Do you back up your ticketing system?

We've had several ticketing systems over the years, but have never backed them up. Others in the team don't seem to consider the data valuable. I had to argue for increasing the archiving period for our existing system, and no one else worried about exporting the tickets from our previous systems.

99% of our old tickets are probably worthless, but I'd hate to lose any with valuable historical information.

What does everyone else do?



https://redd.it/1nvnv7s
@r_systemadmin

Does The Use Of AI Make Me A Shitty Professional ?

I have 8 years of experience working with Microsoft based systems (mainly O365 and Windows) in end-user support. I was laid off and out of work for 8 months. I also have a degree in Cloud Computing based systems and have always wanted to move into that side of the field.

In June, I landed a job as a Cloud Admin. I’m now responsible for nearly every aspect of our organization’s AWS and Azure environments from networking, IAM, infrastructure, etc. For the first time in my career, I’m working in an environment with no training wheels. There’s limited support for complex issues and no real backup. I’ve also fully transitioned away from end-user support and now work strictly on infrastructure.

At the beginning, I was really struggling to understand certain things. And really had no one to ask, So I decided to use ChatGPT to help me work through a specific issue and it honestly opened my eyes. It’s allowed me to say “Hey, I’m thinking of approaching this issue like this, what do you think?”. Which I can't always do with a person. I don't use it for everything.

Lately, I’ve been second guessing my ability. I’ve never relied on AI tools in the past, especially when working with Microsoft systems. Back then, I had years to gradually ramp up on complexity and always had senior engineers around to help if needed. But now, I don’t have that luxury. AI has become a powerful tool for me, and I sometimes wonder if would I even be able to do this job without it? It’s made me question how good I really am at what I do.

Has anyone else gone through this?

https://redd.it/1nvtfnh
@r_systemadmin

Servicedesk newcomers, how to navigate the use of chat-gpt

Hey,

First time in a leadership role for servicedeskers and don't want to impose new ways of searching and getting info for people straight out of school (or just young people) and they use chat-gpt a lot for looking up information.

However, my issue is that if someone calls, or mails, they just enter it into chat gpt and forward the response back to the user.

I always encourage critical thinking and manual searching but you can tell that the younger generation mostly use AI to lookup things.

Whenever I try to nudge them into using google search or by thinking yourself, they usually brush it off and go towards chat-gpt again.

How can I educate them properly, without being a strict parent and just saying NO to chat-gpt? For me they can use it, but they should also read and think critically about what they read and not just blind forward.

https://redd.it/1nvwuhu
@r_systemadmin

Thickheaded Thursday - October 02, 2025

Howdy, /r/sysadmin!

It's that time of the week, Thickheaded Thursday! This is a safe (mostly) judgement-free environment for all of your questions and stories, no matter how silly you think they are. Anybody can answer questions! My name is AutoModerator and I've taken over responsibility for posting these weekly threads so you don't have to worry about anything except your comments!

https://redd.it/1nvzm5n
@r_systemadmin

Looking for specific examples of incidents where shadow IT has caused a significant business impact.

As the noscript says, however dr Google isn't giving me any juicy enough leads. I'm writing some internal education documents and am looking for some examples to cite.
Google search is currenly giving me page after page of vendors selling their services and how they will fix a shadow IT problem drowning out the original query. I have tried varying the search, but not getting many results that quantify specific damages or case studies.
So, here I am asking my fellow sysadmins if anyone can point me in the right directions for some good sources of where people have acted without IT oversight but didn't have malicious intent.

Thanks in advance.

https://redd.it/1nvtndg
@r_systemadmin

For this first time in my career I’m working at a company with a dedicated Security team and I fully understand now why having SysAdmin experience should be absolutely necessary to be on a CyberSecurity team…

I’ve seen people here complain about kids fresh out of college joining their company’s Sec team and making ignorant requests, but only now do I understand.

Younger kid on our security team submitted a ticket, assigned it straight to me and not our team’s queue (ugh), saying “Hey I found this noscript online, could you run it on these three prod machines for me? Feel free to run whenever. Thanks!”

Links to some random blog post, noscript requires some package dependencies to be installed, noscript ends with a reboot command, bunch of cURLs & chmod’s in it.



https://redd.it/1nw6sks
@r_systemadmin

CrownCastle NYC area internet issues

Anyone able to get a ticket open for Crown Castle internet issue that seemed to start around 11:15am EST today? I'm in southwest CT, circuit is flapping and feels like routing issue when it's up. OR could just be flapping.

https://redd.it/1nw7al5
@r_systemadmin

As a SysAdmin, i should not have to....

I'll start:

...teach my IT Manager how to navigate folders in PowerShell.


Add:

They were promoted to their role as IT Manager from....


SysAdmin.



I now see my post was a little light on some details.

https://redd.it/1nw87ue
@r_systemadmin

Computer names - by user

My boss is asking the question, what do you think of naming the computers with the user's login or part of it? Example:  jobsite-username

Any thoughts if this is a good or bad idea? At first glance, I'm not a fan of it, being staff comes and goes.

https://redd.it/1nw917k
@r_systemadmin

Management wants to roll out a time tracker. What technical issues am I bound to run into?

The higher-ups have tasked me with deploying a time tracking tool for our remote fleet. HR already did the vendor selection and they've handed me Monitask.

My job isn't to debate the policy, it's to make sure the rollout doesn't become a technical dumpster fire. I'm already thinking about the obvious stuff like GPO deployment, potential conflicts with our EDR, and making sure it doesn't hog resources on older laptops.

For the sysadmins here who have had to deploy this kind of agent-based software, what were the unexpected headaches? Anything I should be testing for specifically that isn't in the standard documentation?

https://redd.it/1nwaygd
@r_systemadmin

Pour one out for the Crown Castle Network Admins and their customers

Outages all over the Northeast and Florida.

https://downdetector.com/status/lightower/map/

Happy Thursday!

https://redd.it/1nwadif
@r_systemadmin

Sysadmins… Microsoft is keeping your job safe..

I know nothing about what you people actually do, but I assure you that your job is safe… and Microsoft is making sure it stays that way.

As a small business owner, dealing with Microsoft is a COMPLETE nightmare for us common folk’. They move everything all over the place in their admin centers, they re-name things, and they don’t even bother to update their help articles…and even Co-Pilot just feeds you out-dated info.

I’ve literally spent 1 week on & off just trying to get my email to apply a retention policy and tag to move email messages from my mailbox into the auto-expanding archive. A WEEK! Finally, I resorted to powershell, which is 100x easier then snooping around 4 admin centers + Purview (wtf is purview?)

It still hasn’t moved anything whatsoever, but at least I confirmed everything is set up correctly.

In summary, you’re safe, and I salute you 🫡.

Thanks.

https://redd.it/1nwggqp
@r_systemadmin

CISA.DHS.GOV - Suspicious E-mail - Anyone else?

Anyone else in .gov just get a suspcious e-mail from an address on "@cisa.dhs.gov" with a .txt file attachment?


Subject: Hello

Body: Dear hello

Partial Attachment: (The Access Key and Secret Access Key I edited, because it was complete)

url https://hgsm1yxlxd.execute-api.us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com/



IP 10.5.4.24, 10.5.2.193, 10.5.16.109

Creating IAM resources for email sender...

Created role: arn:aws-us-gov:iam::048250888335:role/lambda-email-sender-role

Created policy: arn:aws-us-gov:iam::048250888335:policy/lambda-email-sender-policy

Created user: email-sender-deployer

Access Key ID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Secret Access Key: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Save these credentials securely!



IAM resources created successfully!

Lambda Role ARN: arn:aws-us-gov:iam::048250888335:role/lambda-email-sender-role

Use the deployment credentials to run the deployment noscripts.

https://redd.it/1nwginy
@r_systemadmin

CISA emails during gov't shutdown.

Curious, assuming it can't just be me...but did anyone else get an email from a specific person at CISA with an attachment that lists their credentials for what appears to be their Amazon Simple Email Service? Since the gov't is shutdown, I'm assuming CISA is as well, so I'd have been surprised to get any email from them...much less something that obviously shouldn't have been sent out.

https://redd.it/1nwhdoa
@r_systemadmin

CFO wants to know why our IT costs doubled when we went remote

Pre-remote: 100 employees, $180k annual IT costs, everything made sense.

Post-remote: 100 employees, $340k annual IT costs, CFO breathing down my neck.

The cost breakdown is painful:

- International shipping that costs 40% of equipment value
- Timezone support coverage (we now need 16 hour IT support)
- Equipment recovery when people quit (apparently $500 per laptop minimum)
- Compliance consulting for different countries
- Multiple vendor relationships instead of one local supplier

CFO keeps asking "why can't you just do the same thing but remote" and I'm running out of ways to explain that distributed IT is fundamentally different from office IT.

Anyone else getting roasted by finance for remote IT costs? This feels unsustainable but going back to office-only would lose us 60% of our talent.

https://redd.it/1nwlpo4
@r_systemadmin

Greybeards - has it always been like this?

I know it's a bit of a cliche at this point, but everything in the IT industry feels super uncertain right now.

Steady but uneven rise of cloud, automation, remote work, AI etc. But none of that is settled.

For context, I'm about 6 years into my IT career. It used to be when helpdesk would ask me "what should I specialise in" I would have an answer. But in the last couple of years I'm at a loss.

For those who have spent longer in IT - have you seen this happen before? Is this just tech churn that happens ever X number of years? Or is the future of IT particularly uncertain right now?

https://redd.it/1nwu143
@r_systemadmin

Weekly 'I made a useful thing' Thread - October 03, 2025

There is a great deal of user-generated content out there, from noscripts and software to tutorials and videos, but we've generally tried to keep that off of the front page due to the volume and as a result of community feedback. There's also a great deal of content out there that violates our advertising/promotion rule, from noscripts and software to tutorials and videos.

We have received a number of requests for exemptions to the rule, and rather than allowing the front page to get consumed, we thought we'd try a weekly thread that allows for that kind of content. We don't have a catchy name for it yet, so please let us know if you have any ideas!

In this thread, feel free to show us your pet project, YouTube videos, blog posts, or whatever else you may have and share it with the community. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, or links that appear to be monetization-grabs will still be removed.

https://redd.it/1nwuxpg
@r_systemadmin

Anyone else drowning in "Shadow AI"?

I thought shadow IT was bad enough; now I'm seeing staff pasting trannoscripts, notes, even snippets of internal docs into random AI tools. No approvals and logs, nothing to track after the fact. At least with SaaS sprawl, you could follow the money trail - this just disappears into the void.

How are you dealing with it? Blocking access only works for so long, and just telling people "don't paste sensitive data" isn't cutting it either.

PS: Not looking for silver bullets, just curious what's actually working (or falling) for others before I push this uphill with leadership.

https://redd.it/1nwvl8a
@r_systemadmin

Hassle getting bloatware-free computers.

Why is it such an incredible hassle to get computers with no bloatware for our business?

We paid CDW to send us clean images and to upload the hardware hashes. Instead, they sent us the hardware hashes in an email and the computers still had all of the bloatware. Now it has been well over a month since we returned them to fix it and they still haven't even gotten one computer back out to us.

Is this a challenge everywhere?

EDIT - I find it interesting how many of you are saying "just image it". Can we please stop normalizing and defending shitty business practices? We paid for them to remove the bloatware.

All of my systems are autopilot. I expect to be able to hand a sealed box to my users and say "have a good day." I do not expect to waste days of effort cleaning individual machines before I can send them out.

https://redd.it/1nwyljs
@r_systemadmin

I finally fucking crawled out of the deep, deep hole of helldesk

I accepted an offer at an MSSP this week to become a sysadmin which I’m super pumped about. Been at an MSP for 2 years in support and I fucking hate it. Solid $30k pay bump, better hours, PTO, full remote etc. Plus just a better msp(MSSP) even though I didn’t want to go to another MSP. Solid dudes over there and I said hey what the hell. But I’m finally fucking done with support. I was so burnt out.

https://redd.it/1nx0cn5
@r_systemadmin

Gaming as an IT person

Totally random and off the wall question but for all the gamers in this group, I'm wondering how working in IT impacts your gaming habits? I've heard plenty of stories from IT people who don't ever touch PC gaming because, "I work on a PC all day. Last thing I want to do when I get home is touch a PC." That's never been me. I'm a diehard PC gamer and while I do have slumps, I'm happy to work on IT stuff all day (often on my home PC), then once 3pm hits I'll close out chat and all my work stuff and launch some video game.

Where it impacts me is in the type of characters I play in RPGs. I'm a big fan of RPGs (mostly tabletop; I'm playing in a Daggerheart campaign and running a 1st Edition AD&D campaign), but 99.99% of the time, I'll play a DPS fighter. No magic users, no clerics, no technicians, hackers, or anything that involves a lot of thinking. My brain is usually pretty drained by the time the weekend hits and the last thing I want to do is think. All I want is to play, "pointy end goes into the other man."

I'm wondering what everyone else is like in that regard?

https://redd.it/1nx0k02
@r_systemadmin