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I about had a heart attack tonight. One of the cornerstones of the mountain of technical debt I inherited is a FreePBX system that has 2 servers that do not have HA and do not share configs for whatever reason. They are virtual appliances running on ancient ESXi 5.0 hosts that haven't been rebooted for 927 days. So I try to make a clone of the only FreePBX VM that works and drives all of our office phones, but not the call center, and it fails because it can't find the VMDK. Oh gently caress. There are no backups and I may have somehow killed the entire phone system. Turns out, as long as the flat file is there, you can recreate the VMDK file, which worked for me. I still feel sick, and if I ever run into the rear end in a top hat who left me this dumpster fire, I'm going to beat the poo poo out of him.
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Apr 5, 2016 04:57
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Whats the best way to get experience in enterprise software like MS Server, Active Directory, Excel, Exchange, etc? I have a CCNA and have been trying to break into the field but I noticed a lot of the positions (even entry level help desk positions) require some experience with these programs and I dont really have much at all. Are there any classes that are sort of all encompassing enterprise software education? Or any other kinds of classes I should take that would help in this area?
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Apr 5, 2016 05:13
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Active directory will involve mostly unlocking accounts and password resets. Exchange will be helping people find their missing folders:They collapsed their inbox, press the + Excel will be that they've got a 25GB spreadsheet full of macros and it stopped working on Jan 1 and the guy who made it quit back in 2004.
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Apr 5, 2016 05:57
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Charliegrs posted:Whats the best way to get experience in enterprise software like MS Server, Active Directory, Excel, Exchange, etc? I have a CCNA and have been trying to break into the field but I noticed a lot of the positions (even entry level help desk positions) require some experience with these programs and I dont really have much at all. Are there any classes that are sort of all encompassing enterprise software education? Or any other kinds of classes I should take that would help in this area? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-exchange-server-2013 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2 There is trial software available for all of those except for excel. Just acquire yourself a virtualization program and if you've got an SSD and 8+ gb of ram laying around you can build a pretty decent lab where you can familiarize yourself with them.
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Apr 5, 2016 05:58
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Active directory will involve mostly unlocking accounts and password resets. Alternate excel query: they need to print this company report to a single A4 page. It has to be readable. It's for thousand lines long. Exchange thing on point.
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Apr 5, 2016 06:13
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Also I want to pimp these again for people wanting to get acquainted with Windows Server technologies: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/bb467605.aspx
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Apr 5, 2016 07:56
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:
This got a chuckle out of me. It is so true Edit: about salary negotiation. A recruiter contacted me. We had a talk and the point of salary came on. They asked how much i wanted. I replied with "how much are you guys offering." To which they replied with. "How much do you make now" I'm new to this game. So I did not know how to reply to that. I just lied and told them I make a bit more than i do now. After our talk. I told them i'm not interested in the job. They still were persistent that I come talk to them again to see if they can convince me. Second meeting happened and they asked what would convince me to jump over to them. I said the salary. Study material for certs and a monthly salary of 2.5k gross monthly. They said they will mail me an offer this week. I have no intention of jumping ship to them. I mostly want to use their offer to negotiate a raise in addition to everything i've done this past year to qualify for this 70% raise. Would this be dumb?. And how do I negotiate salary with recruiters without loving myself over? Sefal fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 08:17
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Sefal posted:This got a chuckle out of me. It is so true Read the negotiation thread and ask there, it contains a lot of great advice from people who appear to know their poo poo. E: this thread https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3768531 LochNessMonster fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 08:49
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LochNessMonster posted:Read the negotiation thread and ask there, it contains a lot of great advice from people who appear to know their poo poo. Thank you. Will take a look there.
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Apr 5, 2016 10:12
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Excel will be that they've got a 25GB spreadsheet full of macros and it stopped working on Jan 1 and the guy who made it quit back in 2004. One of the companies we support has so many of these goddamn things. Beyond making sure that people have the ODBC connection which all it takes is throwing them in a security group, we tell people to pound sand when they have issues. "Take it back to the person that gave it to you."
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Apr 5, 2016 12:54
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LochNessMonster posted:Read the negotiation thread and ask there, it contains a lot of great advice from people who appear to know their poo poo. I love that the OP of that thread is Dwight Eisenhower.
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Apr 5, 2016 13:58
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psydude posted:CCNA can probably get you up to the 100k mark in certain areas. CCNP will probably be good for up to 160k. After that it becomes a bit tougher to rely on solely being competent, because you're typically selling your services to multiple customers who will want that CCIE or VCDX in your signature block. Judge Schnoopy posted:Where the hell is this because I will go to there. CCNA with 2 years experience is worth 50k in the midwest suburbs. I have my CCNA already. I think in Minneapolis $75k with a mid level cert like that and experience is close to the limit typically. NippleFloss posted:Any one of those won't likely get you a lot, but a VCP and a CCNA and an MCSA might. Working for a vendor or VAR your knowledge occasionally needs to be deep, but it often needs to be broad. Outside of that there's still plenty of need in infrastructure design and systems administration for people who can understand the big picture. I agree on the experience part. I've never worked for a VAR or MSP, maybe I need to start looking that way. It would be a great way for me to get my hands my on some new technology and learn some new things. Being stuck in a siloed internal IT environment has hurt my career in some aspects I think. I've never gotten much of chance to work with any NetApp or EMC hardware my previous company had because we had a guy who just did that. I got stuck doing just SCCM, which is a good specialty but not something I want to do the rest of my life.
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Apr 5, 2016 14:09
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I've managed to fall uphill without any certs (my Bacehlor's degree and ITIL don't count) and make $75k in the midwest, but I think I've hit the ceiling of what I can get without much more specialization or making a move into management. I honestly have no idea how I've made it this far in IT with no certs.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:39
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I don't know, I enjoy the technical part of my job, but getting into management seems like a much faster/more reliable way to get on the MORE $$$ train.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:46
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ZetsurinPower posted:I've managed to fall uphill without any certs (my Bacehlor's degree and ITIL don't count) and make $75k in the midwest, but I think I've hit the ceiling of what I can get without much more specialization or making a move into management. I honestly have no idea how I've made it this far in IT with no certs. I make about that as a sysadmin with a GED and no certs at all, in the DFW area. I've managed to luck my way into a couple decent jobs that gave me resume fodder and good references, and since then its been good. Its left a few holes in my technical knowledge base(I really have no clue how to deal with an enterprise router or SAN, tho I have a clue how they work, for instance) but if you are solid in the areas you actually deal with, the rest you can pick up as you need it, and dealing with it will show you how things work and fit into the environment as a whole.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:50
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AlternateAccount posted:I don't know, I enjoy the technical part of my job, but getting into management seems like a much faster/more reliable way to get on the MORE $$$ train. Agreed. Although I've had multiple consultants and recruiters tell me that extra management types are usually the first to get laid off in tough times. I dont see whats wrong with just chasing the money in IT. I like IT and I enjoy it as a career but it's not my passion in life. That's why I'm grasping at straws here trying to figure out my next career move. I want to make as much as I can so I can retire early and do whats important to me. RFC2324 posted:I make about that as a sysadmin with a GED and no certs at all, in the DFW area. I've managed to luck my way into a couple decent jobs that gave me resume fodder and good references, and since then its been good. SAN management is a huge gap for me as well. You can lab a lot of things, but you cant lab a SAN. Without getting in someplace that will give you a chance to learn about them you're stuck with just learning what you can out of books and videos. EMC does have a certification train but I can't say how good or bad those are.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:04
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I have managed smaller IT departments for most of my career and I have enjoyed that path. No college degree and no certs. I get paid well, get to make decisions and do things my way, and still get to handle much of the technical side. I started my career with a big company and silos, and it just isn't for me. I like being in control of my environment. I also have been just a technical resource (MSP) and I always tended to gravitate towards pushing and making decisions, so I think management is a decent fit for me.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:10
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ZetsurinPower posted:I've managed to fall uphill without any certs (my Bacehlor's degree and ITIL don't count) and make $75k in the midwest, but I think I've hit the ceiling of what I can get without much more specialization or making a move into management. I honestly have no idea how I've made it this far in IT with no certs. Sounds like you're at the point where experience with relevant technology will help you out more than anything. With a couple of caveats, I bet you could get a 20% jump in base pay just from applying to interesting jobs. RFC2324 posted:Its left a few holes in my technical knowledge base(I really have no clue how to deal with an enterprise router or SAN, tho I have a clue how they work, for instance) but if you are solid in the areas you actually deal with, the rest you can pick up as you need it, and dealing with it will show you how things work and fit into the environment as a whole. Honestly over half of doing this poo poo is being able (and hopefully enjoying) to figure out what you need on the fly. If you're really good at a few things, it's probably a safe bet that you can figure out new things too. Fiendish Dr. Wu fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 17:10
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My lab manager is trying to wrangle getting an application installed in one of our computer labs. The vendor contact is insisting that every lab computer it's installed on be configured with a static, public IP address. Am I missing something or is this insane?
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Apr 5, 2016 17:16
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It's not uncommon for universities or older large corporations to have a public IP address for each client, as they were given huge blocks when the Internet first started. That does not mean it is standard and it does not mean that isn't an insane request.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:20
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Sounds like you're at the point where experience with relevant technology will help you out more than anything. With a couple of caveats, I bet you could get a 20% jump in base pay just from applying to interesting jobs. Tell me more...
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Apr 5, 2016 17:21
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Internet Explorer posted:It's not uncommon for universities or older large corporations to have a public IP address for each client, as they were given huge blocks when the Internet first started. I don't think it's uncommon for those universities and corporations to HAVE public IPs for each client, but I have to imagine none of those organizations are still USING public IPs per client. Certainly anybody ahead of the curve enough to buy massive blocks of IPs has the wherewithall to understand why public IPs on internal networks is a bad idea and would have switched to private DHCP pools.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:24
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Nothing like an impending interview to make you doubt you know anything at all. Japanese Dating Sim posted:My lab manager is trying to wrangle getting an application installed in one of our computer labs. The vendor contact is insisting that every lab computer it's installed on be configured with a static, public IP address. Completely insane.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:24
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Honestly over half of doing this poo poo is being able (and hopefully enjoying) to figure out what you need on the fly. This. Most miserable I have ever been at a job was when we were so locked down we couldn't log into the environment to poke around and see how things worked, while all the knowledge was locked up in a couple of heads in another department. How do you expect me to be able to troubleshoot an issue when I am not allowed to actually log into servers without planning literally every command in advance, and getting each one approved a week in advance? (they were REALLY bad at change management)
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Apr 5, 2016 17:26
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psydude posted:CCNA can probably get you up to the 100k mark in certain areas. CCNP will probably be good for up to 160k. After that it becomes a bit tougher to rely on solely being competent, because you're typically selling your services to multiple customers who will want that CCIE or VCDX in your signature block. Here in Singapore IT salaries are all over the place. I've seen network engineering jobs offer $20K USD per year and see them go as high as $150K+ as well. It seems mostly based on what industry you are in and less on what particular certificate you have.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:28
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Internet Explorer posted:It's not uncommon for universities or older large corporations to have a public IP address for each client, as they were given huge blocks when the Internet first started. That's what I thought... he was asking me about it, and I assumed he was misunderstanding. Nope. He started CC'ing me in emails -  <software> is fully internet-based so you should be able to configure in your network, provide us with static ips and then be up and running. Please provide me with the IPs when you get a chance. Our campus operates on a private, 10.x.x.x network, and our lab computers access the Internet via NAT. We can reserve IP addresses within our specific subnet, but as I understand it that won't be sufficient? We do need externally- facing static Ips for each of the machines. I've never actually worked with a University who isn't able to provide them.Cool - looks like that trend is going to continue, as I'm pretty sure this application isn't that important to us.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:31
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Judge Schnoopy posted:I don't think it's uncommon for those universities and corporations to HAVE public IPs for each client, but I have to imagine none of those organizations are still USING public IPs per client. Certainly anybody ahead of the curve enough to buy massive blocks of IPs has the wherewithall to understand why public IPs on internal networks is a bad idea and would have switched to private DHCP pools. That said a lot of universities will simply leave everything open and let you shoot your own foot on lab networks if you don't make your computers/software secure.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:37
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Collateral Damage posted:Using public addresses isn't inherently more insecure, if your border routers and firewalls are properly set up. Nice username/post combo.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:39
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Judge Schnoopy posted:I don't think it's uncommon for those universities and corporations to HAVE public IPs for each client, but I have to imagine none of those organizations are still USING public IPs per client. Certainly anybody ahead of the curve enough to buy massive blocks of IPs has the wherewithall to understand why public IPs on internal networks is a bad idea and would have switched to private DHCP pools. The ones that refuse to use public IPs internally have long since sold off their unused IP address space for a tidy profit. The ones that still retain that space make full use of it.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:44
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Yeah, that's crazy. Our Uni has a /21 of public IPs, and a whooole lot of regular clients and servers were on those until about two years ago. Now, we use a handful of them to host websites and public access servers, but more than 2k of them are vacant and just sitting there. We sure as poo poo aren't letting go of them anytime soon, though!
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Apr 5, 2016 17:57
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fishmech posted:The ones that refuse to use public IPs internally have long since sold off their unused IP address space for a tidy profit. The ones that still retain that space make full use of it. MIT is still sitting on an entire /8 
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Apr 5, 2016 17:57
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Yeah, there are definitely universities and corporations out there that still use public IPs for their clients. I've heard all sorts of crazy requirements for niche software, and if you told me that there was some small software in the education world that required public IPs I would be surprised but I'd believe it.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:58
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I've read a ton of posts about noncompetes and those sorts of ridiculous agreements, but just ran into a new one... Just talked with a recruiter for a company that has a 2 year bond as a condition of employment. If employment is separated within the first 2 years, you have to pay $7500 
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Apr 5, 2016 18:25
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air- posted:I've read a ton of posts about noncompetes and those sorts of ridiculous agreements, but just ran into a new one... Reply with a "Thanks but haha no thanks." Or if you are interested in the job, tell them that won't fly.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:28
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air- posted:I've read a ton of posts about noncompetes and those sorts of ridiculous agreements, but just ran into a new one... Is that remotely enforceable, wtf
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Apr 5, 2016 18:28
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ratbert90 posted:Reply with a "Thanks but haha no thanks." Even saw on Glassdoor that they have employees share rooms during business trips. Uhhhhhhh hell loving no way.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:33
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air- posted:Even saw on Glassdoor that they have employees share rooms during business trips. I bet management is trying to push through a new initiative "BYOTP"
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Apr 5, 2016 18:35
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air- posted:Just talked with a recruiter for a company that has a 2 year bond as a condition of employment. If employment is separated within the first 2 years, you have to pay $7500 The BBC just had a great article on the East India Company, welcome to the 17th Century. quote:Unpaid internships
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Apr 5, 2016 18:42
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air- posted:Even saw on Glassdoor that they have employees share rooms during business trips. Sounds like a party wooooooo
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Apr 5, 2016 18:42
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I knew a guy who grew up in India and for his first job he paid for the privilege of being an intern.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:49
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