|
pixaal posted:Being the only option that isn't dial up. Yeah, welcome to the oligopoly.
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 20:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 10:28 |
|
|
VDI tech is cool but given the expense it's gotta be pretty rare that it's the most cost effective solution.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
Swink posted:VDI tech is cool but given the expense it's gotta be pretty rare that it's the most cost effective solution. It might not make sense for this thread (small shops) but for larger companies it might make sense when you're provisioning hundreds of nearly identical desktops all at once.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 20:59
|
|
|
There's actually an accountant firm in my town that spent 80k doing VDI for their 50 person office. Apparently the CEO just liked the idea of the tech.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 21:10
|
|
|
I was thinking in more the man hours needed to set each machine up, or swapping them out when one dies; the user profile disk stuff looks neat, even though I'm pretty sure myself it's just not feasible for small business expense wise. The machines we have for sales are pretty heavily customized, and a good chunk of that customization is in the user profile. Sales has expanded pretty rapidly lately, so adhoc-ing machines is getting painful in lead time. Plus the ones we have on hand are getting a bit creaky, so I'm wanting to make swapping in a new machine as quick as possible when they start inevitably dying. These are the machines that are a mixture of pro and home licenses, so not all of them are on the domain; ruling out GPing them for the short term >< Game plan is going to be something along the lines of getting a new server, new domain, then inventory of current machines and working out how to license them all to pro. I'm enjoying being in a small shop again, but there are times I miss toys like SCCM lol
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 21:13
|
|
|
Maneki Neko posted:Has anyone actually found a PC with this on it in a business environment? We touch a multitude of Dells and so far no one has actually been able to find a PC with it. We had a couple of laptops with one cert or the other. We're a VDI shop and just keep a handful of laptops on hand to loan out if needed. Since we have VDIs we are lazy on reimaging, but it's on the list of things to fix. Swink posted:VDI tech is cool but given the expense it's gotta be pretty rare that it's the most cost effective solution. I work for a small company (under 100 users) and we are a VDI only shop. I can't say it is the most cost effective solution when only looking at hard costs, but when you look at soft costs it starts to make more sense. Some Pros: -Remote work -DR is a lot easier -Apps that don't do well across a WAN from their data -Consistent master image -Easy to maintain once it is up and running -BYOD I definitely qualify as a generalist, but I have been a Citrix admin for most of my career. I prefer this type of setup to alternatives. Even as we look to more cloud products, VDI / published apps / published desktops are just an easy way to ensure a consistent experience for end users. Internet Explorer fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Nov 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 23:16
|
|
|
Internet Explorer posted:We had a couple of laptops with one cert or the other. We're a VDI shop and just keep a handful of laptops on hand to loan out if needed. Since we have VDIs we are lazy on reimaging, but it's on the list of things to fix. The thing that always concerns me about VDI is that it relies on Internet connection, right? Like if connection drops, or you're on an airplane, or your connection is there but just lovely, then the users will have a lovely experience. Also how do you explain to the user to minimize and go to local desktop when they want to watch youtube
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 23:36
|
|
|
Yes, it definitely requires an internet connection. Working on a plane is mostly limited to doing word processing or whatever on the local machine and then uploading the file when you get back to the office. This is probably one of the biggest drawbacks of VDI in my mind, but most workplaces can get over this limitation. YouTube works fine these days. Our users have non-Windows thin clients, so minimizing to a local desktop is not a choice. Most of the environments I have worked at are the very definition of office workers. If you have developers or CAD users things get much more complicated, to the point where VDI may very well not make sense.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2015 23:43
|
|
|
If you don't mind me asking Internet Explorer, what's like the ballpark specs required backend to get what you've got working? I've been reading up on some recommended and best use case kinda stuff, but would be really curious to hear from someone that's got a setup going in the real world. Sounds a similar user base I'd be working it for.
|
|
#
?
Nov 26, 2015 01:40
|
|
|
I don't mind at all. People don't really seem to talk VDI too much here, even in the virtualization thread. Like I said, I consider myself more of a generalist so I don't comment about stuff too often. Our VDIs run off a 3 host VMware cluster, nothing special. Dual-processor Xeon's with 4 cores each from 2-3 years ago. Shared infrastructure with our other 3 VMware hosts that host our servers: Some lovely Dell PowerConnects from probably 5 years ago and some equally lovely Cisco Catalyst 2960s. All backed by a NL-SAS filled Equallogic PS6100E. All of this is due for an upgrade, which is waiting on our upcoming DR project. I have only been with my current company for a year and it was a disaster, so I am playing catch up. And by now I'm sure you are wondering how any of that translates to a decent user experience. The secret sauce is Citrix Provisioning Services, which serves up the actual master image. When VDIs boot they stream the disk down from one of our Provisioning Services servers, there is a lot of intelligent caching that goes on for reads and writes. Very little VDI IO hits the SAN. Here's a pretty interesting write-up on the whole caching thing, we use cache to RAM with overflow to device HD - https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/01/19/size-matters-pvs-ram-cache-overflow-sizing/ I will tell you that this stuff is not for the feint of heart. Citrix is a curseword to most end-users, and hell, most IT admins for a reason. I think you really need to know your stuff to get it right and Citrix is a terrible company. But if you know how to hold your tongue just right, it can be a well oiled machine. [Edit: Oh, and since you were asking about specs, I also wanted to say that in my current setup the Catalyst 2960s are definitely the weak link. Provisioning Services causes most VDI disk traffic to go over your LAN switches. These are definitely not up to the task and I regularly see buffer overruns and excessively high disk retries (through Provisioning Services) on our VDIs.] Internet Explorer fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Nov 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Nov 26, 2015 02:25
|
|
|
Internet Explorer posted:/*Awesome stuff*/ Wow, that's a pretty neat setup. I balked a bit at seeing Citrix in there, but I'm tempted to have a play with it myself now. I definitely appreciate you taking the time to write that up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
How good is your internet out? I assume people use Citrix when working remotely as well right? Does it work okay for them in that case? I have people RDPing over the WAN and it's always "fine" but rarely more than like 10 people at a time and it's RDS so I assume totally different.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2015 04:15
|
|
|
We have 100/100 right now, but we rarely use above 10 for Citrix traffic. RDP is fairly similar to ICA these days. They are working on a new release called "Framehawk" that will add a lot of improvements. More here - https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/06/30/our-first-release-of-framehawk-technologies/ Unless your users are streaming 1080p videos remotely all day, Citrix traffic is fairly minimal.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2015 04:20
|
|
|
After the teeth pulling exercise that was getting an order confirmed by Centurylink, I come in today to find 2 more order confirmations sitting in my inbox! All for slightly varying specs; and worryingly, one for a 12 month commitment when we're meant to be month-to-month. And after playing phone tag with them again, finding out all of them for different days. Three separate orders, for three separate lines, to be installed on three separate days next week. And the prices had all changed again. A very firm conversion with a supervisor got two of them cancelled, but only the Gods know what is actually going to turn up Monday now. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2015 15:41
|
|
|
Zakutambah posted:After the teeth pulling exercise that was getting an order confirmed by Centurylink, I come in today to find 2 more order confirmations sitting in my inbox! All for slightly varying specs; and worryingly, one for a 12 month commitment when we're meant to be month-to-month. And after playing phone tag with them again, finding out all of them for different days. Three separate orders, for three separate lines, to be installed on three separate days next week. And the prices had all changed again. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2015 18:48
|
|
|
Zakutambah posted:After the teeth pulling exercise that was getting an order confirmed by Centurylink, I come in today to find 2 more order confirmations sitting in my inbox! All for slightly varying specs; and worryingly, one for a 12 month commitment when we're meant to be month-to-month. And after playing phone tag with them again, finding out all of them for different days. Three separate orders, for three separate lines, to be installed on three separate days next week. And the prices had all changed again. Anytime you have a interaction with a telecom company, always assume they hosed something up. During my 15 years in IT, I have yet for a single interaction with any telecom company to be 100%. I just do not believe that industry is capable of getting things right the first time around.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 18:02
|
|
|
stevewm posted:Anytime you have a interaction with a telecom company, always assume they hosed something up. During my 15 years in IT, I have yet for a single interaction with any telecom company to be 100%. I just do not believe that industry is capable of getting things right the first time around. You can usually predict what, exactly, will get hosed up, and tell them three times to make absolutely sure that specific thing does not get hosed up. I mean, they still gently caress it up, but at least it makes you feel better about it, and you can prepare for them loving it up better.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
Thanatosian posted:...You can usually predict what, exactly, will get hosed up, and tell them three times to make absolutely sure that specific thing does not get hosed up. .... I don't even bother with that anymore, because it just gives them yet another avenue for loving things up. After I ordered UVerse service for a new branch, I called back to confirm because something didn't quite sit right with me after thinking about it for a minute. The agent confirmed the order was correct. A few hours later got another email confirming my second Uverse order  It took many hours to get that fixed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 19:44
|
|
|
stevewm posted:Anytime you have a interaction with a telecom company, always assume they hosed something up. During my 15 years in IT, I have yet for a single interaction with any telecom company to be 100%. I just do not believe that industry is capable of getting things right the first time around. My Rule #1 of IT is "the telco will gently caress you". Every single time, in every conceivable way? Circuits installed in the wrong building (across town)? Porting numbers to another customer? Installing equipment on an outside wall without any weather protection? Drilling a 1" hole through a wall to run a phone line through? Starting a change an hour before your scheduled time? Starting a change several hours after your scheduled time? Billing you for services you're not paying for? Telling you they can ABSOLUTELY get you a T1 at your remote location (until they look at a map)? Tech showing up THREE GODDAMN MONTHS after a scheduled turnup (which was then cancelled since they no-showed) as if nothing ever happened and are you ready for the turnup????
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 20:03
|
|
|
When we decided to shutter one of our offices in Denver, TW Telecom (Now Level3 Communications) worked with us to roll the ETF (Early Termination Fee's) of the contract into the MRC of our other existing offices. We signed the new contract and I didn't really think too much of it. Fast forward a year and a half and for some reason I actually open one of their bills. I quickly see that they are still charging us the MRC for the office we shut down, and looking back through the last year and a half of bills it looks like they never actually stopped charging us. 3 unreturned phone calls to our rep and I escalated it to their internal billing team. That was a month and a half ago and we still haven't resolved it. The nice part is that we likely have 20G's coming our way in the form of a fat check. See Rule #1 of IT: The Telco is trying to gently caress you
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 20:46
|
|
|
stevewm posted:Anytime you have a interaction with a telecom company, always assume they hosed something up. Absolutely. I never would've even known the first order was screwed up if I just hadn't thought to call back myself the next day to confirm. Otherwise it'd be today and I'd be wondering where the tech is. It seems to be 50/50 with the techs they send out in this area whether they are any good or not; the last one that got sent out to deal with the noise issues was fantastic, spending an extra hour testing everything, running a spare line to the pole, etc. The ones before her were completely useless. Guy today was fairly competent as well; however, he just seemed to do the bare minimum, left the line un-jacked. We'll see if another tech shows up tomorrow and Wednesday. Two modems showed up in the mail though! Going to be watching the next bill like a hawk in case we're getting charged for all extra orders, and the second modem they sent out.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 20:47
|
|
|
Just a sampling of what I've ran into over the years. -Taking 4 months to turn on services to a building that already had the cable in place. (Comcast) -Creating multiple accounts for said location, still getting collection calls on that one... (Comcast) -7 month wait for a cable to be strung from the road to the building for installation of new services (Comcast) -Ordered 5 phone lines + DSL/static IP. They installed one phone line and dynamic DSL, sent bills for 2 separate accounts (AT&T) -Ordered business dry loop DSL circuit, informed them said location has a 50 pair line with interior demarc, so a tech needs to come out and tag the active pair. Receive residential self install DSL kit in the mail, tech never appears on scheduled date (Frontier) -Randomly disconnected dry loop DSL circuit one day because they "didn't think any customers where still on that circuit", took over a week to fix it. (Frontier) -Worthless tech support; call reporting severe slowness issues with DSL at multiple store locations; get told the problem was my computer (Frontier) -Phone lines + DSL randomly going in and out, tech dispatched multiple times and would never appear, would get phone call within hours that the problem was solved. Found out local tech was just marking the problem as resolved, without ever actually working on it. Took several days and working my way up the ladder to get that one resolved (Frontier) -Fiber going to new branch suddenly cut one day... Local fiber provider did not bury cable during installation, left it rolled up and laying in the ditch. 2 months later state road workers mowing the roadside went right over the coil of cable now buried in the tall grass. -Local DSL provider started switching businesses in town to VDSL. Required use of their modem that acted as a NAT router with DHCP enabled and a 192.168.1.x IP range, no bridge mode, and no customer access to the modem. You had a static IP, but it was terminated on the modem and therefore useless. Setting up port forwards to your own router, etc.. required contacting their technical support and waiting multiple days for them to do it. Being the only option in town, many businesses where understandably pissed. They saw no problem with this policy, that is until the local city council and county government got involved.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 20:50
|
|
|
Our latest ISP of choice (we roll through different suppliers based on who is offering the best price that week because nobody gives a gently caress about being able to run a well-oiled machine through keeping processes simple and only having as many as absolutely necessary) have started generating order handoff documentation with totally inaccurate RADIUS details. Yay!
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 20:53
|
|
|
So you're all rolling in that sweet SLA credit, right?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 21:22
|
|
|
madsushi posted:My Rule #1 of IT is "the telco will gently caress you". Every single time, in every conceivable way? Telco: "Good news, your building is already lit up so fiber installation is a breeze!" Me: "Great!" *signs contract* Telco: "Actually it's going to take three months because we need permitting from the city for lane closure and construction of about 1000' feet of cabling."
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 21:38
|
|
|
Sheep posted:Telco: "Good news, your building is already lit up so fiber installation is a breeze!" Comcast did exactly this to us... The building did not have an existing cable, however the line already ran down the road in front of the building and was on the correct side. After we signed the contract, they suddenly said it would take much longer to get it installed. No reason was given, they grumbled something about permits possibly being an issue, but where not sure why. Exactly what permit they would need to string a line from a pole already on our property to the building only 400ft away I have no idea... Nearly 7 months of back and forth, multiple voicemails, calls not being returned, broken promises, etc.. A contractor showed up one day and finally installed the line. It took less than an hour. No one was actually able to tell us what took so long.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 22:03
|
|
|
stevewm posted:Comcast did exactly this to us... The building did not have an existing cable, however the line already ran down the road in front of the building and was on the correct side. After we signed the contract, they suddenly said it would take much longer to get it installed. No reason was given, they grumbled something about permits possibly being an issue, but where not sure why. Exactly what permit they would need to string a line from a pole already on our property to the building only 400ft away I have no idea... You don't live in Fresno by any chance, do you? Because this is exactly what happened to one of our tenants, lol. And I mean that literally...
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 23:12
|
|
|
A company director within a couple of sentences of saying that you need to buy quality power tools if you're going to do a good job doesn't want to spend the £25 on a genuine Krone punch-down tool for his staff to use because the £4 knock-offs "do the same job". No hint of irony. Small business, never change.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 23:29
|
|
|
McDeth posted:You don't live in Fresno by any chance, do you? Because this is exactly what happened to one of our tenants, lol. And I mean that literally... Nah, Indiana.... Every single Comcast install we have had has been a nightmare... 1. 4 month wait to turn on an already existing line, no explanations given for the delay 2. 7 month wait to string a line 400ft, again no explanations for the delay. 3. And on the final one they wanted to trench right across the only entrance to our property refusing to do a air drop, which could be easily done. And would only do it during business hours. During the 2 month wait for them to tell us this, a new fiber provider had started wiring businesses in town. We canceled Comcast and went with them instead. Within 5 days of signing the contract this new ISP had brought the fiber line 2 blocks down the street, did a air drop to our building and had it up and running. They where more expensive than Comcast, but at that point we didn't care. Verizon's 1Mb DSL just wasn't cutting it anymore. P.S. gently caress Comcast.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2015 23:30
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ0E37l_sQc
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2015 05:20
|
|
|
On the topic of face-punching, my shameful addition to our 'network closet'...  I'd be making it a mission to rewire this whole thing, but we're honestly moving from this building in a couple months; don't feel it worth the effort of tracing the mystery cables coming out of the floor and walls. ((Yes, everything is plugged into one power strip... apparently this makes it easier to restart everything when needed according to the previous bloke  ))
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2015 22:46
|
|
|
My retirement plan is set guys
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2015 23:03
|
|
|
McDeth posted:My retirement plan is set guys Well, an employee not willing to work 36years straight on a project honestly just isn't committed to this company 
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2015 23:22
|
|
|
Just signed up for a crashplan trial for our file server. We do a backup to a NAS, then a backup we take offsite, but an online would be nice. staring with 80GB of home directories and 250GB of everything else later on. 16 days to upload!
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2015 14:40
|
|
|
Bob Morales posted:Just signed up for a crashplan trial for our file server. We do a backup to a NAS, then a backup we take offsite, but an online would be nice. I've been using Crashplan at home for years, and can warmly recommend it. If you're impatient regarding your upload speeds there should be some tips to increase it if you google around. It's been a while since I've bothered with that since I've already got all my stuff backed up. I just set up the new computer, and then remove the backup of the old one once the new one's done.  In short: Read your status mails, and if they're fine just forget about it. (I have a total of ~6.1 TB backed up over 4 computers)
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2015 20:26
|
|
|
Zakutambah posted:On the topic of face-punching, my shameful addition to our 'network closet'... Is that...a hot water heater? In your "network closet"?
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2015 23:08
|
|
|
ConfusedUs posted:Is that...a hot water heater? In your "network closet"? The cloud is made of water!
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2015 23:18
|
|
|
ConfusedUs posted:Is that...a hot water heater? In your "network closet"? I'll have you know that's critical network infrastructure. It's currently keeping the DSL modems off the floor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2015 23:27
|
|
|
Crosspostin' this from another thread hoping to get it in front of some more eyes: I have a conundrum: The software ("i-cens") that our security people use to view/access video streams from our security cameras is complete poo poo. The PC that it's currently running on is on it's last legs and needs to be replaced. I figured 'hey, I'll just install this crap on another PC and we'll be good to go'. Nope, the software will install, but when it connects to our lovely chinese dvrs (made by some company called Eyemax), the streams just show up as black squares. The streams are working perfectly fine when viewed through a browser, but that aint good enough for the security staff, they dont want to learn anything new and the browser window doesnt let them view enough cameras at once. The funny thing is, when using i-cens, you can look at past recordings and they show up perfectly normal, the problem only happens with the live streams. I've installed the software on 3 different PCs, all with the same result. I've contacted Eyemax and they pointed me to a fix (copy a provided .ini file to c:\windows, overwriting their existing one) but it doesnt fix poo poo. So, as a result of this lovely software I have been tasked with either making the existing software/DVR work or pricing another solution to replace these lovely DVRs. Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about cameras/DVRs and their associated software (I'm a Windows/network admin). I've been given no budget, so that doesnt help. I've started looking at IP cams and some of the solutions that Ubiquiti offers since I'm familiar with their wifi APs, but since I dont know the first thing about this stuff, I'm not really sure where to start. Can anybody offer up some recommendations or some advice about this stuff? We've currently got about 25 cameras and we definitely need to have recording capability.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2015 06:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 10:28 |
|
|
I've never had to tackle that either but it's something that at least seems to be getting easier for your average sysadmin type. I know Synology actually makes their own cams that connect to their NASes. I would definitely look at the Ubiquiti ones too. I'd be interested to hear where you end up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2015 06:30
|
|