@MilesErickson Server Manager in 2012 is actually awesome

it's totally possible to have one management box and have everything else hook into it if you've got a lot of 2012 out there

(not that anyone does)

@MDMarra Of course, none of them were running Server Core. Director insisted that every box, regardless of OS, must have a GUI that he could log into personally from his office.

i dunno how this one's gonna work ...our old server was on ESXi so a GUI was easy via the console

@MDMarra I'll play around with it when I'm back from vacation.

this one's on its own box...so that means VNV

*VNC

@NathanC or iLO/DRAC

@MilesErickson I love it

@MDMarra I made the mistake of installing a Windows 8 partition on this netbook. Good god, what is SteveB thinking?

Ok, time to aimlessly wander off to get lunch. come back with Chinese food. then, hate myself for my poor decisions

And I just noticed our "backups" are in fact going to a folder on the local filesystem...

@MDMarra Sounds like my typical workday, and it's nearly lunch too. :P

@MDMarra Or, come back with Thai food and smile for the rest of the day?

@NathanC My favorite is when someone has an unintelligent disk-to-disk backup scheme that results in meta-meta-meta-backups.

Stupid cat

@Adrian Hi kitty.

Oh jeez.

At the very least its in RAID so it's not completely terrible

She's 14 months old. Everything is a springboard for jumping onto or off of other things.

And everything not nailed down is a cat toy.

She was batting at the buckle on my belt as I was putting it on this morning

@Adrian Sounds like every cat ever haha

I haven't had a cat that was this active before. I'd always adopting older shelter kitties.

@NathanC 20 disks in RAID 5 with no hot spare?

@MichaelHampton Who cares whether there's a hot spare? That's going DOWN.

@MichaelHampton Ever seen a 50-user SMB with a 10-year-old Exchange server sitting on a RAID0 array of 9GB SCSI drives?

@MilesErickson Not one that actually worked, no.

@MichaelHampton Sometimes idiots get lucky.

Oh, the horror...

What is that??

That's an old 5.25" full height SCSI drive.

At least it's got a SCSI interface. Oldest drive I've ever owned was a ST-506

Came in a 286 computer that I acquired many years ago.

@MichaelHampton Wow. That brings back memories. Ran a BBS at my high school on an old XT with a 20MB MFM drive and 512k RAM.

You had a hard drive? I had to use two floppy disks!

Every so often the message store file would run past the end of the drive and loop around and overwrite the partition data

NICE! Somebody still has a web page up for that BBS package: rapro.com

@Adrian Dang.

My first BBS was run off a 25MHz 386 with 4 MB RAM and a 512MB HD that I saved all my birthday money for two years to get (I strongly suspect my parents kicked in half, but didn't tell me).

I miss my old 14.4k external modem. Perhaps the most ridiculously reliable piece of electronics ever made. Ran for YEARS without a hiccup.

@Adrian I ran a BBS on my Atari ST, with a SupraModem 2400 and a 30MB RLL hard drive.

@ChrisS My first hard drive was an ST-251 that I upgraded from 40Mb to 60Mb by changing the controller card an MFM encoder to an RLL encoder

@Adrian No kidding. I used to use my SupraModem as a foot warmer in the winter.

@Iain lol - the good old days

@MilesErickson I think you won that one. The closest I got to that was logging into a Tandy CoCo BBS in 1989.

@Adrian Yeah, I got the SupraModem when I was still in elementary school. I remember there was one BBS that wouldn't let me into their "teen" section because they thought I was an adult pretending to be a kid.... then once we cleared that up, they wouldn't let me in because I was too young.

I just got rid of the USR 56k modems that my work used back in the day. They were the size of Wii and sucked down something like 30W of power.

@Adrian Hell, I wrote a Tandy CoCo BBS in 1989.

@MilesErickson heh. My original Tandy had a 300baud modem. Was so slow I could almost read the text of XModem downloads faster than it was transferring them.

@Adrian A lot of the less popular BBSs in town were still running on C64s with 300 baud modems. Of course you could read the text faster than it was downloading... did you ever try picking up the phone and listening to each byte go over the line?

@MichaelHampton Yeah, I grew up in the farm country. I didn't know anyone that owned a computer until I moved to Upstate NY in 1988

@Adrian 1200 or faster and picking up the phone would lead to instant NO CARRIER, but 300 was much more resilient :-)

-1n5tv3[rfgc`h

3p0y8`r

q\31-=

NO CARRIER

@MilesErickson Actually, my USRobotics 14.4 was surprisingly tolerant of that. If they hung up fairly quickly it would renegotiate and keep on trucking.

@Adrian Funny, people wanting to use the phone line for phone calls. Phone line was definitely the first bill I had in my own name, at age 12... I think it was about $14 per month.

@MichaelHampton Dude, you need to disable call waiting.

@MilesErickson That wasn't call waiting, it was a perl script!

@MichaelHampton :-F

@MichaelHampton Try this: ATDT*70,chat.stackexhange.com

+++

Lunch update: got a slice of pizza instead

cool

@MilesErickson I'm using W8 now

I don't hate it

@MDMarra it hates you, though.

@MDMarra That's odd. How did you learn to stop worrying and love the bomb?

I also don't have a choice, so it could be a subconscious defense

because multi monitor support is the best

that alone makes it worth it for me

@MDMarra when I get back on Monday - my manager asked me to install it on my laptop.

How did multi monitor support improve?

taskbar across both windows with the option to only display icons for programs currently on that screen

@MDMarra That's nifty.

or taskbars stretched across both in a mirrored fashion

@MDMarra no need for UltraMon anymore!

also, I really like the iOS-like notifications

new mail, new tweet, new USB device ready all show up in the same style notification in the top right

Also, I'm a really big fan of IE10, but that's not W8 specific

Somebody's High. Recruiter just called me looking to fill a slot for a company's Linux and Windows subject matter expert.

I only have Firefox/Chrome on here for dumbass sites that treat IE10 like it's IE8

@Adrian Tell them you want 200k, since a SME for each would probably run them 100k each :)

@Adrian Then we'll split it 50/50.

@MDMarra So does bitlocker's unlock dialog. Where it shows the drive's ID. And you can't copy-n-paste from it. So you have to look at that dialog, memorize or write down the ID, switch to ADUC to find the password (which closes the bitlocker unlock dialog since it loses focus), find the key, and all the way back in to the bitlocker dialog. AND! You can't paste what ADUC displays as there's a carriage return in there and the dialog to too dumb to edit that out.

@MilesErickson the dirty underbelly of W8 is that they neutered search so that it isn't unified anymore. Although, rumor has it that unified search will be back in SP1

@MDMarra I haven't heard anything about an SP1....

@ChrisS Huh. You know there is a powershell cmdlet to get that bitlocker stuff out of AD

might make it easier to C&P

@ChrisS 8.1

@MDMarra I vaguely recall someone from Microsoft explaining the logic of that -- that they had decided to limit Windows Search results to what 80% of the people were looking for 80% of the time, or some such thing. You know, for the sake of simplicity. What could possibly go wrong?

Hrm. Might have to look at that. It's pretty infrequent that I'm doing all that BitLocker cut-n-paste anyway... But just an obvious lack of usability testing, which seems to pervade Windows 8.

@ChrisS It might actually be a vbscript. But either way, there's a tool from MS that takes a computer name as a parameter and spits out bitlocker keys for it

Meh, thinking about it, I've only had to go through that song and dance 3 times in the months that I've had Win8.

@ChrisS They invite Seattle IT pros in for usability studies fairly often. My feedback tends toward the scathing, and they seem to appreciate that.

@MilesErickson Appreciate or not, Win8 has some of the worst Administrative Usability of any recent version of Windows.

@ChrisS Besides bitlocker and breaking unified search, what else is bad?

@ChrisS I'm not surprised. It's a product of the political environment there. And quite a few teams that didn't want to move to Metro got bent over the railing...

@MDMarra WinKey+X is about the only reasonable way of getting to most of the stuff on that list.

The Start Screen - 'nuf said?

I almost never use it

I have powershell pinned to the start bar and a custom MMC with almost every snapin in it

@ChrisS After about 30-40 minutes of seriously trying to use Win8 as my primary operating system -- and this is on vacation, mind you, where the most serious thing I'm likely to do is write a book chapter in WordPad -- I was thoroughly convinced that Windows 7 Starter would serve me better than Windows 8 Pro.

The politics at Microsoft has gotten so bad that about half the people I know that worked there 4 years ago have left.

I don't need a whole lot else

Of course, I'm much closer to an end user than an IT admin at this point

I don't do a lot of admin stuff on it. I just draw visios and start lync conferences

I've got 8 icons pinned on the taskbar. Other things I've memorized a word/letter combination that WinKey + Phrase + Enter will start the program.

I have 8 program too!

Explorer, IE10, Powershell ISE, PowerShell, Lync, Outlook, RDCMan, Remote Desktop

@ChrisS Sounds exactly right, though I prefer Windows-R + filename + Enter.

Firefox, Outlook, PuTTY, Onenote, Explorer, Remote Desktop, Server Manager, SCSM

SM!?

You're a SM convert?

System Center Service Manager

yeah dude

That's basically all that I do now

It's a long story

I've spent the last two months designing SM solutions, primarily

Oh - Well I suck at it still, so I'll remember to ask you when I break it.

haha

shhhh

Are you on 2012 SP1?

Fuck I mother fucking hate OSX fuck

We had a homegrown ticket solution built on MS CRM. It worked sometimes, and never right.

When my boss, who insisted on using it - despite it not having worked at all for 6 months before he left - "retired" to found a VC company, I ripped the CRM crap out and installed SCSM.

We have Remedy that's so customized for Notes - it blows.

@JoelESalas Stop being a bitch!

@ChrisS are you using the self service portal?

@MDMarra Looks like 2012 RTM

And have you done awesome shit like tie Orchestrator in to automate account provisioning and other boring shit that no one cares about other than me?

@ewwhite It's so aggravating, the entire OS is designed to pull the wool over your eyes with respect to the shitty IO

@MDMarra I couldn't get it working after 15 minutes, so it's on the back burner.

The portal?

dirty reads all over the place, stale info, and you don't notice until you push it and it's just not responding

Yeah

@JoelESalas why do you need good I/O on a Mac?

@ewwhite It's simple shit, like OPENING THE LID

@ChrisS I've installed it at least half a dozen times. Where did you get hung up?

the OS comes up, I log back in

but I still can't use the macbook for like 2-3 minutes

Don't have Orchestrator installed yet, SCCM/SCVMM/SCDPM are all 2008 versions still... We've got serious "need to upgrade the hardware" issues that I've been trying to iron out. The worst part of skipping a year where you should have upgraded is that next year there's more that should be upgraded, so the price tag is higher

@JoelESalas That's a you problem. Obviously something isn't right.

Go to see an Apple Genius?

@ewwhite This is TWO DIFFERENT MACBOOKS now

I never had this problem with my windows OR Linux laptops

hate it when people are running behind on calling me for a phone screen

@JoelESalas I've never had that problem with a Macbook

@Cole You don't devops hard enough

@JoelESalas I don't DevOps at all

@JoelESalas Treat it like a SF question... I've seen this type of thing, but it's quite easy to diagnose.

(removed)

I'm not dirty like you.

@ChrisS Orchestrator is seriously the coolest

So got some shitty news yesterday

And if you need any help with the SSP, just let me know. I've probably hit every install problem possible with it

uh oh

@MDMarra Trying to add it to our existing SharePoint server... I'd have to look at it again to remember exactly what wasn't working. Whatever it was it wasn't throwing an error anything, just not working.

Had my testosterone levels checked. In Jan. they were perfect at ~700s. Now it's at 194 - which is VERY low.

Now I know why I'm so tired/grumpy/etc lately.

@ChrisS Like, the frame for the page would load, but you'd get a white background instead of the actual portal?

@MDMarra Sounds right

Are you using a cert from an internal CA for it?

@Cole Can your body manufacture its own?

@JoelESalas negative

My ovaries are all FUCK THA POLICE. So, until I get a hysto there's going to be this constant battle of hormones. So I have to up my dose from .4mL(80mg) to .5mL(100mg)/week

I have a feeling I'm going to have to go to 120mg/week

@MDMarra The SP site? No, external CA

@Cole So those "Low-T" commercials must be frustrating. Is a hysto planned?

@ewwhite I'm like FUCK ALL YALL. But not yet - I don't think I could handle two surgeries in one year. Plus, I need to see if I can get it covered by insurance. (I had issues with that stuff prior to T - my mom's mother had hers at 30 and my mom's at 40. So it would be considered "preventive")

@ChrisS What about for the self service portal sharepoint parts?

Did you configure them for SSL?

Otherwise - it's $12,000+

@Cole I know some Russian doctors. You don't like anaesthetic, right?

@JoelESalas lulz

@Cole Thailand might be a realistic cost-saving option, if you like Thailand.

@MDMarra 404 - Data Not Found - Past 5 minute retention period

The only painful part of it - isn't the needle but pushing the testosterone out.

@Cole How's that

@Cole IM, I presume?

@MilesErickson yessir

@ChrisS 99% of the time, a partial page load with the "good stuff" just being white is an SSL problem with the SM web parts. In IIS, you navigate to the SMPortal website, open Application Settings, and make sure the URL is set tot he FQDN. Lots of times it's set to the short name by default

Every time I've had the partial portal load problem, that solved it

@JoelESalas it's very thick, suspended in sesame oil. So it basically makes a hole in your muscle by pushing it apart.

Stings a bit

@MDMarra I'll take a look....

it would be set to server/smportal or whatever instead of server.domain/smportal, which doesn't match the cert

ugh ugh ugh -5HP -5HP -5HP

if it doesn't match the cert it wont load but it also wont throw an error

I really don't know SharePoint very well, definitely not as well as I'd like. Also, I installed a test server, PoC more than anything. The developers got a hold of it and it's our current SP server; complete with my former boss's "organic growth" organizational model (aka, trash pit).

@ChrisS blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2012/05/04/…

Sharepoint...ew

I don't know a thing about SP. I just know enough to install Foundation 2010 for clients to get the SSP running on

I love how the Central Admin page takes 6 minutes to load too...

You know theres a problem when there are "warm up" scripts for a product so that it's not dog slow at 8am logon time

My application shouldn't need a fluffer!

That's a feature, not a problem

@cole fwiw hystersisters.com/vb2/article_150115.htm

@MilesErickson thanks.

Most guys get it covered. Or only have to pay about ~$2k-$3k out of pocket

I traveled after top surgery and it sucks. It so uncomfortable

@Cole Mostly I am projecting my wish that if I ever needed major surgery, it would be done in Thailand. The customer service orientation of medical facilities there is ridiculous... they actually let you stay in the hospital comfortably until you've recovered, which to us sounds ridiculously novel.

@MDMarra ZOMG! IT WORKS

@MDMarra heh. Most of our databases need to be fluffed for 30-40 minutes to warm up :)

@Cole but, obviously, if you get it paid for in the USA, that's a heck of a lot more convenient :)

@DennisKaarsemaker You work for one of the few places where someone can safely say "shut up, you don't count"

@ChrisS ya!

That pretty much sums up 97% of my frustrations with MS Software. The SSL Cert was for the FQDN, and the webapp was tripping over a mismatch, but instead of a helpful error, it's just f-ing blank

Fucking christ internet is so slow here

@ChrisS It's because the SM content is sort of...passed through...from the web content server to the sharepoint server

@MilesErickson also Boston, MA to Thailand is about a 17+ hr flight.

you may have installed them both on the same box, but they don't have to be installed that way

so it's sort of...embedded...why is why sharepoint doesn't throw an error

it's just like "welp, nothing to see here"

@MDMarra what do you mean with that?

@MDMarra yeah, but at some point in the process there was a simple "CN doesn't match, error" and it doesn't show that ANYWHERE

@DennisKaarsemaker you're at a much larger scale than most

@ChrisS yeah im sure it's in an IIS text log somewhere that you'll never see

True, but fluffing still sucks :-)

but I don't know that for sure

THANKS!!

Touch of polish and this sucker's getting rolled out. =]

Rolling out new code to our entire frontend takes 5 minutes. Restarting one database half an hour. One of these things is wrong :-)

@ChrisS dude, start playing with scorch2012 and the new exchange connector for approvals

in about a week you'll be at a point where HR fills in all the new user info into the SSP and you just click on "Approve" in an email to provision the account, mailbox, lync, group membership, and the email with that user/pass to the new employee's manager

@MDMarra No time to play... I have to put together a justification for server hardware, comparing it against Clouding All The Things (yes, I'm serious) on AWS, Azure, and a local provider.

poor guy

@DennisKaarsemaker haha. Sharding, MongoDB, Big Data, Hadoop, NoSQL (Have I said anything relevant yet?)

Our company will not do anything cloud.

Also, we're thinking about partnering with another company for our MS stuff... Basically we'd be subcontractors, but our company name would go on everything. That means we'd give up our MS Partnership, and lose all the associated internal use licenses... So I have to figure out what that would cost.

@MDMarra ...you email passwords?

oof

Blasphemer.

@voretaq7 I don't

@Cole I've got nothing against the cloud, except all the marketing BS.

I just do what my clients ask of me :)

@ChrisS they say it's a "security risk"

@MDMarra I draw the line at emailing passwords.

and Windows NT/2000 isnt? Or having the guest account enabled on your fileshare?

At $university we printed them in a letter and snail mailed them to everyone

@MDMarra sharding (relevant, done) mongodb (haha webscale) big data (buzzy buzzword) hadoop (relevant, done), nosql (omgsoftwarehippies)

@voretaq7 you'd make a shitty consultant

@MDMarra We make our clients call.

@Cole Our insurance used to say the same - now they just want 104 pages of documentation making sure you're secure.

@voretaq7 Can't do that with FERPA

@MDMarra I was an excellent consultant. Clients always thanked me when they didn't fail their security audits :-)

There's no good way to verify authenticity over the phone

We have two 1PB hadoop clusters

@MDMarra no good way to do it via postal mail either - how do you know someone else in the house didn't open the mail?

Cloud is more expensive than running your own hardware though. And the whole "you don't have to deal with the hardware directly" argument, doesn't hold much water. It was brought up at our meeting last week, and I can't remember the last time I was messing with the hardware directly - probably last year sometime or other.

@ChrisS I'd be curious on how to kind of change their mind. The site I'm at now, the IT Manager would love to go to the cloud for some stuff.

@DennisKaarsemaker Oh yeah, well my dad can kick your dad's butt.

@MDMarra and my mom will shard your moms ass!

Our clients go through a two-step authentication process before we'll give them a new password over the phone. Most of them don't mind.

@voretaq7 USPS is considered acceptable means of communication for FERPA. Done

@DennisKaarsemaker Two moms, one shard.

@Cole $$$$$$

@MDMarra that's disturbing even by comms room standards :)

@MDMarra Telephone with two-step confirmation is considered acceptable under HIPAA. They'll also accept fax.

Not sure about USPS, but none of our clients would wait that long

Everyone accepts fax

@Cole At a small scale, cloud is cheaper. At a large scale, in-house is cheaper. Somewhere in the middle, things get interesting.

it's lovely

@Cole Some cloud stuff is great if you want awesome things like Lync and Exchange but can't run them yourself

@DennisKaarsemaker everyone is fucking stupid.

Fax is crazy easy to intercept compared to most forms of electronic communication too... makes no sense

DirSync + ADFS == seamless cloud Lync/Exchange

@voretaq7 no shit sherlock :)

however, clouding things like DCs or file servers is nuts

brb

@MilesErickson Somewhat true. But cloud is cheaper at larger scales when your changing capacity constantly.

@ChrisS Fax is insecure (any idiot with an audio tap can get a copy, no cryptographic auth to prevent tampering in transit, and the fax machine is often a communal resource so unless your recipient is standing there someone else is probably gonna see it), low-resolution, black-and-white. -- It truly is THE WORST technology ever.

That's the main dynamic in the middle, constant capacity flux == cloud cheaper. static capacity requirements == in-house cheaper

oh and the fax machine is out of toner and always eats page 2 of any document.

@ChrisS True. I've never had to engineer for that scenario, but it is obviously a big deal when you're running large-scale web services.

(I haven't figured out how to make our electronic fax system eat page 2 yet... working on it. Bug-for-Bug compatibility you know!)

@MilesErickson we centralize all IT to the HQ (where I work) - for the world.

@voretaq7 I'm sure that if you'd gone with Nortel/Avaya, they would have found a way for you.

@MilesErickson Fuck Avaya

We go down, the whole world goes down. Like when a core switch failed and the network was down for 12 hours

It took me 2 years to convince this company that the shitty ass partner messaging system was satan's asshole and get them to move to VoIP

@voretaq7 It's really not necessary. They do it to their own products.

@MilesErickson and their customers

@voretaq7 Yup.

speaking of getting fucked - what the hell did they do to Network Manager? Its stupid applet icon no longer realizes when I disconnect network...

Fingers crossed, I made it to the second of three interviews for a company I really want to work at.

It's a phone interview, last step is coming into the office.

1x Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor code for Steam going free if anyone wants it.

@Cole remember your phone interview etiquette -- slurp your coffee and eat crunchy chips. And always make sure your mouth is full when you answer a question.

oh wait you WANT to work there...

@voretaq7 So THAT'S why LW didn't take me

It is freaking incredible how awesome of a system you can put together for $700.

I need a catalyst 3750 for dummies text that explains how to reset to system settings and how to create vlans and assign ports. Any pointers?

I found the 1200+ page configuration guide explaining everything I don't need :)

@DennisKaarsemaker For your use, or for redistribution?

@DennisKaarsemaker Reset with or without knowing the current password?

my use, without password

cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps5023/…

picking it up from the DC tomorrow. It's an old spare I get to use for the perl5.git.perl.org network and nobody seems to know the password :)

refer to the above link.

@DennisKaarsemaker Look for a note stuck to the switch.

No such note. Reading the text already, thanks @MilesErickson

@MDMarra more expert level questions rather than he river of HALP !

@DennisKaarsemaker Once you're in, it's enable followed by erase startup-config and del flash:vlan.dat then reload

@Iain But you're not running again!

@MDMarra to paraphrase @MichaelHampton that's easily fixed ...

@DennisKaarsemaker As for configuring ports and vlans, log into Safari Books Online and pick your favorite CCNA guide. I like Wendell Odom's stuff.

thanks

I really should know more about this, but I don't ever get to touch network equipment :(

the only switch I can drive is hp procurve, as that's what's in the side network now :)

but that won't talk to bl460 g5 blades

@DennisKaarsemaker Everyone's CLI commands are similar to Cisco IOS commands, but different enough to be frustrating. This is especially the case with HP networking gear. If you're going the other direction, you'll still benefit from what you already know.

@DennisKaarsemaker 3750 is a nice switch to learn on. Supports all the switch features you need to learn, all the way through CCIE R&S. Get a handful of them if you can.

I have no need for a handful (so no trunking for me), so I won't get more than one :)

that little side project is one blade chassis with 16 servers and 2 internet uplinks. No need for more than one switch :)

maybe once we swap out all the old cisco kit for juniper & arista. Though that's mostly big chassis :)

@DennisKaarsemaker Fair enough. I bought a few "for parts or not working" 3750s off eBay last year... of course their problems were merely cosmetic and they work fine in a training rack.