Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

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Lord Dudeguy: Sep 17, 2006; [Insert good English here]

Anybody have an opinion on the Dell Storage arrays? Looking into getting a SC4000-series for VMWare stuff.

# ? Jan 4, 2016 23:48

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# ? May 9, 2024 07:09

Proud Christian Mom: Dec 20, 2006; READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

Methanar posted:

I really don't understand some of the situations where these are in effect.

It must be that over half of the voters are actively voting for policies that obviously hurt them, possibly the people who need the help the most, given they are rampant in the poorer regions of the US.

Is it really still just the Red Scare being alive and well?

people actually believe that they are just one BIG BREAK away from being a millionaire and that taxes, regulations, whatever are keeping that big break from happening. these are also the same people that think hard work makes you successful and if they just work a little bit harder, maybe 70 hours this week, they'll get that promotion they've been wanting for 12 years.

# ? Jan 4, 2016 23:52

Lord Dudeguy: Sep 17, 2006; [Insert good English here]

go3 posted:

people actually believe that they are just one BIG BREAK away from being a millionaire and that taxes, regulations, whatever are keeping that big break from happening. these are also the same people that think hard work makes you successful and if they just work a little bit harder, maybe 70 hours this week, they'll get that promotion they've been wanting for 12 years.

The Goon-in-a-Well Party, if you will.

# ? Jan 4, 2016 23:55

YOLOsubmarine: Oct 19, 2004; When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

While I don't look forward to it for personal reasons, it's going to be pretty hilarious when the tech bubble tanks and suddenly all of the "why don't these guys just get MARKETABLE SKILLS!?" tech worker ubermensch find themselves competing with the rest of the plebes for jobs as baristas or retail managers for which they feel vastly overqualified because no one wants to pay them six figures anymore to install windows patches or check whether a database is up, or all of the other vastly overpaid tedium that earns way too much money and will be automated away.

There's no guarantee that your marketable skill now will be marketable ten years from now. If you got a job as a petroleum engineer because it was lucrative you're quite possibly looking at unemployment right now because oil is cheap as hell. If you joined the masses getting law degrees 20 years ago to make bank you might very well be making less than you did when you were waiting tables. Taxi driver? Hope uber doesn't exist in your city or you're about to take a massive pay cut to work as a contractor. College Professor? You probably won't get tenure, but if you're lucky you *might* remain employed part time.

Of course, if your earning potential suddenly takes a nose dive you can always acquire some new marketable skills in between the time spend working two jobs to try to come close to what you were making before so that you don't have to move your kids out of their house. I mean, it's how hard can it be to make money, everyone makes so much of it!?

# ? Jan 5, 2016 00:15

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

My marketable skill is a trust fund.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 00:23

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

Sysadmin jobs are being taken by the cloud.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 00:24

Moey: Oct 22, 2010; I LIKE TO MOVE IT

NippleFloss posted:

While I don't look forward to it for personal reasons, it's going to be pretty hilarious when the tech bubble tanks and suddenly all of the "why don't these guys just get MARKETABLE SKILLS!?" tech worker ubermensch find themselves competing with the rest of the plebes for jobs as baristas or retail managers for which they feel vastly overqualified because no one wants to pay them six figures anymore to install windows patches or check whether a database is up, or all of the other vastly overpaid tedium that earns way too much money and will be automated away.

There's no guarantee that your marketable skill now will be marketable ten years from now. If you got a job as a petroleum engineer because it was lucrative you're quite possibly looking at unemployment right now because oil is cheap as hell. If you joined the masses getting law degrees 20 years ago to make bank you might very well be making less than you did when you were waiting tables. Taxi driver? Hope uber doesn't exist in your city or you're about to take a massive pay cut to work as a contractor. College Professor? You probably won't get tenure, but if you're lucky you *might* remain employed part time.

Of course, if your earning potential suddenly takes a nose dive you can always acquire some new marketable skills in between the time spend working two jobs to try to come close to what you were making before so that you don't have to move your kids out of their house. I mean, it's how hard can it be to make money, everyone makes so much of it!?

Trying to stay ahead of the curve is the best you can do currently, unless you wanted switch out of IT.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 00:33

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

CloFan posted:

Welcome back to work, everything is broke! ShoreTel

Are there any good VOIP providers out there at all? The MSP I was at recommended ShoreTel's cloud offering and we never really had problems with it (as long as they also went with our recommendation of a dedicated T1 for it), but my new job uses OneSource Networks and they're a complete shitshow.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 01:05

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

There's a goon here that works for ThinkingPhones and I know a couple of companies who use it and seem happy.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 01:15

kensei: Dec 27, 2007; He has come home, where he belongs. The Ancient Mariner returns to lead his first team to glory, forever and ever. Amen!

DigitalMocking posted:

gently caress ShoreTel.

gently caress ShoreTel.

gently caress ShoreTel.

In short, gently caress ShoreTel.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 01:21

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

NippleFloss posted:

While I don't look forward to it for personal reasons, it's going to be pretty hilarious when the tech bubble tanks and suddenly all of the "why don't these guys just get MARKETABLE SKILLS!?" tech worker ubermensch find themselves competing with the rest of the plebes for jobs as baristas or retail managers for which they feel vastly overqualified because no one wants to pay them six figures anymore to install windows patches or check whether a database is up, or all of the other vastly overpaid tedium that earns way too much money and will be automated away.

Where do I get a job where deploying patches nets 100k+?

Sickening posted:

Sysadmin jobs are being taken by the cloud.

IT exists not to spin up servers for fun but to meets the needs of the the company. Keeping the lights on doesn't necessarily add business value and it's quickly becoming one of biggest things I dislike about System Administration.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 02:57

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

Tab8715 posted:

IT exists not to spin up servers for fun but to meets the needs of the the company. Keeping the lights on doesn't necessarily add business value and it's quickly becoming one of biggest things I dislike about System Administration.

Please source your quotes.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 03:13

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Sickening posted:

Please source your quotes.

???

# ? Jan 5, 2016 03:15

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

Tab8715 posted:

???

Your personal narrow view on what sysadmins do and/or IT not adding value to the business is pretty poo poo. I honestly assumed the opinion was an inside joke I missed from earlier in the thread but alas, here we are.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 03:28

nitrogen: May 21, 2004; Oh, what's a 217°C difference between friends?

Lord Dudeguy posted:

Anybody have an opinion on the Dell Storage arrays? Looking into getting a SC4000-series for VMWare stuff.

Compellent storage is okay.

It's cheap, but solid. Honda Civic of storage.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 03:37

Sprechensiesexy: Dec 26, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Tab8715 posted:

Keeping the lights on doesn't necessarily add business value and it's quickly becoming one of biggest things I dislike about System Administration.

If you are not acting as a multiplier to your colleague's business value or adding your own you're doing IT wrong.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 03:38

YOLOsubmarine: Oct 19, 2004; When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

nitrogen posted:

Compellent storage is okay.

It's cheap, but solid. Honda Civic of storage.

Given that Dell just bought another storage company with a bunch of products that compete with Compellent I'm not sure I'd want to buy it right now. Who knows what they're going to keep and wha they are going to jettison.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 03:46

DigitalMocking: Jun 8, 2010; Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
Benjamin Franklin

Tab8715 posted:

IT exists not to spin up servers for fun but to meets the needs of the the company. Keeping the lights on doesn't necessarily add business value and it's quickly becoming one of biggest things I dislike about System Administration.

If that's what your management believes then wherever you work is bad and you should not work there any more.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 04:53

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

Tab8715 posted:

IT exists not to spin up servers for fun but to meets the needs of the the company. Keeping the lights on doesn't necessarily add business value and it's quickly becoming one of biggest things I dislike about System Administration.

What the gently caress does this even mean? Do you do sysadmin where all you do is spin up servers and then keep them up or something?

# ? Jan 5, 2016 05:04

Sacred Cow: Aug 13, 2007

Tab8715 posted:

Where do I get a job where deploying patches nets 100k+?

Become either an SCCM or BigFix engineer

# ? Jan 5, 2016 05:05

Kirios: Jan 26, 2010

Just got my CCNP....feels great man. :getin:

# ? Jan 5, 2016 18:07

DigitalMocking: Jun 8, 2010; Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
Benjamin Franklin

Kirios posted:

Just got my CCNP....feels great man.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 18:36

CLAM DOWN: Feb 13, 2007

Speaking of certs, has anyone here written a GIAC exam before? Am I even allowed a piss break during the 5 hours?

# ? Jan 5, 2016 18:40

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

RFC2324 posted:

What the gently caress does this even mean? Do you do sysadmin where all you do is spin up servers and then keep them up or something?

Nah, this means that in most shops, you have the same set of staff and budget resources allocated to day-to-day operations as you have to project work. This means that IT will either come up with or be assigned some project intended to add business value, and give a one-month estimate to completion, then it will take three months and be completed 25% under scope because the key project resource had to spend most of their time fighting fires and dealing with bullshit issues instead of doing the thing of actual strategic significance.

There are major benefits to letting stupid poo poo be someone else's problem that aren't easily explained on a balance sheet, but it's the largely same reasoning why most businesses spin off units that don't align with their core strategy: it's a lot of headspace and intellectual capital wasted on things that are, at best, really distracting.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 18:45

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Sprechensiesexy posted:

If you are not acting as a multiplier to your colleague's business value or adding your own you're doing IT wrong.

True, but specious. Shallow. Misses the point.

Adding business value for the sake of adding business value is never the end game. It's like investing: I can earn 3% year-over-year, and I'm staying ahead of the rate of inflation. See, I'm adding value! But it's a poo poo value, and instead of being happy that I'm not operating at a net negative, I can take a better strategy, like selling those assets and putting the money into something that earns.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 18:58

LiterallyAnything: Jul 11, 2008; by vyelkin

Cross posting this-

I have to distribute files to multiple work from home users (using VPN) who aren't able to reach shares on the domain due to... well, I'm not sure really. Either something with Corp IT security policies or something with Net Eng and the routing. Either way these users can't hit shares on our primary domain even though they have domain accounts (AD restrictions?).

Anyway, I need to find a way to get files out to these individuals. Preferably a method that would involve them clicking a simple batch or vbs script that will pull down the files from (somewhere) and replace them with files currently on the PC.

There's a webserver that serves pages to all users regardless, so I think that's how I'll have to go about it, but I'm not sure where to begin. Will this have to be like a FTP thing? Thanks for any help in advance.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 19:23

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

How big in total are these documents? Honestly, this sounds like something a revision control system could do. Depending on how technical the users are you could just give them the github client and run a git repo locally, or you could make a script that will do stuff for them, but just mashing files around sounds like a great way to overwrite something important.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 19:26

LiterallyAnything: Jul 11, 2008; by vyelkin

FISHMANPET posted:

How big in total are these documents? Honestly, this sounds like something a revision control system could do. Depending on how technical the users are you could just give them the github client and run a git repo locally, or you could make a script that will do stuff for them, but just mashing files around sounds like a great way to overwrite something important.

These are very small files; talking 8kb. They're configuration files actually. When I make a change to the file I want to let the users who are unable to hit the domain shares to be able to just click my script and it'll pull down the new config. These users are very much non-technical.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 19:39

Zaepho: Oct 31, 2013

Brady posted:

These are very small files; talking 8kb. They're configuration files actually. When I make a change to the file I want to let the users who are unable to hit the domain shares to be able to just click my script and it'll pull down the new config. These users are very much non-technical.

Do you have a tool like SCCM that can push these updates to the users when changes are made instead? as a bonus, you could standardize on managing the configurations for all users using one process instead of dealing with special snowflakes.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 20:00

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

If they're non technical you should be able to write a wrapper script that will do git checkins. Or just give the regular Github windows client a try, it might not be too complicated for them. But especially if these are flat text files, and configuration to boot, version control is a really good use case.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 20:06

OWLS!: Sep 17, 2009; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Thanks Ants posted:

There's a goon here that works for ThinkingPhones and I know a couple of companies who use it and seem happy.

There are actually a few of them. I can confirm that a ThinkingPhones customers go "gently caress Shoretel" tho.

OWLS! fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Jan 6, 2016

# ? Jan 5, 2016 22:02

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

I had a customer leave our lovely phone service and moved to ThinkingPhones and I've been working through all the PoE switching and connectivity with him and the rep. They seem pretty solid, and I like Polycom handsets.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 22:27

LiterallyAnything: Jul 11, 2008; by vyelkin

Zaepho posted:

Do you have a tool like SCCM that can push these updates to the users when changes are made instead? as a bonus, you could standardize on managing the configurations for all users using one process instead of dealing with special snowflakes.

Unfortunately these are contracted workers who are using PCs that are not on the domain, so SCCM is out.

FISHMANPET posted:

If they're non technical you should be able to write a wrapper script that will do git checkins. Or just give the regular Github windows client a try, it might not be too complicated for them. But especially if these are flat text files, and configuration to boot, version control is a really good use case.

I've honestly never dealt with Github but this sounds like a viable solution. Thank you!

# ? Jan 5, 2016 23:09

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

So more discussion with my former employer offering me a job. I negotiated a title change to Network Admin so it doesn't look like I'm taking a step back. He's deadfast on getting me a direct report by the end of the year to form a networking team, for which I would be lead.

Couldn't negotiate a signing bonus to compensate for loss of benefits. Couldn't negotiate higher salary because from where I left it's still a 40% raise. Instead negotiated to commit to a 2 year term contingent on a 5k raise this time next year to avoid pay stagnation. Anything after 2 years is fair game and he's got advanced notice this time.

Instead of giving him an answer I asked for an interview on Friday to sit down and hammer out the final details of the offer, check out the office again, take a look at projects coming up. And it gives me an extra 3 days to think about it before finalizing my non-negotiable sticking points.

The alternative is to put my head down at this boring place, cert up and jump in a year. This only works if I can scrounge up a job nearby that can throw 20% on top of my pay and isn't a total shitshow.

I have no loving idea what I'm going to do.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 23:17

Kashuno: Oct 9, 2012; Where the hell is my SWORD?; Grimey Drawer

I am gonna go against the grain here and say take it, but only of all that poo poo is on paper for you so they can't gently caress you over :shrug:

# ? Jan 5, 2016 23:22

Calidus: Oct 31, 2011; Stand back I'm going to try science!

Are there any legit dongle emulation companies/software? I have a old piece of software from a now bankrupt and out of business vendor that requires a USB dongle key and I only have one copy. That scares the crap out of me considering this software connects to some very expensive heavy machinery.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 23:49

KS: Jun 10, 2003; Outrageous Lumpwad

The typical answer is a digi usb over network device and secure the dongle in a fire suppressed area. Make sure your property insurance covers the dongle.

Since it's out of business, that changes the picture. there are emulation packages for most types of dongles. You need to figure out what type of dongle it is to get specific software recommendations.

# ? Jan 6, 2016 01:30

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

Judge Schnoopy posted:

So more discussion with my former employer offering me a job. I negotiated a title change to Network Admin so it doesn't look like I'm taking a step back. He's deadfast on getting me a direct report by the end of the year to form a networking team, for which I would be lead.

Couldn't negotiate a signing bonus to compensate for loss of benefits. Couldn't negotiate higher salary because from where I left it's still a 40% raise. Instead negotiated to commit to a 2 year term contingent on a 5k raise this time next year to avoid pay stagnation. Anything after 2 years is fair game and he's got advanced notice this time.

Instead of giving him an answer I asked for an interview on Friday to sit down and hammer out the final details of the offer, check out the office again, take a look at projects coming up. And it gives me an extra 3 days to think about it before finalizing my non-negotiable sticking points.

Seems like you have your head on straight, though I would make sure there are clear goals outlined for you. I would make them start your benefits Day 1 (health, vision, dental, 401k, vacation accrual, etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

# ? Jan 6, 2016 01:42