Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

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Defenestrategy: Oct 24, 2010

Sarern posted:

A few years ago I set a firm rule to only do trainings during work hours and it was a huge life improvement. Anyone who would object to that is someone I don't want to work for anyway.

Same, if it benefits the company directly they can pay for it. I'd rather use my free time for grapple sports or video games.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 17:31

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# ? May 23, 2024 18:25

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

Terraform is previewing Active Directory support.

https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/manage-active-directory-objects-new-windows-ad-provider-hashicorp-terraform/

# ? Aug 6, 2020 17:44

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

Matt Zerella posted:

Terraform is previewing Active Directory support.

https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/manage-active-directory-objects-new-windows-ad-provider-hashicorp-terraform/

That�s cool. I�d really like better Hyper-V support though.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 17:51

Agrikk: Oct 17, 2003; Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

I was in a team meeting where we were talking about work life balance. The message was �you have PTO. You should use it.�

One colleague chimes in with, �I resent that you are telling me what to do. YOU CANT MAKE ME TAKE PTO.�

Talk about completely missing the point of the discussion.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 17:59

TheBacon: Feb 8, 2012; #essereFerrari

Schadenboner posted:

No, we're still on rack-and-stack physical hardware.

Same bud. I just recently had an experience with trying to use terraform for building an on prem k8s and honestly vastly disliked it compared to our existing system of kickstart, but I am sure we were using it real wrong considering it was cloud native people forcing this to be the system and trying to rebuild the k8s cluster in a couple days. Basically most of my frustrations revolved around that I somewhat cared about machine ordering and logic surrounding that as they corresponded to physical servers that rack placement mattered, and the OCD of keeping things ordered.

e:

Schadenboner posted:

I'm combination NOC-jock and low-level system admin but we're all on-prem and mostly not even virtualized. I'm looking at having to move to a different city and about my complete lack of .

lmao I found my god drat twin, hey man, condolences, I am a very junior sysadmin at a place thats got 25 year old perl and as old school as possible, but we did just start trying to virtualize things int he last 6 months or so. Managing a bunch of bare metal is certainly something. Definitely have a sense of a trapped feeling of both under and over paid at the same time and only being able to function here because I have worked here for 6 years so I have all the tribal. Solidarity

TheBacon fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Aug 6, 2020

# ? Aug 6, 2020 18:29

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

12 rats tied together posted:

I actually just put in my notice today, , and while the new position is a very slight title bump and pay raise, I'm leaving a frankly stupid amount of money in stock behind me. I think you have to do whatever it takes for you to tolerate going to work, and sometimes that means taking a paycut. How much you can tolerate a paycut I think depends on your overall compensation, savings, and life goals: costs are generally fixed, so, if you're at 200 and you take a 40k paycut you're still going to be extremely comfortable. If you're at 100 and take a 40k paycut that hurts a lot more.

Personally I have nothing to spend any of my dollars on except rent and food for at least the next 5ish years, so, I have a lot more freedom to accept pay changes that aren't maximum number go up.

I also don't think you necessarily have to take a job specifically in a nonprofit in order to be happy with it. It's rare but there are private corporations and especially startups that are fairly moral (relatively speaking anyway).

My promotion at work came with a 5% raise, and while the money spends, I am actually much happier that the job responsibilities are larger, which means that in a couple years, I'll be able to apply for jobs at Umich that pay a lot less than I make now but enough for my lifestyle, as opposed to a lot less than I made before and not enough for my lifestyle. I want to go back to Umich because they're the only big org for miles around that is firmly rooted in this area and doesn't play the acquisition and divestiture game. I feel like I could give up at least 10% of my salary, maybe 15%, to know that I would never again be treated like a fifth wheel for not being in the office with the cool kids (though covid may solve that problem) and to know that $employer was at no risk of going out of business.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 18:31

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

TheBacon posted:

Same bud. I just recently had an experience with trying to use terraform for building an on prem k8s and honestly vastly disliked it compared to our existing system of kickstart, but I am sure we were using it real wrong considering it was cloud native people forcing this to be the system and trying to rebuild the k8s cluster in a couple days. Basically most of my frustrations revolved around that I somewhat cared about machine ordering and logic surrounding that as they corresponded to physical servers that rack placement mattered, and the OCD of keeping things ordered.

Were you using the provisioning to do the K8s part? I try to avoid the TF provisioning outside of basic bootstrap stuff.

Probably would have been a better job for Ansible. Jeff Geerling is writing a book on Ansible/K8s management that's about 40% done on leanpub. I recommend both that and his Ansible For DevOps. They're my Ansible bibles.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 18:35

TheBacon: Feb 8, 2012; #essereFerrari

Matt Zerella posted:

Were you using the provisioning to do the K8s part? I try to avoid the TF provisioning outside of basic bootstrap stuff.

Probably would have been a better job for Ansible. Jeff Geerling is writing a book on Ansible/K8s management that's about 40% done on leanpub. I recommend both that and his Ansible For DevOps. They're my Ansible bibles.

Was terraform + typhoon to bootstrap the hardware into the initial k8s cluster.

Compared to our other k8s clusters leveraging our existing pxe kickstart, setup that's all a bunch of home grown stuff we've used for years, to install a base CoreOS and then manually creating and joining new nodes to the k8s cluster (which as we move to scale up is probably a step ansible would slide in).

# ? Aug 6, 2020 18:40

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

12 rats tied together posted:

I actually just put in my notice today, , and while the new position is a very slight title bump and pay raise, I'm leaving a frankly stupid amount of money in stock behind me. I think you have to do whatever it takes for you to tolerate going to work, and sometimes that means taking a paycut. How much you can tolerate a paycut I think depends on your overall compensation, savings, and life goals: costs are generally fixed, so, if you're at 200 and you take a 40k paycut you're still going to be extremely comfortable. If you're at 100 and take a 40k paycut that hurts a lot more.

Personally I have nothing to spend any of my dollars on except rent and food for at least the next 5ish years, so, I have a lot more freedom to accept pay changes that aren't maximum number go up.

I also don't think you necessarily have to take a job specifically in a nonprofit in order to be happy with it. It's rare but there are private corporations and especially startups that are fairly moral (relatively speaking anyway).

Even 200 to 160 is a nasty thing to have on your mind. Even if in reality its less because you can rationalize about taxes, and you don't actually notice beyond maybe retiring a little bit later.

It helps to phrase it that you've spent 20k (after tax) to be happier.

Methanar fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Aug 6, 2020

# ? Aug 6, 2020 19:46

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

Methanar posted:

It helps to phrase it that you've spent 20k (after tax) to be happier.

Yikes, this makes it feel worse.

Although I'm nowhere near being a sixfiggie fuckstain and probably never will be one?

# ? Aug 6, 2020 19:52

luminalflux: May 27, 2005

I used to work at a really toxic """unicorn""" that got subsumed into Amazon (it's a service you're probably familiar with!). While it was great getting the relocation from europe and they pay certainly was good, being on-call for stuff I couldn't fix, working long hours and basically being shat on by every part of the organisation because SREs aren't real engineers took an immense toll on me psychologically. Like, multiple people yelled at me and I had one engineer scream at me for changing a host name convention.

After I left I went to a place that was strictly 9-5, no on-call and very relaxed for a slight pay cut as an SWE. I lost a ton of weight and felt emotionally a lot better, but after a while I realized i wasn't really doing anything creative or pushing any boundary, just shoveling more Go into the TDD machine. 9 months and an IPO later I went to something with a bit of a pay bump and on-call, but with 50 engineers instead of 500 I have a lot more control and impact over my life as an SRE

# ? Aug 6, 2020 22:42

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

What was the SRE role at this place? I usually hear them described as pretty senior folks, since they're dealing with problems much bigger than ordinary computer-toucher stuff.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 22:46

luminalflux: May 27, 2005

Zorak of Michigan posted:

What was the SRE role at this place? I usually hear them described as pretty senior folks, since they're dealing with problems much bigger than ordinary computer-toucher stuff.

This was in 2015-2017. Everything from building inventory systems, building imaging systems for bare metal, secrets management to maintaining a really bad mess of puppet, running DNS servers and getting caught in departmental politics

# ? Aug 6, 2020 23:13

12 rats tied together: Sep 7, 2006

They're usually about on par with software engineer in my experience. That a lot of the tooling tends to be written in duck typed languages definitely contributes to an overall impression that SRE is a degenerate form of SWE and the tooling/solutions are toys that should only exist until a real developer can come rewrite it in java or c# or whatever. I would also say senior levels of SRE usually tend to be compensated less than senior levels of SWE, since SWE can have such a profound impact on profitability and SRE is, at best, cost management.

It can be extremely poisonous if your organization either doesn't care, or doesn't catch that attitude early and stop it.

# ? Aug 6, 2020 23:21

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

For those looking for help with "how do I get passed the tier 1 helpdesk" :siren:

While I frequently work with the Microsoft Stack this is an awesome introduction to AWS. Yes, it is intense but if you can get through this on your own or even with a little help I'm sure you will without a doubt get a job somewhere. Here's a small snippet.

The cloud resume challenge

quote:

Instructions
Complete these steps so I can share your resume with as many people as possible. See the FAQ for more context on why I chose these specific steps.

1. Certification
Your resume needs to have the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification on it. This is an introductory certification that orients you on the industry-leading AWS cloud � if you have a more advanced AWS cert, that�s fine but not expected. No cheating: include the validation code on the resume. You can sit this exam online for $100 USD. If that cost is a dealbreaker for you, let me know and I�ll see if I can help. A Cloud Guru offers exam prep resources.

2. HTML
Your resume needs to be written in HTML. Not a Word doc, not a PDF. Here is an example of what I mean.

3. CSS
Your resume needs to be styled with CSS. No worries if you�re not a designer � neither am I. It doesn�t have to be fancy. But we need to see something other than raw HTML when we open the webpage.

4. Static S3 Website
Your HTML resume should be deployed online as an Amazon S3 static website. Services like Netlify and GitHub Pages are great and I would normally recommend them for personal static site deployments, but they make things a little too abstract for our purposes here. Use S3.

5. HTTPS
The S3 website URL should use HTTPS for security. You will need to use Amazon CloudFront to help with this.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 00:00

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

That�s funny, I haven�t gone through the link yet, but I do all of the things in your quote only with azure blob storage and cdn instead of aws.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 00:06

Defenestrategy: Oct 24, 2010

A lot of that seems closer to, "Guy who wants to get into web dev and also fucks around with aws" rather than Generic IT dude.

Edit: Hell, what do I know I'm just a hodgepodge of doing networking, security, and sys admin crap myself.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 00:39

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

The Fool posted:

That�s funny, I haven�t gone through the link yet, but I do all of the things in your quote only with azure blob storage and cdn instead of aws.

I suspect the AWS Services are awfully similar to Azure. Part of me wants to convert his walkthrough to be an Azure one.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 00:46

George H.W. Cunt: Oct 6, 2010

Gabriel S. posted:

I suspect the AWS Services are awfully similar to Azure. Part of me wants to convert his walkthrough to be an Azure one.

Do this please

# ? Aug 7, 2020 00:54

Internet Explorer: Jun 1, 2005

afaik Azure does not have static sites hosting in a storage bucket like s3
I was actually trying to set up a redirect in Azure recently and it was significantly more complicated than doing it in AWS with an S3 bucket

[edit: apparently I'm wrong - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-static-website , doesn't seem like it's as easy to do a redirect with this, but I am sure you could drop in the html code yourself]

Internet Explorer fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Aug 7, 2020

# ? Aug 7, 2020 01:12

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

Internet Explorer posted:

afaik Azure does not have static sites hosting in a storage bucket like s3
I was actually trying to set up a redirect in Azure recently and it was significantly more complicated than doing it in AWS with an S3 bucket

[edit: apparently I'm wrong - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-static-website , doesn't seem like it's as easy to do a redirect with this, but I am sure you could drop in the html code yourself]

Do a redirect with azure functions instead, it�s like 8 lines of code.

e: it's the end of the day and I'm bored

code:

module.exports = function (context, req) {  
    var domain = req.headers["disguised-host"]
    var envVariableName = "APPSETTING_" + domain
    var destination = process.env[envVariableName]
    
    res = {
        status: 301,
        headers: {
           'Location': destination
        },
        body: {} 
    }
    context.done(null, res);
};

This runs as an httptrigger in azure functions. It takes the domain you are coming from (demo.contoso.com) uses that to look up the destination that is stored as an environment variable, then does a 301 redirect to the destination.

I have some other tooling written around this to help manage it, but this is the part that does the work.

The Fool fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Aug 7, 2020

# ? Aug 7, 2020 01:26

GreenNight: Feb 19, 2006; Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

I have faith he could do it with 40.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 01:27

Internet Explorer: Jun 1, 2005

The Fool posted:

Do a redirect with azure functions instead, it�s like 8 lines of code.

e: it's the end of the day and I'm bored
code:
module.exports = function (context, req) {  
    var domain = req.headers["disguised-host"]
    var envVariableName = "APPSETTING_" + domain
    var destination = process.env[envVariableName]
    
    res = {
        status: 301,
        headers: {
           'Location': destination
        },
        body: {} 
    }
    context.done(null, res);
};
This runs as an httptrigger in azure functions. It takes the domain you are coming from (demo.contoso.com) uses that to look up the destination that is stored as an environment variable, then does a 301 redirect to the destination.

I have some other tooling written around this to help manage it, but this is the part that does the work.

I just used Azure Front Door.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 01:42

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

shut the front door

# ? Aug 7, 2020 01:57

Vargatron: Apr 19, 2008; MRAZZLE DAZZLE

I'm probably 5 years away from a degree going part time but I try to get the coursework listed on my annual review as career development. Not sure if that will get me more money but surely it's going to pay off down the line where I can show that I worked full time and got a degree in my field. You know, using that tuition assistance effectively.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 01:58

GnarlyCharlie4u: Sep 23, 2007; I have an unhealthy obsession with motorcycles.

Proof

gently caress me I wasted an entire day and a half chasing stupid problems because one of my hosts is randomly dropping its connection to the SAN and I still cannot for the life of me figure out why.
There's no errors or anything. All the hardware is fine (as far as I can tell). iLO shows nothing, windows doesn't report poo poo, vSphere has nothing in the logs other than "Shortly Lost access to volume due to connectivity issues" that's not even a loving alarm, it's just an information event.

The only thing I've got left is maybe something is fucky with the HBA but this host is using the same flex fabric card as other hosts in the same chassis so IDFK.

I said gently caress it and put the blade into maintenance mode because I need to get some loving sleep tonight. Or paint the house... whatever.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 04:06

Spring Heeled Jack: Feb 25, 2007; If you can read this you can read

Been having a weird issue with a user getting prompted to select a default mail program on a remote session host repeatedly.

Loved this hacky-rear end fix from Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/troubleshoot/group-policy/configure-email-client-using-policy#resolution

# ? Aug 7, 2020 04:15

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

Where are you applying that accepts webpage resumes? Almost everyone has a document upload.

Unrelated, I did an eCommerce setup for my lab work so now I'm working on getting it set up for deployment with Terraform and Ansible so I can get that on my resume.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 04:20

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Where are you applying that accepts webpage resumes? Almost everyone has a document upload.

Unrelated, I did an eCommerce setup for my lab work so now I'm working on getting it set up for deployment with Terraform and Ansible so I can get that on my resume.

Recruiters, referrals, or the hiring manager�s email, usually. Probably not as useful if you�re applying on indeed or something similar.

Congrats on the eCommerce setup! It�s a cool thing to say you�ve done!

Now when you�re asked about it don�t say �oh it was just a lab setup�, say �It wasn�t for [current employer], but I�ve built e-ecommerce websites with X Y and Z products, here�s how I accounted for scaling, security, updates, green/blue deployments, it was a great opportunity to build my cloud skills.�

See how one of those gives a very different implication than the other? Being selective in your language is very useful not just in landing jobs, but also keeping them and progressing upwards.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 04:33

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

Yeah, good point. When I mentioned it in the interview I mentioned it was for a friend who was starting a business, maybe I should say a manufacturing technology startup :v:

. Less of a "oh, this guy is nice" but more professional-sounding.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 05:23

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Where are you applying that accepts webpage resumes? Almost everyone has a document upload.

Do your design in html/css then print to pdf.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 05:26

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Where are you applying that accepts webpage resumes? Almost everyone has a document upload.

Unrelated, I did an eCommerce setup for my lab work so now I'm working on getting it set up for deployment with Terraform and Ansible so I can get that on my resume.

print to pdf

# ? Aug 7, 2020 05:28

GnarlyCharlie4u: Sep 23, 2007; I have an unhealthy obsession with motorcycles.

Proof

It never ceases to amaze me that no matter where I go, ITS seems to be expected to take ownership of other departments' processes and workflows.
I don't mean in a technology sense, I mean in a "literally nobody in our department knows how to do this job that has nothing to do with technology" sort of way.

So you end up with dumb tickets like:
"How do we pay invoices?"

"I.T. has not provided me access to the mailroom. I need access to the mailroom! Also, where is the mailroom?"

"I.T. has not provided our department with instructions on where to locate client billing information, or how to bill them, or who our clients are, or what we are billing them for."

or my personal favorite; "I have not received any onboarding information from I.T. regarding my job duties or workflow therefore I am unable to work." from a user who has been there for like 3 months.

Like how the gently caress do you people breathe?

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:22

skipdogg: Nov 29, 2004; Resident SRT-4 Expert

IT is an easy scapegoat.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:34

GreenNight: Feb 19, 2006; Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

It never ceases to amaze me that no matter where I go, ITS seems to be expected to take ownership of other departments' processes and workflows.
I don't mean in a technology sense, I mean in a "literally nobody in our department knows how to do this job that has nothing to do with technology" sort of way.

So you end up with dumb tickets like:
"How do we pay invoices?"

"I.T. has not provided me access to the mailroom. I need access to the mailroom! Also, where is the mailroom?"

"I.T. has not provided our department with instructions on where to locate client billing information, or how to bill them, or who our clients are, or what we are billing them for."

or my personal favorite; "I have not received any onboarding information from I.T. regarding my job duties or workflow therefore I am unable to work." from a user who has been there for like 3 months.

Like how the gently caress do you people breathe?

All of that sounds like lovely loving management.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:37

GnarlyCharlie4u: Sep 23, 2007; I have an unhealthy obsession with motorcycles.

Proof

GreenNight posted:

All of that sounds like lovely loving management.

Well, yeah. But what is management if not poo poo?

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:40

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

skipdogg posted:

IT is an easy scapegoat.

its this. just live under the bus we have coffee down here and it stays nice and cool

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:42

Schadenboner: Aug 15, 2011; by Shine

Nuclearmonkee posted:

its this. just live under the bus we have coffee down here and it stays nice and cool

You have coffee? Management took away the coffee and chips once they were WFH and stopped benefiting from it.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:43

Antioch: Apr 18, 2003

I'm refreshing hardware for the new company. Currently running a janky AF HyperV deployment - no HA, no failover, no management tools of any kind outside just "Log in to the server and make VMs". I don't like that, so I've got my boss convinced we can go to VMWare on VXRail.
I'm sizing things out and I think we'll be able to do 4 nodes and have a decent amount of growth available. I've done HyperV to VMWare conversions before so I'm going to plan for about a month to do so, and upgrade servers from 2008R2 to 2019 along the way. We're pretty simple for services - AD, teams, OneDrive/O365, Sharepoint.

We're also redoing the networking between sites - we have 2 sites in my hometown, and another down in Kentucky. I'm thinking HA/DR Active/Active between the two sites in Alberta, then an offsite "Break Glass" site in Kentucky with essential services.

I'm also going to be replacing the aged and out of warranty compellent that's storing all our backups. Since I'm giving Dell a bunch of money anyway, I asked for a quote on DataDomain. I'm thinking onsite backups in the main site, then replicate to the secondary and probably an Azure blob for cloud.

So my question: Does anyone have any experience with VXRail and DataDomain deployments? Any gotchas or stumbling blocks I should watch out for? I've worked with VMWare for years and know my way around esxi fairly well. vSAN and networking I haven't done a lot of, but the VXRail setup seems fairly straightforward. Backups seem pretty easy too.

I keep banging around the idea of using Terraform and Ansible to manage deployments, but that might be more of a lab thing.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:44

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# ? May 23, 2024 18:25

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Schadenboner posted:

You have coffee? Management took away the coffee and chips once they were WFH and stopped benefiting from it.

Seems like a great plan. Go WFH so there's less immediate supervision and cut coffee to ensure remaining office employees are as resentful and non-productive as possible.

# ? Aug 7, 2020 18:47

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