If you are my coworker in IT, any Non-Critical troubleshooting calls stop at 4:30 on Fridays.

If you ask to have a troubleshooting call with me 4:30 on a Friday the Answer is No. You had all week or at minimum all day. Its one thing if its for a VP or if we were already on a call since 3:30 or 4. I'm not gonna cut you off at 4:30. But if its not a P1 or P2 and you just want to solve your curiosity about something, it can wait til Monday. Especially on Halloween night.

Had our security guy ask to have a call with me at 4:30 today, on Halloween night of all nights. I have a 2 year old who can't stay up past 8 and its dark by 7 anyways. That gave us like 1.5-2 hours at most to do any trick or treating with her.

So no I am not going to have a troubleshooting call with you when you had literally all week to have a call with me or at minimum anytime today before 4:30p.

/Rant

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

OE: 2 IT Jobs

Been in IT for over 10 years now.
Just started my over-employed journey 2 months ago. Only IT person at both startups without MSPs.

Job 1: Hybrid / Senior IT Engineer
220 Users / 5 Countries

Job 2 / Hybrid / IT Manager
125 Users / 2 Countries

Similar stack in both:
Okta
Kandji
Google
Etc…

It’s been pretty great so far. I was able to revamp IT departments in both locations. Automation high and tickets low. Not for everyone but decided to share if you’re thinking about OE. Worth it.




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

Is the Australian IT market good for Systems Administrators?

Hey All !

I am from New Zealand and have roughly 15 years of experience in IT Systems Administration mainly within the Wintel space ( windows server, VMware, entra ID, AD ) you know the jazz.

The job market here is horrible and I was wondering how the Australian IT job market is ? Especially for Senior Systems Administrators ?

I have been unemployed for 6 months now !

https://redd.it/1ol9rsg
@r_systemadmin

Azure Entra SOA Experiences

Hey all,

We’re looking at piloting Azure Entra’s new Source of Authority (SOA) conversion feature and wanted to hear from anyone who’s already tried it.
For those unfamiliar: it’s the feature that lets you transfer user/group management from on-prem AD to Entra ID without deleting and recreating objects.

It uses the isCloudManaged attribute to tell sync tools to stop syncing specific objects while maintaining identities and relationships.

Specifically curious about:
• How smooth was the actual conversion process? Any gotchas?
• Did you run into issues with on-prem app access after conversion?
• How are you handling Kerberos-based applications? (Application Proxy, Cloud Kerberos Trust, or something else?)
• Any problems with group provisioning back to AD after conversion?
• What’s your device situation? (Entra joined, hybrid joined, etc.)
• Would you recommend it, or are there hidden pain points Microsoft’s docs don’t cover?

Our situation:
We’ve got a hybrid environment with mix of cloud and on-prem apps. Considering starting with a specific OU that has fewer legacy dependencies, but want to understand what we’re getting into before committing.
Appreciate any insights - both positive experiences and horror stories welcome!

Also interested in hearing if anyone’s hit the universal group limitation or had issues with nested groups during conversion, or issues with legacy on-premises APPs.

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

How do we hide wifi password - is there a GPO or registry entry or tenant setting or MDM setting (not intune) ?

WARNING... 'manage known' now has a very prominent "show" password button :( with a QR code even.

Cue the abuse from personal phones and tablets. At least it was hidden away before. Would like for the MDM delivered wifi profiles to not allow seeing the password so easily.

https://redd.it/1olhvs5
@r_systemadmin

Windows Update simplified noscripts are going to cause so much confusion. Why was this approved?

1. Monthly or out-of-band security updates: Security Update (KB5034123) (26100.4747)

2. Monthly preview non-security updates: Preview Update (KB5062660) (26100.4770)

3. .NET Framework security updates: .NET Framework Security Update (KB5056579)

4. .NET Framework non-security updates: .NET Framework Preview Update (KB5056579)

5. Driver updates: Logitech Driver Update (123.331.1.0)

6. AI component updates: Phi Silica AI Component Update (KB5064650) (1.2507.793.0)

Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/simplified-windows-update-noscripts/4465287

How and why were these noscripts approved? Do they really know what admins expect?

https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/11/01/windows-11-update-names-got-simpler-drops-yyyy-mm-now-it-admins-are-going-mad/

Oct 25 optional patch (https://www.windowslatest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/New-Windows-Update-noscript.jpg) looks like an Insider Preview release.

I can't believe they went ahead with this move, and they're promising improvements after people called Microsoft's move dumb in the comments

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

IBM / Lenovo Storwize V3700 / SAS down

Hi zusammen,



wir stehen gerade etwas auf dem Schlauch und unser IT-Dienstleister auch, vielleicht hat jemand diesen Fehler schon mal gesehen.



Umgebung:



2x HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9



VMware ESXi/vCenter (vCenter lief als VM)



Storage: IBM / Lenovo Storwize V3700 (altes Storwize, heute ja Lenovo)



Anbindung der ESXi-Hosts an die V3700: direkt per SAS (kein FC, kein iSCSI)



Keine lokalen Platten in den DL380, ESXi bootet also vom Storage.



Fehlerbild (plötzlich mitten im Betrieb):



vCenter nicht mehr erreichbar



Wenn man direkt an die DL380 geht: „VMware Hypervisor Recovery – No hypervisor found.“

→ also Host findet sein ESXi nicht.



In der V3700-GUI: Alert „SAS-Host-Ports nicht aktiv“ auf beiden Nodes

→ bei den Hosts steht: Typ SAS, Status: Offline, angemeldete Hosts: 0

→ Management-GUI vom Storage geht aber ganz normal!



iLO auf beiden Servern erreichbar.



Was wir schon wissen:



Die Server haben keine lokalen Disks/SD, die haben wirklich vom Storage gebootet.



Wenn beide Server „No hypervisor found“ sagen und die V3700 gleichzeitig „SAS-Host-Ports nicht aktiv“ meldet, dann sieht das Storage schlicht keinen der beiden Hosts mehr.



Das spricht eher für: SAS-Strecke/Host-Ports am V3700 als für „ESXi kaputt“.



Kabel neu gesteckt → keine Besserung.





Fragen an euch:



Kennt jemand das Verhalten beim Storwize V3700, dass alle SAS-Host-Ports plötzlich „offline“ sind, Management aber geht?



Reicht da oft ein Node-/Canister-Reboot oder ist das eher „SAS-Teil vom Canister defekt → FRU tauschen“? Reboot hab ich schon gemacht ohne Erfolg.



Macht es Sinn, temporär per iSCSI an die V3700 zu gehen (ESXi lokal booten → iSCSI-Target → Datastore wieder da), oder übersehe ich da was?



Ist Lenovo aktuell der richtige Kontakt für dieses alte Storwize? (Gerät stammt noch aus „IBM“-Zeiten.)



Ziel:

Ich will eigentlich nur vCenter + Shares so schnell wie möglich wieder online haben – egal ob über SAS oder notfalls „langsam“ über LAN.



Danke 🙏

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

HP/Papercut Device Licenses

Greetings all,

We have Papercut and like 30 Xerox copiers. We are looking to add some HP printers we have that are capable of running Papercut, using a device license for it, to our Papercut setup.

Does anyone know how to get these device licenses? Is it a HP thing or a Papercut thing? I got quoted $950 for each printer from our vendor, but I’m wondering if I could get them another and hopefully cheaper way….

Thanks

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

How you track what would break if main cloud region goes down

We had a chat after the last AWS/Azure outage and honestly realized… none of us really know what would die if our primary region disappeared for a few hours.

We’ve got “multi-AZ everything”, backups, health checks, all the standard playbook stuff. But that’s still all inside one provider. Once you start asking “what if IAM or S3 or DNS in that region stops working?” it gets ugly fast.

Turns out half our “redundant” systems depend on the same control plane or managed service anyway. Even our monitoring stack isn’t as isolated as we thought.

Curious how other teams handle this:
• Do you actually simulate provider/region outages, or just hope it never happens?

• How do you figure out what’s truly single-point vs redundant?

• Anyone built good visibility around this without going full multi-cloud?

• Is your multi cloud really fail proof?


• And when something does go down, what’s the hardest part — detection, failover, or explaining it upstairs?

Not trying to start a multi-cloud debate — just wondering how others think about dependency risk in real life.


https://redd.it/1olu2rc
@r_systemadmin

VDI with VOIP Would you recommend?

Heya ,

Company wants to go in the direction of VDI but we have about 400 users who use Five9 Softphone daily. Also heavy use.


Five9 has been a nightmare - everyday there is a new issue or ticket created in our help desk to help a user with Five9 ( brower refresh errors , or not recognizing the softphone app). Inorder to save money being laptops my company is thinking of introducing VDI in the upcoming year.

I have concerns with reliability and call quality.

Anyone have experience with VDI and VOIP? Would you recommend ?

These will be loaded on thin clients.

https://redd.it/1olst2o
@r_systemadmin

SSH with pubkey accidentally left opened. Any issue?

I normally check the server security carefully, but finally made a mistake.

When I create servers in cloud, the firewall is enabled and only 443 is allowed, which I usually also manually remove. No allow rules, no incoming traffic. This is the default behavior in my provider.

I changed the cloud provider, and didn’t notice that the default behavior is different: if there are no rules in dashboard, it means everything is allowed by default. The UI is different. Somehow I didn’t catch it in my test.

On VM, ufw default is block all incoming except SSH. SSHD is configured correctly with a custom sshd_config to allow only public key authentication and nothing else.

I noticed the issue, and found tens of thousands of failed connection attempts. Logs on the same server show nothing was accepted other than with my public key and IP.

Is there any concern?

Should the server be deleted? It takes a lot of work.

**Update**

I also worry if some non-SSH services could bypass ufw. I know Docker could do it (not in my case). But I wonder if there could be any other services bypassing UFW via IPtables rules in a default installation of Ubuntu server (kept up to date)?

Obviously IPtables and logs could be checked. But if someone got in, they could erase traces left. The server doesn’t have anything super important, and is isolated, but malware could still potentially spread through HTTPS pages accessed (malicious javanoscript pushed to the viewers).

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

Why has system admnistrator pay gone down in Canada?

Before about a year ago, i was seeing regularly pay around 90k. Now all I see is 68k-75k and thats with 5 years of experience.

Is the market down or is this the new normal?

Im in the windows sysadmin environment (citrix, vmware, SolarWinds, windows)

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

Sandboxie plus error

I used to use sandboxie plus here and there and never used to have an issue with it, it would open up a web browser just fine. Lately though, when I go to open a web browser through it by right Clicking default box, then Run-> Standard applications -> default web browser (which for me is firefox), it gives me the following error:

procedure entry point pk11sdr_encryptwithmechanism could not be located in the DLL c:\\ProgramFiles\\Mozilla firefox\\xul.dll


I don't know why it would give me this error. Firefox opens up just fine outside of the sandbox.

https://redd.it/1om4jwm
@r_systemadmin

hyper-v instead vmware

hi

we have a standalone cluster with 8 hosts.

they don't have shared storage - each host have its owed local storage, of course no migration between the hosts..

today we are running vmware esxi, our license will expire next year

i consider hyper-v as replacement, all our servers-based windows server OS on this cluster

also, i consider proxmox as candidate..

https://redd.it/1olx3hn
@r_systemadmin

8TB spinner have been hovering around $150 for the last 7 years and I need someone to blame

Any researched takes on why I can't reasonably upgrade my array?

https://redd.it/1om9ei8
@r_systemadmin

MacM2 I can't open my chrome profile on debugger port anymore (since 4 months ago)

4 months ago when I opened an existing google chrome profile on a debugging port (9222), it worked (lsof -i :9222 in terminal returned the session json). Now when i run it, lsof -i :9222 returns nothing. Likewise, going to http://localhost:9222/json/version returns nothing. This means its not working.

However, when I open a new profile on this debugging port, it works. But I need it to latch on to the correct profile. Did something change since 4 months ago? Please help, I hope to find a way to reconnect my profile to a debugging port, not just any random profile. Example of opening a chrome profile on a debugger port (in mac terminal):

"/Applications/Google `Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google` Chrome" \
--remote-debugging-port=9222 \
--profile-directory="Profile 1" \
--no-default-browser-check

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

Keep failing/Upsetting Manager

I’m so sick of this. I keep messing up and feel like I’m being written up one week and then the next week commended for all the work I’m doing.

For example, this last week I got a notification that I needed to renew a few client secrets. So I went to notify the users who own the apps but then I got pulled away from the ticket and never followed up with them.

Come Sunday morning/Saturday night, (extremely unfortunate timing…) the secret expires and the platform is for reporting. So engineering flags me down and asks me to update the secret. I jump on it immediately and it’s resolved within 15 minutes.

I get a notification from my manager that he’s asked me several times to resolve this problem of secrets not being updated. I need it fixed by EOD Monday. With the slightly cryptic “We’ll discuss in our 1:1.”

Now I’ve been up all night stressed bc ugh, I messed up. I know it was my fault, and it was an issue and I am the single point of failure here but I can’t wrap my head around how to fix this/what I’m going to tell my manager on Monday.

Mind you I have tried to take care of this with our existing support system (that is implemented so terribly for internal use) — there’s a reoccurring ticket that comes up once a month for audits. But again, I just can’t keep up with the tickets, onboarding’s, device management all while trying to implement full on projects like a vpn, asset tracking solutions, third party patching and well cleaning up this god awful support system. Meanwhile I get 10-15 messages every morning in slack that are not put in as tickets. And I’m weary of even having the users use the ticketing platform because I know that it’s shitty and I can’t keep up on them.

I just feel overwhelmed and don’t know how to show it because I’m stuck using the crappy system. And it’s probably not even the platform but just the implementation. Anytime I try and change something I get a notification from our service team saying I broke something because they are using it too. I know I know I need to test first before pushing out, but I don’t have the time to fix the system in the first place. I’ve always had at least enough time to get my stuff documented, I just don’t feel like I can here due to my tooling.

Anyways, I know I need to fix the system, but I also need to fix my process. I have a feeling it’s definitely a culture fix and no tool will help with this but I can’t help but feel horrible when I make these mistakes.

I know I’m doing good work and am probably just tired because I was recently brought up by the leadership team for helping with multiple projects and moving things along. But omg why do I feel so helpless with the medial tasks that should be easy but take so much dang time.

Thanks for letting me get this out, it’s been a long fricken week.

https://redd.it/1omd495
@r_systemadmin

Endpoint Protection for Small Business with old machines

Hello,

We have 13 machines, some 7, one 8, a few 10, and a few 11. Plus a server 2016 for AD.

Our IT company no longer does IT stuff, so they won’t sell me a new Symantec license. I’m winging it at the moment. Unintentional sysadmin. Getting approval to spend money on anything tech is difficult.

We currently have Symantec endpoint security enterprise, but it expires in a week. It’s been busy, and I haven’t been able to shop around. I got a quote for Crowdstrike, which I was able to get approved, but now the company I got the quote from is ghosting me, so I can’t actually buy it. Their quote was cheaper than how much crowdstrike is on crowdstrike’s site, and I’m confused about the Falcon Sensor for Legacy systems thing for our one windows 8 machine. I need something that just works for older machines (if that exists).

What endpoint protection would you guys suggest for our out-of-date setup? I was authorized to spend about $700, so I need to come in under that.



https://redd.it/1ome6ie
@r_systemadmin

Storage Maintenance - Best Practices

Dear Friends,

I have a storage activity. We need to power it off and dismount it then repower it again.

I need to know the proper way/steps to do this activity as we have San switches and servers (all hyper-v).

My plan/steps are as follows:

First - Host Side:
1. Shut down all VMs in Hyper-V.
2. Shut down cluster in Hyper-V.
3. Take off-line storage disks in Hyper-V.
4. Shut down physical servers.

Second - San Switches:
Shut down san switches one by one.

Kindly share your thoughts.

https://redd.it/1omfg5b
@r_systemadmin

Is there a modern equivalent to the old relaxing Windows defrag?

Saw a post about the windows defrag emulator and got me thinking about how much I used to enjoy watching the damn thing while it actually did something worthwhile. Is there a modern equivalent where you’re actually getting work done but also enjoying just watching it?

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

No-IP down

The website www.noip.com is returning a 502 error, and domains are not begin resolved.

From what i've seen, it seems to have been down for 3-4 hours.

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