. AD is for internal users 99.999% of the time. I've never heard of anyone using it for external. Most just use normal NoSQL databases.

Exactly. He said "external authentication" which makes me think for some kind of external to internal authentication for some kind of services using federation services with Active Directory. That's not how you do it in that case, so his management has it all wrong. I think they just need a database... not AD DS.

Unless there's a lot more to it the OP is leaving out, this what it's pointing towards.

Sounds like it will be used for some kind of federation services for users to log in to via the web.... think online banking website, or Facebook (had they wanted to AD for user logins, which is a terrible idea). If that's the case, it'll need to be HA, which means it will need to be distributed across multiple sites, load balancing, failover, AD CS / AD FS / WAP, the WHOLE SHABANG!

Hope they are prepared for that. Very little details are given, but that's how it looks without giving it a ton of thought.

@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:

All comes down to your speed needs. Is the extra $100 a good price for the extra speed? What does the extra speed mean to your business?

I comes down to what you are backing up, and as you said, the needs of the business.

If you are backing up a lot of data, and it goes too slow, the run time may leak into business hours, and it'll put some burden on your network and productions servers, slowing it down and causing a mess for the users who need to work. It could also delay "domino effect" backups, causing too many to happen at once, or for backups to be skipped entirely... but that depends on the backup software too.

On the other hand, if you are backing up something that requires a lot of retention, snapshots, frequency, etc... you'll need to have available space for that, and also I can see how speed fits in.

It's always going to depend heavily on the businesses needs, and it will be very different from place to place. Some larger businesses may have lighter requirements than a much smaller one.

If the extra speed of the backup process has no effect at all on the business, then is it really worth the extra money? If the extra speed will have actual positive impact on the business, then it may be worth it.

You also need to consider future growth, at least near-future growth. And, what happens if you fill it up?

@theOtherGuy said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

@Tim_G said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

You will need 4 licensing models for a typical mixed environment:

Free - VEB (because a lot of people do tend to use it with servers, although that's not what it was designed for, and you shouldn't)
Paid - B&R (for hypervisors - enterprises typically need this in a standard mixed environment)
Paid - Veeam Agent for Linux (needed for physical Linux servers that are not hypervisors)
Paid - Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows (needed for physical windows servers that are not hypervisors)

You, Sir, are making wrong statements

1.B&R - offers a Free version that lets you backup VMs.
2.Veeam Agent for Linux - has fully functional free version
3.Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows - not even released yet and will offer free version as well.

Okay... so then you'll be stuck with 4 separate free products... my point still remains the same. I think like 99% of all backup solutions have a free version. But at least with Unitrends (and many others), you'd only need a single free product. With Veeam, you'd need maybe 4 separate ones. Whether it's free or paid wasn't the point.

I like my Asus. Better and cheaper than either of those options.

Yeah I would have just asked if it was a video or voice call "so you can be ready on the correct device".

But if video... shirt and tie, nice hair, no pants just kidding lol

@NashBrydges said in I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours, Home Labs:

@Tim_G said in I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours, Home Labs:

@NashBrydges said in I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours, Home Labs:

@Tim_G According to my UPSs, I'm running my lab on about 1.2kw and yeah, I definitely notice the increase in power bill. It's costing me about $125 per month based on loca rates, delivery charges and taxes in.

Is that $125 extra or $125 total? If total, how much extra does it add for you with your setup?

It's $125 extra per month. Just for the networking and server gear.

Wow... your setup is something I'd love to have at home. But there's no way I could justify that cost per month, if you know what I mean.