@scottalanmiller said in User to IT ratio:

Here is an example of why this makes no sense to use equipment as the guide:

Company 1: 100 employees, buys Scale hyperconverged appliances, does VDI with WorkSpot, uses enterprise thin clients. All hardware is 100% under vendor management and support. All desktops are identical. Backups are to a Datto appliance, hosted. All network gear is Meraki and managed by a VAR. All software is Office 365 and other major SaaS applications. Ratio 100:1

Company 2: 100 employees. Servers are custom built by the IT department. Every desktop is made in house. Each machine is high performance and very unique. Replacement parts are stocked locally and IT does all swaps. Turn over is high. All main applications are written, tested and deployed internally. Mix of hypervisors, operating systems, hardware and apps are used. Backups are done by custom tools. Ratio 100:15

Totally different situations and approaches requiring totally different numbers of IT per user. The IT departments do very different tasks, too.

Yes this is pretty much what I was trying to get at... That it depends because it's totally different from place ti place and industry.

I think a much better question is Hardware + users : IT staff.

You could have a warehouse of 2000 workers and only 10 pcs. Who cares.

I'm at a company with roughly 250 "local" users and 3.5 it staff. But we support probably 700 or more computers and servers just locally.

We are constantly busy and have a ticketing system. We could really use two more it staff, tier 1or 2, to be optimal.

@travisdh1 said in Pentagon Warns Against Using Lenovo Equipment:

@Tim_G said in Pentagon Warns Against Using Lenovo Equipment:

I see Lenovo adds ALL over the place on spiceworks. No idea why.

Just me?

Lenovo is one of a select few companies that spend lots and lots of money on advertising with Spiceworks. They seem to get special treatment from that. Also makes me question weather I can continue to trust anything Spiceworks related

Maybe Spiceworks is running on Superfish infested Lenovo servers... stealing all your infoz!

@RojoLoco said in Pentagon Warns Against Using Lenovo Equipment:

@Tim_G said in Pentagon Warns Against Using Lenovo Equipment:

I see Lenovo adds ALL over the place on spiceworks. No idea why.

Just me?

If you install uBlock Origin, ads will all go away. If you still see ads, just right-click and choose "block element", and that ad will go away as well.

The answer to your question, however, is MONEY. Money is why you still see Lenovo ads on SW. They will advertise anything they get paid to advertise.

I did have adblock plus installed in Edge... "did"... I have no idea what happened to it! I did not uninstall it, and I don't see it in the menu anymore.

...nice one Microsoft!

I see Lenovo adds ALL over the place on spiceworks. No idea why.

Just me?

@DustinB3403 said in BWAHAAHAHHAHA Im gonna download everything!:

@Tim_G said in BWAHAAHAHHAHA Im gonna download everything!:

@DustinB3403 said in BWAHAAHAHHAHA Im gonna download everything!:

Wow! That's like, EU speeds! How is that possible here?

Residential fiber, and I'm thinking of moving up to the 1Gb connection, it's only $25 more per month. . .

Ah, so good internet speeds require light to carry the data here. How do they do it so well there with just typical coax?

@DustinB3403 said in BWAHAAHAHHAHA Im gonna download everything!:

Wow! That's like, EU speeds! How is that possible here?

@BBigford said in SMB firewall options:

There is a metric ton of vendors out there. Some use on-premesis, some point at a cloud firewall service, and there are tons of vendors in between.

There isn't much of a difference between a (US) ton, and a metric ton... a metric ton is only 205 lbs heavier. 907 kg versus 1000 kg

So the way I understand it, is there's only one extra vendor person out there vs a regular ton of vendors.

But... on to the main point of your question...

@BBigford said in SMB firewall options:

For businesses under ~20 users, what do you use for a firewall, content filtering (basic stuff like porn & gambling), VPN site-to-site?
I've used:
SonicWall
pfSense (mixed with Securly for filtering)
Sophos
Cisco (though that was getting out of the price range)
Fortinet (800C down through the small units)
WatchGuard (larger X series down through their Firebox models)
Anyone using anything cloud based? Haven't really looked into it.

For about 20 users, I've seen success with RRAS, SonicWALL, Fortinet, and Sophos.... oh, depends on the SonicWALL, and also had success with Untangle... and OpenDNS worked well in a few places.

I have set up some decent SQUID proxies on CentOS. That's does a freakin awesome job of filtering. I think I have a guide on setting up a basic configuration of SQUID somewhere...

@thwr said in WD Blue PC SSD:

Couldn't find a good English source, but this German Golem article explains that WD blue is based on planar 15nm TLC cells from Flash Forward (joint venture: Toshiba & WD) and uses a Marvell controller. This combination isn't new, just take a look at the SanDisk X400.

It looks like the WD Green SSD uses the same cells, but another controller from Silicon Motion which does not even have a cache, making it a poor choice in most cases.

So yes, it's just rebranded with a slightly modified firmware.

I think this pretty much answers my question. Thanks!

@thwr said in WD Blue PC SSD:

@Tim_G said in WD Blue PC SSD:

I guess what I'm getting at, is do we consider them A-level drives or B-level? I know they have the 3-year warranty with them like the wd blue spinners.... but do we treat them with the same respect?

I would probably stick to Samsung EVO or Kingston for SATA and Intel 600p for entry level M2.

As said before, WD Blue SSD isn't a new product, but I would still wait a bit.

I'm strictly talking consumer-based and desktop/laptop/client-based. Nothing to do with servers. Nothing to do with anything really for that matter...

I'm just wanting to know if WD builds their SSDs or are they rebranded? If you say rebranded from SanDisk, then does SanDisk make them? Because I thought SanDisk was rebranding them anyways?

I have no idea.

@Jason said in WD Blue PC SSD:

Western Digital Bought SanDisk, hence the WD SSDs

Yes I know this, but I thought SanDisk was rebranding their SSDs?

I guess what I'm getting at, is do we consider them A-level drives or B-level? I know they have the 3-year warranty with them like the wd blue spinners.... but do we treat them with the same respect?

@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Enterprise E1 - What Can I Use For Simple Collaboration?:

@garak0410 said in Office 365 Enterprise E1 - What Can I Use For Simple Collaboration?:

@Dashrender said in Office 365 Enterprise E1 - What Can I Use For Simple Collaboration?:

@garak0410 said in Office 365 Enterprise E1 - What Can I Use For Simple Collaboration?:

@Dashrender said in Office 365 Enterprise E1 - What Can I Use For Simple Collaboration?:

How are you accessing calendars today? Are your users using Outlook? or are they using Outlook the web?

Here's the lower left corner of my Outlook on the web (horrible name!)

There's the calendar icon just like in the desktop option, then once there you can request access to anyone's calendar you want. Like in the past you can create shared calendars as well.

You could also create calendars in SharePoint and use those (though getting those into Outlook might be more challenging.

I went to our Office 365 Portal and created a DRAFTING group and added everyone...so it does now have one group shared calendar. But if they happen to be on Office 2013 (the majority), it takes them to OWA and it isn't idea for our business model.

@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Enterprise E1 - What Can I Use For Simple Collaboration?:

"Other people's calendars" show up in OWA and work great. We use that every day.

I'll never get anyone to use OWA over standard Outlook...ever...(well, at least for a good while)...they resist change...

I wonder if there is another way to create the calendar that you can then map directly into Outlook 2013.

As for moving them away - that's easy, uninstall it. Of course I'm guessing management won't allow that. But then they didn't put all the pieces together if they want O365 and local office because they didn't buy local office with their subscription.

Yeah...it was going to be $20,000+ a year with Office versus about $6,000 for E1.

Wow

That could be worth it. How much would the Exchange CALs, server license, hardware/storage, upkeep, labor, etc. cost per year if it was onprem?

A lot of places spend 100k+ per year on O365 alone...

You can set up "Office 365 Group"s in there can't you?

I think E1 users can use the "Planner" app when they log in. Not able to verify this atm though.

WD has kind of recently came out with their WD Blue SSD line:

https://www.wdc.com/products/solid-state-drives/wd-blue-ssd.html

My question is: Who makes them?

Does WD have their own factories? Is SanDisk making them? Does SanDisk buy them cheap somewhere, and rebrand them, and then WD re-rebrands them?

I can't find this info anywhere.

Thanks!

Where the complexity comes in, is that it's not just simply one IP address being matched to a single domain name.

If that were the case, there wouldn't have been any outages for these websites.

The problem is that there's thousands of IP addresses that are mapped to tens or hundreds of domain names for a single domain, for example, load balancing and other supporting services.

Visit facebook.com and record all network activity. It's not just facebook.com you see, there's x.facebook.com, xyz.facebook.com, etc... It's also not the same IP address for everyone. It get's very complex.

If the authoritative name server for a domain or several domains that support a single domain becomes unavailable, things will be fine until the TTLs expire. Once that happens on the DNS servers down the chain, you don't get the name resolution anymore, and those dns servers can no longer find a path to resolution.

When you combine that with all the other interworkings of a domain, it can be awhile until things get better, even if the attacked name servers get better.

How many of you have ever bought a single domain name and see the message it may take up to 48 hours or whatever to propagate?

The above is pretty a pretty basic explanation and understanding, but I'm just trying to get my point across without making a massive wall of text.

The feeling of breaking the 1m mark.... (I know ML is passed that now, but just saying). I remember when a site I have had back in the day did that!

@scottalanmiller It's been boxed up in an attic or basement on the other side of the country for years.

• Sim City 4
• No Man's Sky
• Minecraft
• Medieval Engineers
• World of Warcraft

Those are the games I switch between playing, during the extremely limited time I actually get the chance to sit down and dabble in a game!

If I could get my xbox 360 back, if it still works, I'd play Halo. That'd be my top choice over all others.