The Comms Room

Hey @SpacemanSpiff

Oh, nevermind. I thought you were someone else.

Well, "hello" nonetheless.=)

@WesleyNonapeptide I have a feeling you tell people that a lot.

I do tend to talk to person A as if he was person B until I then realize he's not person A... and that the conversation was really meant for person C.

Which is exactly why person D is snickering quietly in the background.

And person E plots my demise with person F who writes IM's to me just long enough for me to notice "Person F is typing..." at the bottom of the IM window only to then stop typing and leave me staring at the IM window like this: ಠ_ಠ

ಠ_ృ

4:19 AM

Yeah, I find that rather annoying.

Some clients are a little wonky and will give that message for hours.

Talk about antici

4:30 AM

pation

I C what you did thar

Yeah, that seems to be a crowd pleaser.

5:28 AM

Finally got my nomination in. I wanted to have the time to properly write up the proposal.

Ward

5:53 AM

@Warner: I might nominate myself, since I'd like to be a moderator, but I'll be voting for you.

7:14 AM

Good morning to ye

8:07 AM

I dont get it.. why do I suddenly get logged out of the chat?

9:02 AM

and got logged out again, while surfing serverfault..

anyways; spam? serverfault.com/questions/26264/…

its a valid product from what I can see, I'm just thinking that this is someone advertising his own product..

I kind of get the feeling that EMC has been inspired by apples web pages.. norway.emc.com/products/family/vnx-family.htm

9:26 AM

Morning!

Hiya

I get logged out of chat all the time - this is going to sound like me being a mac-fanboi but this never happens on my mac with safari but happens a lot with W7/IE9

Reading the nominations I think everyone who's applied is more deserving of being a moderator than me

I was swapping between FF and FF4beta yesterday and kept having to log in but other than that I generally stay logged in OK

@Chopper3: No, I'm not going to apply :P

9:54 AM

wow - both Kyle and Zordache had mod-alerts against them this morning - naughty boys - dismissed the alerts however :)

gah, the quality of questions these days

half of the front page is filled with "how do i host interweb" questions

Morning

Does anyone else find the new Close vote tools page less user friendly than the old one?

10:10 AM

@Sam in what way ?

@Iain I find it more difficult to try and see which questions are gathering a lot of close momentum, particularly if the closing votes are spread over different reasons.

@Iain i'm not saying it's bad, it just doesn't feel as intuitive as it should be

It looks the same as it always has to me - only recently came into the powers

the only ones I find odd are the migrated ones which don't allow for a reason beyond off topic

I would like to see some sort of colouring (visible to those with sufficient rep) of questions that have close votes against them to make it easier to spot them

@Iain ah ok, when I say new, It's not really that new (a couple of months really). It used to just list them by close vote and not split by type of close vote, which I preffered

11:04 AM

Anyone else noticing this - on the main SF page under people chatting - the room info says the date is Jan 4 ?

You're right! mine says Jan 4 1986 and there's a crazy looking guy in a Delorian outside too!

Dr. Phil

or, blah, nm :)

11:25 AM

me?

ye

cant decide on my IP design

go on

I'm creating a visio, hold on

It's either that, or connecting firewall1 to switchA and have both the firewall and router on the same subnet

Something in the back of my head tells me that its not a good idea, but I cant remember why

btw, router1's default gateway is the firewall

11:44 AM

seems ok to me, not sure why vlan 90 is a /23 but nothing's leaping out bad about it

only because we have a big scope here at the hq with IP's spread out, its not even half full

the complexity to this isnt shown in that viso btw.. there are two other companies who also are arriving at the mpls link

add 3 more networks here at HQ and you're set (companyB, companyC and guest)

plus DMZ etc yada yada

ok

@pauska does company B etc, have their Internet traffic go over the MPLS, or do they have a local Internet connection too?

@Sam: Everything is going to go over the MPLS

Ok, then I would say your design is fine, by having the Switch on a separate subnet you avoid any excessive internet traffic from the MPLS link causing issues on your internal network

11:59 AM

this is a logical design, so don't focus too much on how its connected

(it's actually dual 3750-X switches as core, dual 7000-something routers with HSRP and dual ASA5510 firewalls with active/passive failover)

Fair enough, well it looks good to me

I like 3750's

so do I

line switched! mmmm

12:32 PM

I think someone may be out of a job - theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/halfords_domain_fail

Just read that.... Ouch

tombull89

@pauska I was going to flag but can I do it for "potential spam"?

I'm going to hazard a guess that "a temporary administrative issue in our domain name renewal process" means, "Someone forgot to renew the domain"

That almost happened here (K12 district) many years ago -- we have .org, not .edu. The purchasing office is loathe to buy with anything but a PO... Registrar only accepted PayPal/CC/etc, wouldn't do PO.... There was some nail biting in our department as the expiry drew near, but finally purchasing relented and swiped their plastic.

1:13 PM

trying my hardest not to laugh while the secretary near me yells at the fax machine "Stop it!" "Give me that back!" "Stupid machine!"

1:43 PM

Oh FFS $dayjob. Having servers that are on !UTC is a terrible idea.

@TomOConnor So would that be GMT-12?

@packs GMT±12, and it flips randomly between + and - to keep him on his toes.

@ChrisS Good call, I like it.

2:02 PM

@packs reminds me of "You are tenacious like bull, I like."

Dan

Peggy, is that you?

@packs I meant, Anything that's not UTC

@ChrisS I rather enjoyed Sanya's "Tiny, but fierce!"

2:17 PM

Any strong opinions here about Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010? I've been asked to look at it by a Customer as a replacement for Backup Exec 2010 R2. The download is rolling now, but I thought it might be interesting to see if anybody here has feelings about it.

Thanks, @Ward!

We're in the process of moving from Backup Exec 12, to DPM. Only surprise was the requirement to use "local" disks for backup storage in DPM. With BuExec, we could use UNC paths. No biggie, just turned the shares into iSCSI targets and stuck those on the DPM server.

John's being grumpy again, haha.

@EvanAnderson We run it. Overall I like it, definitely not a solution for large enterprises. Great for medium businesses (or small ones with heavier than average requirements).

@jscott One gripe I've got with the D2D is that it creates a partition on the "backup" disk for each protection target (like the "C:" drive on a server, or a SQL Database, or the System State); and guesses how big it should be (leaving free space all over the place). This can quickly fill a disk with reserved space that never gets used (depending on how often the data changes).

Yeah-- I'm seeing "sizing concerns" re: D2D storage being the biggest challenge to getting DPM working optimally.

2:28 PM

One other gripe I've got is that it's all smoke and mirrors in the GUI interface and all raw and gritty in the PS interface; no happy medium.. I've been frustrated by this a couple times when trying to do things like copy a specific set of recovery points from disk to tape. The GUI will only let you do one at a time, the PS is pooly documented and exceptionally complex.

Just based on what I've been reading. I feel a bit silly that I haven't used the product up to this point, but Backup Exec has been doing what we want in most of our Customer sites up to this point.

The retention rules are pretty basic too. Disk backups get held for X days. Tape backups can only have two rotations, usually something like weekly and monthly. These are all things you can work around by simply paying attention to what you're doing; but most other solutions have much more granular retention control.

Most PowerShell APIs seem needlessly complex and verbose, so that doesn't seem like much of a surprise... >smile<

I'm going to be interested to try and "exercise" the retention / rotation capabilities. This particular Customer doesn't have complex requirements, but if I'm going to use it in other sites I'm definitely going to make sure it'll handle more "nuanced" environments.

Once you get used to it, it just works. Which is why I like it. We had CA ArcServe before and I really got frustrated with BS like tapes created on one platform can be read, inventoried, cataloged on another, but you can't actually restore and of the data.

@EvanAnderson I wouldn't be surprised if you could do very complex rules through the PS interface, but the GUI dumbs things down a bit. Not sure if they were aiming at an end user audience or if they just didn't have the time to build all the details into it.

I'd rather have dental surgery than use ArcServe.

@ChrisS: I'll definitely have a look "under the hood". It wouldn't surprise me at all of the GUI is just incapable of "expressing" the full possibility of configurations.

2:35 PM

I haven't used BackupExec in ~4 years, but I felt the same about it last time I used it.

We use it here for Windows stuff and are generally satisfied with it.

Heh heh... Backup Exec has its warts. My issue with ArcServe, in about the 2004 time-frame (when I last used it) was that it was destabilizing Windows Server machines-- causing them to STOP, etc. I never had that problem w/ Backup Exec. Sure, Backup Exec might not have worked at times, but it didn't take down the OS.

(BackupExec)

DPM 2010's GUI has a lot of improvements over the previous version. Lots of little things like doing a quick tape erase. Used to be long erase only through GUI; had to use PS to do a quick erase.

Hrrrm. Just had another serverfault user email me directly with a job offer. I didn't think that email address information was available to other users.

Unless he searched for my name and found my email address that way, but I'm fairly sure it isn't up anywhere indexable.

2:37 PM

I'd bet they found it on your Web site.

@MuraliSuriar It's not. Probably found it through your website.. I had someone do a whois on my domain and used that e-mail (which isn't my primary, hasn't been for a long time).

Hrrrm. Are other people's OpenID URLs accessible in any way?

@MuraliSuriar Not to normal users.

Chris S: that's the thing, the email address in question isn't used in any whois records etc

I'm 99% certain it's not on any website at all; I've moved away from using it.

Have you searched the Internet for it? ;)

2:41 PM

I have indeed. :P

Ah, he must have guessed it.

That's the problem with Google profiles.

Checking the MD5 hash of the subject email address against your gravitar URL would work as a decent confirmation of a guess, too.

/me flips to random number based profile URL.

Too little too late now, I guess.

2:54 PM

Well, if they did jump through those hoops to track you down, you might be dealing with someone who has some brains in the tech department, no?

sigh why can't I get email from a long lost relative or government agency telling me I'm a millionaire and just have to claim it? All my friends seem to get those. I'll never retire :-(

@BartSilverstrim Just relax your spam filter rules... You'll be a millionaire in no time.

Yeah, he just confirmed he used the google profile. Let that be a lesson kids: random strings of numbers ftw. :/

@jscott-there's an idea...hmm...

There are days where I wonder how hard it would be to become one of these spam kings, making tons of money just by exchanging my soul.

3:24 PM

"NEW: Vision Track Super Sessions" -- One of the items on the Symantec conference

Greg

This may be a stupid question... but when following the ISP mail server tutorial workaround.org/ispmail/lenny, should you be setting the addresses up with what's provided in the tutorial (john@example.org) or my own domain?

@MuraliSuriar I list a variant of my email address on my SF profile.. Only had 2 offers so far.

@TomOConnor This is the first time it's happened to me, was just curious as to whether it was by design.

@MuraliSuriar I think it's kinda a shame that there's no Private Messaging system.

but i'm not raking that one up again.

Eh - I don't think it's a huge loss.

3:29 PM

It makes it slightly more difficult to find people who are struggling and pimp my consultancy to them

There's here for general chat (although wtb either XMPP or IRC access), and if you're interested in a job, then there's careers.

Oh, true. I hadn't thought of that - never been a consultant. :P

Does chat.stackexchange work as IRC? <3

I don't think so.

shame.

that'd be amazing.

Ooh...moderator elections.

3:31 PM

At least not on 6667

"If I'm elected, I promise not to kick ban the people who didn't vote for me. Probably."

Mmmm. Secret Ballot.

*TomTom was kicked from #thecommsroom (Don't be a dick.) *

or similar.

Greg

@TomOConnor there is a nascent community project to create an IRC interface to our chat. github.com/ghewgill/soirc

hah

hackyftw.

Hmm...I haven't seen Chopper3 on the moderator candidacy. Because he already is one? Or he's planning a coup?! SHARKS WITH LASER CANNONS!

3:41 PM

Anyone know how cheap LTO-3 or LTO-4 drives get (without being total crap) ?

@BartSilverstrim: Active moderators don't need to rerun -- at least for this one

@kylebrandt...so...no sharks with laser cannons?

Sea bass is the best we could get

@KyleBrandt: My experience is that you're going to be hard-pressed to get a bare LTO-3 tape drive (sans enclosure, warranty, etc) for less than about $800.00.

:-( Wish they were cheaper

I prefer Quantum drives, personally, and you can expect to pay upwards of $1,000.00 for them.

That is the major weakness of tape, IMO... high drive acquisition price. They're great for incremental cost for addt'l storage but that initial "bite" is expensive.

3:49 PM

@EvanAnderson ITYM Byte ;)

Sea bass? Really? I get better crap than that at Red Lobster. They even have lobster ninja in the tank in the waiting area.

@EvanAnderson Maybe used at that price. I'm thinking more like $1200-ish retail price for a reliable drive.

@ChrisS: I'm seeing a bare HP PD070A for around $950.00, though the vendor may not actually have any stock. In general, though, I'd expect to pay north of $1,000.00 to get anything decent. How much you actually spend depends on how much you can beat up your vendor.

See, @evananderson understands the importance of sea life armed with lasers.

:-/

+1 for beating up your vendor with laser-armed sea life.

3

4:04 PM

Someone should collect the starred items on the side and offer them as t-shirts.

Ohh that's a great idea.

Although it might not make sense.. in all cases.

If there's one thing I've learned as an admin it's that things don't have to make sense to make admins giggle.

@BartSilverstrim See Monty Python.

Zypher

yea we are an odd lot arn't we?

@zypher: ya think?

4:14 PM

@BartSilverstrim: Things that don't make sense do make me giggle

Zypher

I'm quite proud of this fact ... goes looking for his helicopter with frickin' laser beams

You have a copter too? Do you and @Chopper3 duel?

Well surely if you you had sharks/seabass with lasers, you could tape them to the side of your copter for dual use (although you may have to replace the shark/seabass when your copter ride is done)

sysadmin1138

It's a good day when I hit the rep-cap before breakfast.

@sysadmin1138 I particularly liked your update to that answer.. Unfortunately, I had already upvoted once.

sysadmin1138

4:29 PM

Thank you. Once I realized I might have a canonical answer on my hands, it was time to get more data into it.

You forgot the "/tips hat /gives knowing nod"

You only up-vote once per question, @jscott?