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CLAM DOWN posted:It was a combo of networking/connections, eduction, ability, and the right timing when they needed someone with my skills. Years later now and I've moved up multiple times and couldn't be happier. What was your path of education? Self-learnt or traditional education?
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Dec 1, 2015 08:48
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Famethrowa posted:What was your path of education? Self-learnt or traditional education? BSc in computer science at a traditional university then a tech school for an IT diploma program (BCIT for any western Canadians here). I did a 2 month coop at my company and never left, hired out of that.
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Dec 1, 2015 08:51
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I will love you forever if you can answer this question: do you guys know of a good MDM solution that will identify first and foremost devices (with certificates or something like that) and only then identify username/password? We have a very security strict client that doesn't want any requests hitting Exchange from ActiveSync until the device has been proven to be safe/managed. For the best question I'll buy an avatar gift  .E: Also, no Domain servers on the DMZ. (just to make it challenging)
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Dec 1, 2015 12:14
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Inspector_666 posted:Having your VOIP traffic split out to a separate VLAN was best practice I thought? funny thing about that... my last job there was a lot of discussion from my coworkers and I as to why exactly we needed to do this. Turns out my boss thought VLAN meant Voice LAN (apparently that was a common thing 20 years ago) so, he said "make it so." Some 6 months later he somehow figured out what we had done and ordered that it all be lumped back into one jumblefuck of a mess across 15 switches.  Grandstream phones are chatty as gently caress by the way.
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Dec 1, 2015 13:53
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Does anyone have any thoughts about moving into software sales engineering from generalist network admin at an MSP? I could go into details of the two positions further, but I'm just looking for first impressions. The new position would likely be 20%-30% increase in pay.
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Dec 1, 2015 13:58
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Famethrowa posted:I probably will finish something, it just feels weird staying the course with a degree that is even more useless then a history degree, if you don't get a masters. Degree chat: it is not a requirement for me because there are clearly very talented people who did not have that opportunity. However, any degree from a reputable institution is noticed just as the for profit schools are. IMO, cert'd up Devry grads in the Chicagoland area have been some of the worst candidates I've interviewed because they had little to no ability to troubleshoot issues effectively, which is the biggest skill I am looking for in an interview. My first job was as a Systems Engineer supporting and designing post-production systems at a university. This was due to a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology, the research project I was working on (was published as an undergrad), and the part time IT job I had during my senior year that help desk and sysadmin for a small company. After about 3 years, I started getting into the syadmin stuff as the school kept growing and we only had one guy running infrastructure and he needed help. We have some very green (~1yr of experience with no technical background) service desk guys that are ambitious, but are not very patient as they seem to think you become a sysadmin overnight. I have been telling them that those types of power are earned and not given. That has not been the case at the company in the past, and my day to day is cleaning that poo poo up. Like yesterday when I found our that our HP 3PAR management console is still using the loving default password. My path to Senior Systems Engineer, which is the lead technical position at my 1000+ seat company, took about 7 years, which is probably a bit on the fast side, but I've taken on huge projects and delivered along with hopping to new positions that will get me ahead.
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Dec 1, 2015 14:03
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Degree chat: got my first job at an msp with customer service (sales) experience and N+, no degree. The pay was abysmal because of my lack of qualifications, even after earning 8k in raises over 2 years. While working I finished my associates degree. It's a great quick way to get a "college degree" that satisfies hr check boxes while only costing a few thousand dollars. Community colleges offer a lot of online courses and I would usually only go to school two nights a week. For those who can't afford state school debt or have trouble with schedules I highly recommend at least picking up that associates degree to have something. Also grabbed my CCNA at the same time and jumped to a Jr admin job at +40% pay.
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Dec 1, 2015 15:08
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Degree chat: No, you don't need a CS degree to be a sysadmin, but some days I would literally murder for a coworker who understood OOP, version control, reasonable development practices or graph theory.
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Dec 1, 2015 15:47
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I did the same, and I had the gal durn common sense to join the Air Force at a time when they let you score high enough on the ASVAB to pick your career and say you wanted to be a sys admin, and it was that easy. Nothing like a bunch of 19 year olds with 3 months of training being given domain admin. (This does not happen anymore.) Sure it does
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Dec 1, 2015 15:52
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Methanar posted:Sure it does He means in the Air Force.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:19
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captkirk posted:or graph theory. I, too, long for discussions on optimizing SPF algorithms. Seriously though it would make design and topology discussions go so smooth.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:25
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Is Nagios still a good option for monitoring? Small/medium multi-office VMware/Microsoft environment. I like the idea of the customization of Nagios, and I previously hosed around with it but didn't have enough time to dedicate to it to get it where I needed it. I shut down that old VM since it's been like 4-6 months since I last tinkered with it and downloaded the NagiosXI OVF template not realizing that's actually the "pay for" version. I have no doubt I can get approval to spend ~2k on monitoring software, especially if it's just the upfront licensing costs the most money. Not sure if I'm less stupid than the last time I worked with Nagios or if NagiosXI is a lot easier to get running without reading a novel of documentation, but so far it seems fairly simple getting what I want monitored setup. From what I gather, I'd have to install one of probably various plugins in order to do any sort of bandwidth monitoring, but basically what I'm looking for is monitoring for our two offices networks consisting of: Seattle:[list] 2 Internet connections L2 P2P fiber connection to Portland Switches, access points, copiers VMware hosts VMware guests - mainly server 2012 r2 Handful of physical servers (vCenter, Email archiver, FreeNAS) Veeam backups Portland is similar, except in a smaller scale and one ISP connection aside from the L2 fiber to Seattle which provides their primary internet for the time being. I'm looking to be able to monitor windows services, bandwidth, and anything that may be an indicator of a potential problem or performance killer. On another note... If anyone has any experience with inter-state Comcast Fiber EPL connections, I'd like to chat.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:29
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orange sky posted:I will love you forever if you can answer this question: do you guys know of a good MDM solution that will identify first and foremost devices (with certificates or something like that) and only then identify username/password? BES 12 with the Router service in the DMZ. It's expensive, that's the issue here.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:36
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I did the same, and I had the gal durn common sense to join the Air Force at a time when they let you score high enough on the ASVAB to pick your career and say you wanted to be a sys admin, and it was that easy. Nothing like a bunch of 19 year olds with 3 months of training being given domain admin. (This does not happen anymore.) When I took the ASVAB the recruiter told me I had the second highest math score on that round for all of southern California. I'm terrible at math so I could only wonder how bad everyone else was. He said that between my score and having a degree I could pick whatever MOS I wanted but there was always the chance my selections would be ignored and I'd just get dumped into something like 92W.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:39
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My sister took the asvab in high school to get out of class for the morning, and she had military recruiters hounding her for years. I learned from that and never took it. I still had military recruiters hounding me for years.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:45
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:I'm starting to think that the worst part about my job is that I have no one readily accessible that is senior to me (or even pretty much equivalent) to me in terms of technical know-how. This is not me bragging in anyway - I just work in a small department. While there's something to be said for being able to work through issues via my own research, I can't get rid of this nagging feeling that I take too long to fix more "complicated" issues and that the way I've implemented things couldn't be easily improved upon. I wouldn't worry about it too much. When I run into issues over my head I'm at the point where I have to do my own research or I engage vendor professional resources. We buy a block of Microsoft hours every year so I can get a PFE for stuff when I need. I don't have anyone at the company I can bounce stuff off either. Forums are good for certain things as well depending on the issue. goobernoodles posted:Is Nagios still a good option for monitoring? I guess, a lot of people use it. After using PRTG though I'm way over Nagios. PRTG isn't that expensive really and I really like it.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:50
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skipdogg posted:I guess, a lot of people use it. After using PRTG though I'm way over Nagios. PRTG isn't that expensive really and I really like it. I've used both and prefer Nagios. Just for aesthetic reasons. PRTG seems to throw to much at you and gets really jumbled up and busy. With Nagios I can configure it to my liking more. Actually now that I type this out I could probably do the same with PRTG but it was easier for me to do with Nagios. Also it's free which is nice.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:04
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goobernoodles posted:Is Nagios still a good option for monitoring? Small/medium multi-office VMware/Microsoft environment. I like the idea of the customization of Nagios, and I previously hosed around with it but didn't have enough time to dedicate to it to get it where I needed it. I shut down that old VM since it's been like 4-6 months since I last tinkered with it and downloaded the NagiosXI OVF template not realizing that's actually the "pay for" version. I have no doubt I can get approval to spend ~2k on monitoring software, especially if it's just the upfront licensing costs the most money. Not sure if I'm less stupid than the last time I worked with Nagios or if NagiosXI is a lot easier to get running without reading a novel of documentation, but so far it seems fairly simple getting what I want monitored setup. From what I gather, I'd have to install one of probably various plugins in order to do any sort of bandwidth monitoring, but basically what I'm looking for is monitoring for our two offices networks consisting of: Look at OpenNMS, I'm still playing with it, but its so much better than Nagios with less of the nagios bullshit. PRTG is good if you have a budget of a few dollars, Solarwinds is good if you have a few dollars plus. Everything else in the monitoring space is complete poo poo.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:11
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Yeah, I have a test PRTG server up and let it run through an auto-discover sequence. I think that's the problem with anything network scan based... waaaaaay too much noise initially. I'm systematically going through my list of servers/devices and setting each up the way I want. Even if I don't end up going with Nagios, I'll have a comprehensive list of services to monitor for each one in one location. I'll take a look at OpenNMS. PRTG just seems so expensive in comparison to Nagios and at this point I'm more comfortable with Nagios. I pretty much need to just pick something and run with it.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:20
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goobernoodles posted:Yeah, I have a test PRTG server up and let it run through an auto-discover sequence. I think that's the problem with anything network scan based... waaaaaay too much noise initially. I'm systematically going through my list of servers/devices and setting each up the way I want. Even if I don't end up going with Nagios, I'll have a comprehensive list of services to monitor for each one in one location. I'll take a look at OpenNMS. PRTG just seems so expensive in comparison to Nagios and at this point I'm more comfortable with Nagios. I pretty much need to just pick something and run with it. I've been a Nagios user since it was Netsaint way back in the day. You'll like OpenNMS. Icinga2 seems like it'll be slick as hell in a year or so once they have some updated documentation and a more useful UI.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:31
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DigitalMocking posted:I've been a Nagios user since it was Netsaint way back in the day. I'll have to check those out. Honestly Nagios works really well for us and I'm happy with it, but it's always nice to have some cool looking graphical displays to show the bean counters when they walk by. No joke I think it can help you during budget negotiations. Showing them some cool graphing and monitoring with pretty fancy colors and displays helps paint a picture and gets you more moola.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:40
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The thing about Nagios is it only does alerting. If you want graphs and historical data you'll then also need something like collectd + graphite or another visualization tool. I'm partial to Zabbix as an all-in-one solution, although I'll grant the UI is really confusing at first. It really just comes down to personal preference which monitoring tools you want.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:42
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Anyone work in identity management? Here's a tough one, Contoso Corp has a big On-Premises Environment with Active Directory and various business applications they've independently developed for the past decade. They're now using Office 365 and use Dirsync to keep identity information synchronized. The problem is SaaS Applications like Salesforce, ARP, Workday, etc. They've federated to these applications but there are a lot of unique user attributes such as "Business Division" that also exists On-Premises although slightly different "Business Unit". Is there something you may use to synchronize identity from SaaS Applications to and from On-Premises? I know you may sort of manipulate the SAML Token that's passed but even so it's for authentication not the transfer of directory info. tldr; I need a Dirsync app from On-Premises to SaaS Applications.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:44
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Today I get to work on the ugly cable mess that runs from the rack in the far corner. I bought a tool just for cutting zip ties so I can free the cable loom that's going unused and stuff nice new proper length cables into it. Hack away the impressive pile of old TV coax, coil the old fiber into the ceiling and voila.
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Dec 1, 2015 19:08
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mayodreams posted:Degree chat: it is not a requirement for me because there are clearly very talented people who did not have that opportunity. However, any degree from a reputable institution is noticed just as the for profit schools are. IMO, cert'd up Devry grads in the Chicagoland area have been some of the worst candidates I've interviewed because they had little to no ability to troubleshoot issues effectively, which is the biggest skill I am looking for in an interview. 
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Dec 1, 2015 19:28
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Docjowles posted:The thing about Nagios is it only does alerting. If you want graphs and historical data you'll then also need something like collectd + graphite or another visualization tool. https://github.com/BrightcoveOS/Diamond/wiki/collectors-NagiosPerfdataCollector Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 19:41
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Tab8715 posted:Anyone work in identity management?
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Dec 1, 2015 19:50
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Tab8715 posted:Anyone work in identity management? You're looking for Microsoft Identity Manager (formerly known as Forefront Identity Manager). You can map attributes in the metaverse between your directory and application. You can have the AD attribute for Business Unit map out to the Business Division attribute in the SaaS application. There are several other big name Identity Lifecycle Management suites out there. CA, Oracle, Quest/Dell, and others. If you're a Microsoft shop MIM is probably the way to go (especially if that's a test question for a cert exam) Several of the Cloud Identity folks like Okta, OneLogin, and even Azure AD Premium can do SaaS provisioning and user management with custom attribute mapping as well. We have OneLogin doing all the mapping and provisioning for our SalesForce instance along with SAML SSO. edit: We'll eventually be moving all of our SaaS apps to SSO via Azure AD Premium as we're paying for EMS licenses anyway. skipdogg fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 19:51
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skipdogg posted:There are several other big name Identity Lifecycle Management suites out there. CA, Oracle, Quest/Dell, and others. If you're a Microsoft shop MIM is probably the way to go (especially if that's a test question for a cert exam) Just as a note, we have an Oracle IDM system at my place, and it's horrible. It might be the specific implementation, or the some of the integrations it has, but the loading times for pages are horrible. They range from 10 seconds to several minutes, depending on the specifics for a user. It also has no way to do mass changes apart from raw SQL. (Obviously very few have SQL access to the database, I'm not one of them.) So yeah, nobody here likes it. At least they're trying to move some of the functions over to MIM.
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Dec 1, 2015 19:57
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"So we can't have you bill for anything against this subcontract until we take care of the paperwork, but we want you to come in three days in a row so we can just chit chat without charging us despite this being a time and materials contract." I'll sit on the phone with you, but I'm not driving downtown to do free work, guy. Get a FFP with a big bucket of hours if you want that type of involvement.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:12
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psydude posted:"So we can't have you bill for anything against this subcontract until we take care of the paperwork, but we want you to come in three days in a row so we can just chit chat without charging us despite this being a time and materials contract." Tbh, I wouldn't even be on the phone with them for more than 15 minutes without bringing up "So, I'm getting paid for this right?"
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Dec 1, 2015 20:38
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Vulture Culture posted:I wrote the Diamond collector for Nagios performance data, which is probably the most reliable way to get stuff over to Graphite (Graphios's parser is garbage and falls over a lot): You're one of my heroes for doing that.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:41
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:Tbh, I wouldn't even be on the phone with them for more than 15 minutes without bringing up "So, I'm getting paid for this right?" Well, I'm still getting paid through my current company, but I have way too many other things going on right now to do something like that. That's kind of like me calling up a plumbing company to ask if they can send a guy over to do some light work without charging me.
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Dec 1, 2015 20:49
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Famethrowa posted:As a Chicagoland recruiter, how do you feel about Northeastern? I've met a few people who went to Northeastern, but they were not in technology, but otherwise very nice people!
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Dec 1, 2015 21:12
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Just got offered a new job with a substantial raise. Why didn't I get into IT sooner?
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Dec 1, 2015 22:07
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mayodreams posted:Chicagoland area Looking for any sysadmins? I livein chicago and commute to the south suburbs, yes, it's pretty awful, not quite as bad as trying to take 90/94 west/north, but 55 is no picnic MF_James fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 22:13
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Bigass Moth posted:Just got offered a new job with a substantial raise. Why didn't I get into IT sooner? You know nothing, Jon Snow.
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Dec 1, 2015 22:24
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Bigass Moth posted:Just got offered a new job with a substantial raise. Why didn't I get into IT sooner? The raise barely covers the liver damage
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Dec 1, 2015 22:26
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Spent way too long trying to put our Windows 7 image onto a Dell Precision with a NVMe SM951 as the boot drive yesterday. Near the end of the day I finally realize that NVMe is only "sort of" supported as the boot device on Windows 7. Windows 8.1 it is!
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Dec 1, 2015 22:26
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mayodreams posted:I've met a few people who went to Northeastern, but they were not in technology, but otherwise very nice people! I went to Northeastern (in Boston... is there another one?) and I like to think I am mostly not terrible! Edit: apparently there is in fact an unrelated one in Illinois so never mind! Docjowles fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 22:59
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