Anti Rant - Some users are a joy to work with.

This isn't a Rant, but there is no Anti-Rant flair, so here it is.

I asked a user to come in, for a support case, all is handled nice and easy without much hassle. He then asks about a different problem that he has been experiencing, something trivial that I decided to deal on the spot because it took me only 45 seconds to apply the fix.

5 Minutes later, he creates a ticket to say that the issue was solved by me and he just opened the ticket so we can track it on our side.

Aren't these users a joy to work with? Love to see it on the workplace.

https://redd.it/1ojwtv3
@r_systemadmin

Oldest Technology Still Kicking

I replaced a token ring network at a rural tractor repair place about 20 years ago, and even then it was way out of date. What’s the oldest tech you guys have seen still in use in a working company?

https://redd.it/1ojx6wu
@r_systemadmin

Does anyone else struggle with getting laptops back after employees leave from managers?

After one of the employees left. the manager asked for the physical laptop to get some files off of it. It's been months since then. After asking for it back that manger respond with

we are making slow progress and working through the information on the laptop. Timeline to finish the task is still unknown. Until unless there is a strong reason for the laptop to be returned, we may have to raise a continual request to keep the laptop until we have all the information needed. 

I dont think this really appropriate since 1st off they dont need to have a strong reason to return assets that dont belong to that department.

What would y'all do in this case, or have done in the past? I have not yet responded to this email.

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

We're rolling out a time tracker to 500+ remote machines. What are the technical hitches I'm not thinking about?


Our company is standardizing on a single time tracking tool for all remote and hybrid employees, and the deployment has landed on my desk. The tool is Monitask, and I'm responsible for getting it onto about 500 machines.

My job isn't to debate the policy (it's a transparent rollout, all communicated by HR), but to make sure it doesn't become a technical dumpster fire.

I'm already planning for the obvious stuff: noscripting the deployment via GPO/Intune, potential conflicts with our EDR, and testing for resource usage on older laptops.

For the sysadmins here who have had to deploy this kind of agent-based software at scale, what were the unexpected headaches I’m I bound to run into? Any advice from the trenches would be a huge help.

https://redd.it/1oju7sz
@r_systemadmin

The Tragedy of LinkedIn...

A couple of weeks ago some pour soul posted up on Linkedin that his Windows 11 installation went a bit askew and now he was locked of his own dam computer. All he got when he turned it on was a screen asking for a BitLocker key. That is frustrating. So, he went to LinkedIn where all the "experts" hang out.

What happened next was eye-opening. While the poor b@stard needed some actionable advice on how to get back into his system all he got was commentary. For example, the merits of BitLocker vs other encryption packages. The need for encryption on laptops. The importance of encryption for compliance. Difference between different versions of Bitlocker. Whether Bitlocker uses 128-bit or 256-bit..Just pure unadulterated BS.

If this person's house was on fire...there was not one person in the crowd taking a p!ss on the burning house. It was just talk. Stupid talk. Not one piece of actionable advice. I'm now thinking that if I were hiring someone in the morning - that last person on earth I would hire would be a LinkedIn commentator. Useless. Absolutely useless. Give me a do-er, not a LinkedIn commentator, any day...Rant /over

https://redd.it/1ok3lks
@r_systemadmin

Two of our company devices somehow ended up getting assigned the same random hostname by Windows

We just got a bunch of laptops in at another office- we don't have Intune setup, we just have someone go through OOBE and install NinjaOne (yes this is dumb, we're "working on it").

When I remoted in I noticed none of the noscripts had ran- then noticed the username on the Overview was different. Somehow, that machine had ended up with the same exact random hostname as a machine that had already been deployed. They're not even from the same batch- the other machine went out about 3 months ago. I'm absolutely baffled.

Screenshot of the two machines

https://redd.it/1ok3ncq
@r_systemadmin

M365 sprawl is getting out of hand

Our Teams setup has turned into the Wild West. Random groups, no naming rules, duplicate SharePoints.
We’re testing out some structure tools with Silicon Reef that help automate provisioning and cleanup.
Anyone else found a decent way to keep things organized without nuking everything?

https://redd.it/1ok10e8
@r_systemadmin

Is It Worth Taking a $25K Pay Cut for Better Work-Life Balance?

I'm deciding whether to stay in my 100k remote role with high workload or to take a 75k job with a 5 to 10 minute commute, that may or may not be better. In my current role, I manage 3–10 cloud migration projects at once, and my manager recently added a long list of goals: 80 hours of LinkedIn Learning (PowerShell + soft skills), a Google Workspace certification, writing a noscript, 6–15 migration improvements, 18–40 hours of provisioning tickets, and two presentations. Next year, the goals expand to include a Google Data Engineer certification, a 40-hour data course, and more improvements and tickets. These goals are rated on a weighed scale, so I don't have to achieve all of them, but do you still think these are unreachable?

I interviewed for another role that’s more cybersecurity-focused, working with Azure, AWS, and PKI/Certificate Authorities. It’s more specialized but pays less ($75K vs. $100K) and is in-person with government contracts, which might carry some layoff risk if projects slow down. My current job is remote but has had three layoffs in the past three years, so neither feels completely secure. I also feel like Google cloud migrations is very niche. Do you think I will get siloed into a service that not many people use when it seems like most applications I see focus on Azure?

I’m torn between staying remote or taking the lower-paying role for a potentially better work life balance although that's not guaranteed. I also don't know if I'll regret going back to working in person either. Do you think it’s worth the pay cut and commute, or should I stay put and keep looking for something better?

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

Court order for email from long deleted mailbox

I have been assigned the task of finding emails from an account that has its O365 license removed around 2 years ago. Obviously this thing is long gone and there is no email archive or backup that exists. Only solution available is to search through the other 700 or so email accounts looking for relevant emails from 5 years ago and hope I get lucky? I'll likely end up needing to testify about methods and why I was or was not successful.

I've had to do similar things in the past but I always had some kind of archive or the account still existed. What kind of tools would you use to find this off a hosted Exchange? I can buy tools if the price is reasonable and have global admin to the tenant for permissions.

https://redd.it/1okbhy8
@r_systemadmin

Burnt out. Understaffed. Head’s gone and not thinking straight… give me your worst…

Brain fart moments or days.

Been taking on the workload of myself and another person for pushing 4 weeks now. I think it’s finally caught up with me. Can’t sleep properly at night as I can’t switch off.

Internal server couldn’t reach an external API service. Really fucking simple firewall issue took me a week to sort as I ended up going down a rabbit hole of thinking something else was the issue after the connection was allowed despite knowing in the back of my head it was F/W related (and also drafting an email to our firewall guys to investigate in the meantime time but not sending it)

Result? Me feeling like an idiot. Tail between my legs to my boss. Now sorted, kind of, internal server hitting another endpoint so the full connection couldn’t be established, but should have been sorted a week ago. If I was thinking clearly… and how I usually do… it would have been.

Make me feel better…?

https://redd.it/1okdec2
@r_systemadmin

MSP recommended syncing entire AD org to Entra — we’re only syncing user OU. Thoughts?

Our MSP recently suggested we sync our entire on-prem AD organization to Microsoft Entra ID (via Azure AD Connect). Their reasoning was simplicity and future-proofing. But we’ve held off and are currently syncing only the OU that contains actual user accounts.

Here’s why:

• We use Exchange Online, so syncing mail-enabled users is necessary.

• We assign Microsoft 365 licenses, and syncing only the relevant OU keeps the licensing dashboard clean.

• We don’t want service accounts, disabled users, or legacy objects cluttering Entra or triggering compliance noise.

I get the appeal of full sync — no filtering, fewer surprises — but it feels messy and unnecessary for our setup. Especially when selective sync gives us more control and less overhead.

Curious how others are handling this. Are you syncing everything? Just users? Using group or attribute filtering? Any regrets or gotchas from going full sync?

https://redd.it/1okdl2d
@r_systemadmin

Tired of SaaS subnoscription creep - what are you self-hosting?

We're spending like $3k/month on various SaaS tools and management wants to cut costs. What are the best self-hosted alternatives you've actually deployed in production? Particularly interested in project management and collaboration tools.

https://redd.it/1okip9o
@r_systemadmin

Weekly 'I made a useful thing' Thread - October 31, 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/1okqgh5
@r_systemadmin

WSUS Replacement Needed! Domain-Joined Org with 1600+ Endpoints - What are you using for Windows Update Management?

Hey r/sysadmin,

We're an organization with a global footprint (1400 domain-joined computers across the world, and 200 servers in our virtual environment) and we've finally reached the point where we need to move on from WSUS. Its limitations, especially with remote/global endpoints and lack of seamless third-party patching, are becoming a major headache.

Our entire environment is still fully domain-joined (Active Directory), and while we are exploring options like Azure Arc for our servers (I posted separately on that), we need a comprehensive solution that handles both our servers and our 1400+ client computers globally.

We are looking for a robust, scalable solution to manage all Windows updates (OS and third-party) for our desktops/laptops and servers.

I'd love to hear what products your organizations are using as a modern replacement for WSUS. Specifically, we're focused on these key areas:

1. Product Suggestions: What are the absolute best products you've used for managing updates on a large scale for both Windows computers and servers? (e.g., NinjaOne, Automox, ManageEngine, Action1, Ivanti, etc.)
2. The Microsoft Path (Intune/MEM): Given that we are fully domain-joined, what is the recommended Intune pathway?
Is it Co-Management (SCCM/MECM + Intune) for a gradual migration?
Can we effectively manage all updates (including WaaS/WUfB) on our domain-joined clients via Hybrid Azure AD Join and Intune alone?
what is the cost to manage updates via Intune (License per user/computer)?
3. Deployment/Connectivity: How does the solution handle our global, remote workforce?
Is it a purely cloud-based agent that manages updates over the internet (no VPN needed)?
Does it still require a VPN connection to a central server/data center to pull or report on updates?
Does it use Peer-to-Peer (P2P) distribution (like Delivery Optimization) to save on bandwidth at remote sites?
4. Licensing/Cost: What is the typical cost model? Is it per-device/per-endpoint, or is it a flat fee/unlimited for domain-joined machines? (Our scale is about 1600 total devices).

Our goal is a product/approach that simplifies management, improves compliance, and effectively patches remote endpoints without needing them to be on the VPN.

Any and all suggestions, war stories, and advice on the best modern approach would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

https://redd.it/1oki9cm
@r_systemadmin

Anyone else seeing this strange behavior on m365.cloud.micrsoft

We push a basic shortcut to desktop's that just links to the m365.cloud.microsoft site. Same place your sent if you hit the hamburger menu in your browser for app launcher. After the big MS outage we have been getting reports from users that when going to that shortcut now they can't find their icons which used to live under the "Get work done" heading. I get this same issue now as well. If I go to that site and click search in the top left and then immediately click apps again on bottom left it brings me right back to the same link however now the webpage will show the "get work done" section with all our apps. Tried in two different browsers etc.

https://redd.it/1oktwy5
@r_systemadmin

Chemical corrosion on network gear

We have an open wall rack with a couple of switches and a UPS in an area where chemicals for an olympic size pool are stored, and is also open to the pool which is up a set of stairs. It's humid and obviously the vapors from the chlorine are in the air. After a few months, switch contacts are green and corroded and the UPS chassis looks like it's been underwater for 100 years. Moving the rack is impractical right now, but is there any kind of enclosure or anything that can help protect against this kind of corrosion?

TL;DR: Hydrochloric acid, chlorine, humidity and a swimming pool are eating my network gear. Help!

https://redd.it/1okuh3k
@r_systemadmin

Took my first contracting job as an IT specialist. Some things I learned.

Just reached launch day on my first contracted job. I just wanted to share some things I learned along the way. I’ve been mostly in “enterprise IT” for my career, so that's where my mindset was during this project. Which led to a lot of “over-configuring” for this use case.


A bit of background for me. I’ve been in IT for almost 3 years, I was a bit “late to the game” in terms of getting a career I like. I'm 28 and didn’t go to college for 4 years to do this stuff. Working on my bachelors now. I work full time for a company as an IT admin and have also been trying to network to get my own business off the ground. It took a year to get my first client. Anyway, onto the stuff.

Really evaluate if your client needs a server. My client was pretty insistent that he have one, but a Lenovo ST250 V2 may have been complete overkill. Luckily we were able to score it for $799 refurbished on new egg. We won’t be doing much local storage or VM’s, possibly it will only be running a print server DNS & DHCP and be a place where scans go on a network folder. I think we could have settled for something less to do that stuff.


Windows Server is A LOT for a small company. Completely ridiculous. High prices for the server software, Device CAD’s/User CAD’s. Not to mention, If you want to go the cloud route for active domain, you need intune licences assigned to each device. Which is also costly. I ended up going with Ubuntu Server. I’m completely new to Linux and only took it on because I did not know how my client would react to having to fork out thousands that wasn’t expected.


Configuring everything to have a network going without your client having a dedicated network is hard. I was hired on while my client was still in the transfer/waiting to signoff phase. I was building this new net while there was a business still in day to day operation. I had to use their network to set up a lot of things, but didn't want to touch setting up DNS, DHCP, VLAN or anything until I had a dedicated network. In all honesty, I wasn't sure what I would break.


Procurement is HARD. You really have to know what you're doing. I had been forward with my client about this topic before we began. I let him know this was my first time handling procurement, so it may get messy and there may be mistakes. We went through 4 rounds of procurement sheets before we had everything we needed. Silly things like servers don’t come with a GPU, we didn’t need one, but this was new information to me. SSDs for servers are strange, really make sure you get seating for memory that will fit snug in the bay. The server in particular we got has bays that are somewhere in between 3.5 and 5.25. To be honest, I still don’t know what I did wrong.


I focused way too hard on getting things done that I wanted to learn rather than what the client was focused on. I think that was a bad move. My client was mostly concerned about getting desktops, printer/scanners, phone systems, and a way for customers to pay with their chosen solution. I was focused on learning how to setup all the things I thought was cool, like the aforementioned DNS, DHCP, and VLAN stuff.


Porting numbers is also a complicated situation. At best porting numbers from a main provider to a SIP provider, at best could take up to 7-10 days. My client wanted to keep the phone numbers from the previous business. It was a scary situation, I didn’t want to port them too early, or else the business would lose their phones before transferring the business. I also didn't want to do it too late as I didn’t want my client to be without phones. We ended up starting the porting process a week prior to opening day, I setup their phone system using a bought test number assigned the dummy, not transferred yet, numbers to the rest of the phones. We decided to keep the previous business phone system in place for a few weeks until the port is complete. One day, hopefully, the new phones will just ring and work without issue.


Overall, this experience was

incredibly insightful to how many layers and things to learn there are in IT. It was also super humbling, I thought I knew a lot going into this, but nearly every step of the way I ran into something I’ve never dealt with before. I was so happy when my client told me he was amazed at what I was able to get done in 3 weeks. He really is happy with what I was able to do and I wasn’t expecting that. I think a big takeaway from all of this for me is that you don’t have to be an expert to do this sort of stuff, experience is incredibly important and sometimes you just need to dive into an uncomfortable situation to start doing cool stuff.



https://redd.it/1okvym5
@r_systemadmin

Education IT is the worst

I just need a quick vent. IT in education are a complete shit show. I thought leaving from a high end corporation to a school would be better. Boy, was I fucking wrong. It’s more drama, more bullshit than anything I’ve been in. I somehow have multiple more jobs that have nothing with IT. Administrators and teachers act worse than stupid CEO’s. Less pay to deal with more bullshit. I would have never left corporate if I knew how worse education was. I’m looking to go back to corporate.

Edit: I am K-12. I left my previous job because I read work life balance was better but it’s not. An example of bullshit I had to deal with was I got called to come in the evening because the they couldn’t login to a computer because one of the users didn’t know her password and the mics weren’t working. Handling and scanning packages all day because they refuse to hire someone for this.

https://redd.it/1oky7j1
@r_systemadmin

Relief after firing

Anyone struggle for so long to help a company improve on their processes - both internal and external, procedures - both internal & external, client relations, you’re considered to be the subject matter expert on things.
With all your knowledge you try to put to help improve a company, have you ever just felt utter relief after being fired?
I was just fired today, and instead of feeling dread about $$ or fear about bills, etc. I actually feel relief.

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

The pain of dealing with Dell Financial Services and they messed-up returns process

Hi fellow sysadmins,

maybe this is more a post for people in Germany/The EU, but I really wanted to find out if we are the only ones that this happens to.

We lease our devices for 3 years and without fault every single time after we've packed everything nicely and made sure all computers are clean (physically) and wiped/reinstalled, sent everything back on time, we are being told that devices were missing in our shipments. One time all of our docking stations were apparently gone (sent in the same box as the laptops....) this time we are apparently missing 74 of 89 devices. They were packed on two palettes, picked up by their own partner and arrival at the warehouse was confirmed to me.

I'm so over it, all the effort on our end to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and then it does still.

I have started taking several pictures of each shipment, from all angles so that we can prove we have packed the required amount of devices on the palette.

Either we are terribly unlucky or something is fishy either with their contractor Expeditors or whoever picked up the palettes from us. Is there someone here located in Germany or the EU who had experience with returning Dell leasing equipment?

I have a feeling that Expeditors doesn't employ the most trustworthy people, but DFS has so far also not proven themselves to be any better. They often didn't even inform us that devices were apparently missing and just continued the leases. I had to kick up a giant fuss at the start of the year because they confirmed they had closed the contracts but then didn't and kept on billing us for another year after (because it took them another 6 months for resolution after I contacted them about it).

We had switched to Lenovo in the meantime but for the last contract Dell's offer was unbeatable and now we are back with the devil.

I am exhausted.



https://redd.it/1okw5m5
@r_systemadmin