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AreWeDrunkYet posted:For one-off things, I usually just do it in excel rather than scripting. Have a list of user names in one column, the addresses in a second column, and make the third column something like nice. I like it. I don't know why I've never thought of using excel to create strings for a command line interface
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# ? Mar 24, 2014 07:50 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:41 |
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incoherent posted:If its only 300 peeps, learning scripting will help you accomplish this. But really you're at the 300 people size and you could use a tool like ADmodify.net (http://admodify.codeplex.com/) to mass update everyone. I'm alright at PowerShell but like the other poster said, it's really only a one-off thing so writing a script seemed like a waste of time. I've used AD Modify before but not sure it would work if each user has a different phone number and extension. AreWeDrunkYet posted:For one-off things, I usually just do it in excel rather than scripting. Have a list of user names in one column, the addresses in a second column, and make the third column something like Oh I never thought about copying formulas and doing it this way. Thanks, I think this will work.
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# ? Mar 24, 2014 14:12 |
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You could probably store it all in a csv and pull it in that way if you want to fancy it up.
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# ? Mar 24, 2014 18:49 |
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Can anyone recommend a cloud dropbox-like solution for replicating certain folders/shares from file servers to the cloud so that employees out of the office don't have to copy files over to the VPN? If you don't have a recommendation, rambling off some options would be fine and I'll look into them. I'm basically looking for a solution that would provide this type of process: The user is in the field and wants to transfer files to the office network drives. They put files on a folder on their desktop, it syncs in the background to the cloud, which then gets synced at a throttled rate to the file server in the office in order to be backed up. From a cost perspective, it would be nice to only sync certain folders (job specific folders, for instance) for certain people, but *shrug* I'm just trying to figure out what my options are before asking for too many specific features. If we had to replicate our entire network shares, that might be something to consider. e: I posted in the wrong thread last week and was considering enabling DFS replication of shares to cheap servers at construction job sites. However, that would only alleviate the issue for the guys on the site. I think a cloud solution might be the way to go. Here was my original post in the Windows thread: goobernoodles posted:I'm looking for ways to improve the way our employees transfer files to/from our network drives when they're not in the office. Transferring tons of photos over the VPN takes forever and bogs our connection. We're a construction company, so we have jobs that go up and down in somewhat short spans - 6-12 months typically, sometimes longer for large projects. goobernoodles fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Mar 25, 2014 |
# ? Mar 25, 2014 18:24 |
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BranchCache is made almost exclusively for that, I believe.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 19:13 |
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Bandwidth saving replication is exactly what DFS is built for as well.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 19:15 |
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Neither really solve the problem for all staff. DFS would make working from a job-site with a server a lot better, but it wouldn't help the person working from home, truck, or smaller job sites that wouldn't be able to justify purchasing a server. BranchCache looks like it wouldn't be of much benefit at all, if I understand it correctly. It looks like you need a server for one option, and the other option is to cache files directly to PC's, with PC's on the same LAN using the files they each have as their local version. However, doesn't branch cache only cache files that have been accessed? They still have to pull the files from the office, and if they write back to the server, it's still effectively the same as going over the VPN, no?
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 20:47 |
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Egnyte?
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 21:07 |
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GPO Question, No options to configure IE 9/10/11 settings here: User Config > Preferences > Control Panel > Internet Settings All workstations are Windows 7, PDC is 2008 R2 Should I be installing this: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36991 on the PDC??
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 21:29 |
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goobernoodles posted:Neither really solve the problem for all staff. DFS would make working from a job-site with a server a lot better, but it wouldn't help the person working from home, truck, or smaller job sites that wouldn't be able to justify purchasing a server. The microsoft answer is probably going to be some combination of offline files and DFS or branch cache.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 21:44 |
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Caged posted:Egnyte?
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 22:12 |
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You could bodge something with a file share (or Synology NAS or equivalent) syncing with a Dropbox / Google Drive account. But that will have you tearing your hair out quite quickly.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 22:24 |
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lol internet. posted:GPO Question, That's only going to give you Administrative Templates for everything supported on Windows 8 and Server 2012, which won't give you the preference item for IE9 and 10. If you want the preference item you'll need a Windows 8 or Server 2012 box with RSAT.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 22:47 |
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lol internet. posted:GPO Question, Do this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929841 I think IE is moving to some convoluted as gently caress Internet Explorer Administrator Toolkit or something like that, but for the most part the above will work for you. I use all the RSAT policies, Office Policies, etc and put them into the Central Store, which makes it pretty easy to set policy settings on various software. Even Google and Firefox make group policies you can put there.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 23:26 |
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Gyshall posted:I think IE is moving to some convoluted as gently caress Internet Explorer Administrator Toolkit or something like that, but for the most part the above will work for you. The IE10 preference item applies to all versions of IE up to 99. At least it's configured that way, I imagine Microsoft will eventually cap it on the next major change.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 23:50 |
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Gyshall posted:Do this: The IEAK has existed for several versions of IE and basically lets you make your own custom IE installs with whatever default options and bookmarks you want. You can also make a reconfigurator that will make an existing install like your custom version but I don't think it was ever intended as a management tool.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 04:06 |
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lol internet. posted:GPO Question, If I'm not mistaken, you have to be on a Win8 box with RSAT for Win8 installed to configure the IE10 GPs. Otherwise, you just can't see them. And you have to update the templates on the domain every time a new IE comes out. I just dump a stupid win8 VM to mess with IE10 and Win8 GPs. thebigcow posted:The IEAK has existed for several versions of IE and basically lets you make your own custom IE installs with whatever default options and bookmarks you want. You can also make a reconfigurator that will make an existing install like your custom version but I don't think it was ever intended as a management tool. IEAK is pretty cool, but it will never be a substitute for GPs. You can't lock down different settings based on user or PC.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 06:36 |
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goobernoodles posted:Can anyone recommend a cloud dropbox-like solution for replicating certain folders/shares from file servers to the cloud so that employees out of the office don't have to copy files over to the VPN? If you don't have a recommendation, rambling off some options would be fine and I'll look into them. You say "dropbox-like". Is there anything stopping you from using Dropbox? Is it purely required from a backup perspective or is it also required on a collaborative level?
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 10:10 |
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goobernoodles posted:Nice, thanks. That looks promising. Sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. I might look into paying for a 30 day pilot if everything looks good after talking with an engineer. Are there any other companies that provide similar local storage <-> cloud <-> end-user synchronization? Acronis MobileEcho and Varonis DataAnywhere also fit in this market. They will provide a shim between local NAS and cloud/mobile users, handling all the file syncing and integrating with AD for authentication.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 20:59 |
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Does anyone use a really smart monitoring suite? Our monitoring situation is...less than ideal right now and it's giving us some headaches mostly with tons of false alerts. I'm looking for something smart, that can be configurable, like a workflow. Process monitoring would be nice as well. It's not much help if you can ping the server OS if the critical process running on it is locked up or crashed. We're mostly a Microsoft shop, with a fair bit of linux for our engineering systems. I haven't had time to really look into SCOM but that is an option as MS products are easier to adopt than 3rd party ones as we can just add to our EA without much drama.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 21:27 |
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skipdogg posted:Does anyone use a really smart monitoring suite? Our monitoring situation is...less than ideal right now and it's giving us some headaches mostly with tons of false alerts. I'm looking for something smart, that can be configurable, like a workflow. Process monitoring would be nice as well. It's not much help if you can ping the server OS if the critical process running on it is locked up or crashed. I only have limited experience, but SCOM is probably a really good idea for you. Especially if you're a primarily Microsoft shop, but I think SCOM 2012 supports Linux monitoring as well.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 21:39 |
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I think the general rule with all monitoring systems is that you'll get out of them about as much as you put into them. If you carefully craft your checks and alerts then you'll have a useful tool, if you just dump your entire infrastructure into it and make sure you can ping everything, then you're just going to get a ton of noise. Unless there's some product out there that magically figures all of this out for you, in which case I'll jump at the chance to open my wallet.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 21:58 |
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We use Solarwinds and I like it quite a bit. Has built in counters for drat near everything.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 22:00 |
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I came from a Zabbix background, with a little SCOM, but now we use CheckMK, which was a frontend to Nagios but now has blossomed into its own monitoring engine and all. It's kinda awesome, and it'll monitor pretty much everything known to man. http://mathias-kettner.com/checkmk.html The guy (Mathias) is also beyond helpful in terms of working with customers to implement requested features, commercially, of course. But yeah, if you don't manage your alerts and what your thresholds are, then you're gonna get a tonne of noise like FISHMANPET says. You really need to make it an actual project that you can dedicate some decent time to initially. Once you've done that though, you're golden going forward as the rulesets usually transfer to anything you've got going into your org with limited tweaking.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 00:07 |
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Anyone work with Xenapp 7.0/7.5? Just curious if authentication tokens will work with the storefront? I'm actually not too familiar with XenApp but we're on 6.X and we're looking to upgrade to 7.5. From what I understand, the "web interface" on 6.x is being replaced by a less capable but html5 Storefront/7.x web interface?
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 00:37 |
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Not a SCCM guy but I'm wondering if this is possible. We currently use SCCM to deploy images and do our software installs. Management wants to outsource desktop imaging to our local supplier. Have them do bare metal installs from their office and bring them on site for deployment ready to go. Would standalone media be the best way to go? Or some crazy half assed Distribution Point/VPN tunnel headache that management is envisioning?
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 02:26 |
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gooby pls posted:Not a SCCM guy but I'm wondering if this is possible. I'm sure someone else will have better info, but I can talk to the guys who set it up if you don't get a better answer.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 02:35 |
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goobernoodles posted:It's been like 3+ years since I've worked with SCCM, but I'm pretty sure you basically would have a distribution point set up at their office, where images get replicated to, and they can then image machines on-site. Would require a MPLS/VPN tunnel though, I believe. I worked for an outsourcing company that did exactly that. Sounds good. So something like an ASA/RV and a switch on site to connect the DP to, as well as hand out DHCP/PXE to the PCs?
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 02:50 |
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Honestly, at that point, it's almost easier to use the Windows AIK to get a sysprepped wim file and tell them to put it on a local pxe server. You'd just have to keep giving them an updated file each time your image changes. Unless you're regularly building a large number of systems, I'd tell management to stop over complicating things and just keep it in house. Put the bare metal on a bench somewhere and use system association to zero-touch build it.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 02:50 |
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gooby pls posted:Not a SCCM guy but I'm wondering if this is possible. By local supply if you mean vendor before they ship you new purchased laptops.. they require a .wim file. I don't think they'll setup a huge VPN tunnel. To be honest it will just be more overhead when you need to update. At one of my other places we had distribution points on our DC (yeah i know.) and we used Riverbed to cache the image\software. Riverbed allowed us to have one VM which was the DC. That was in the remote offices to allow local authentication. We just threw on the DP\PXE service and used the admin assistance\secretarys and made them PXE boot or we did mandatory OSD re-install.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 03:06 |
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gooby pls posted:Sounds good. So something like an ASA/RV and a switch on site to connect the DP to, as well as hand out DHCP/PXE to the PCs? dotalchemy posted:Honestly, at that point, it's almost easier to use the Windows AIK to get a sysprepped wim file and tell them to put it on a local pxe server.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 03:10 |
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goobernoodles posted:Can anyone recommend a cloud dropbox-like solution for replicating certain folders/shares from file servers to the cloud so that employees out of the office don't have to copy files over to the VPN? If you don't have a recommendation, rambling off some options would be fine and I'll look into them. I can't really recommend it per se since I've only used it in very small ways, but... owncloud?
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 03:35 |
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skipdogg posted:Does anyone use a really smart monitoring suite? Our monitoring situation is...less than ideal right now and it's giving us some headaches mostly with tons of false alerts. I'm looking for something smart, that can be configurable, like a workflow. Process monitoring would be nice as well. It's not much help if you can ping the server OS if the critical process running on it is locked up or crashed. We use SCOM at both places I work and its actually really easy to write management packs for. Just be aware that false positives are going to be a thing for a while until you tweak monitors to work the way you want. You can also monitor Linux boxes with SCOM with an agent and that works as you would expect. I recommend SCOM in a test environment first to see if you really need the power that it can provide.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 12:02 |
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gooby pls posted:Not a SCCM guy but I'm wondering if this is possible. I've never messed with it, but look into doing pre-staged media, this is exactly what people use it for.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 14:45 |
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FISHMANPET posted:I think the general rule with all monitoring systems is that you'll get out of them about as much as you put into them. If you carefully craft your checks and alerts then you'll have a useful tool, if you just dump your entire infrastructure into it and make sure you can ping everything, then you're just going to get a ton of noise. This is very true. We have a Nagios installation right now but my boss isn't thrilled with it. I can only guess to the reasons why, but I think it's a combination of - it's not configured properly resulting in tons of false positives. One week I got over 400 alerts and ended up ignoring everything like I have for years... wouldn't you know somewhere in those 400 alerts was a real alert and it caused a little dustup that we didn't catch it promptly. - only 2 people on the team are familiar with Nagios. Most of the team are Windows guys, we only have 2 Linux guys. - The things we monitor aren't the most useful (ping, c: drive space, d: drive space). I would like to see more detailed monitoring, like RAM/CPU utilization, process monitoring. We could definitely improve our Nagios environment, if you put the time in I'm sure there is nothing it can't do. I don't have time to even think about touching a project like that until maybe September and everyone else on the team is busy as well.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 17:49 |
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SCCM Question: For App catalog requests\approval. Once I approve, the software doesn't seem to automatically install on the clients computer. There is no deployment status messages (pending/successful/fail) but it does appear in the clients software center. Any ideas? The software in the app catalog that doesn't require approval installs fine.
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 01:10 |
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dotalchemy posted:Honestly, at that point, it's almost easier to use the Windows AIK to get a sysprepped wim file and tell them to put it on a local pxe server. AIK + WDS and never look back it's "harder" but owns so much over SCCM or MDT
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 02:23 |
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Hey guys, Active Directory question. I'm doing some infrastructre work for my old job. Part of the project is to create a new domain controller and set up a new AD domain to replace their old one. The current/old one has some really wonky stuff and they'd like to just start over. I'm wondering the best way to handle removing current machines from the current domain and adding them back to the new one with as little friction as possible. Luckily they're small and we only need to move a SQL Server box, one web server, and 6-8 laptops. Is it as easy as having all clients remove themselves from the domain, then remove the SQL Server, create a new domain and rejoin?
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 16:26 |
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I want to say "yes, pretty much", but be careful with the SQL server if you're using Windows authentication to manage access, as hose accounts will no longer be valid. Basically, make sure you know the SA account password. Not this SA :-) Someone who's more AD focused will likely explain how to do this with a trust between domains or something, but I just wanted to pop up and stop you making similar SQL mistakes as I've made!
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 17:34 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:41 |
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Something that small it's probably fastest to do it manually. A larger environment you would want to use something like ADMT or a third party software suite.
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 17:34 |