i feel like chatgpt is shrinking my skills

Before when I had to run that one basic task/command/noscripting thing I didn't fully remember I would have to either: google it, dabble thru man pages/help commands, get grilled on an IRC server/stack overflow by some elitist. And then burn that shit into my memory.


Now I just chatgpt it, ezpz no grilling. But also if I have to write an entire noscript that I KNOW how to write it correctly(given enough time and patience) I'll just hand it off to chatgpt.

https://redd.it/1paya84
@r_systemadmin

Domain controller upgrade

Hi, I currently have a few domain controllers running on Windows Server 2016. I want to upgrade them to Windows Server 2022 using new hardware and then retire the old servers. All of the domain controllers are in the same domain and within a single forest. What would be a reasonable cost for an MSP to handle this upgrade?

https://redd.it/1pb16vp
@r_systemadmin

How do you know if you have too much work ?

For context, I accepted a new job after months of difficult searching. I didn't really have a choice, so I took this Level 2 Helpdesk Technician job with some sysadmin and IT Project Manager responsibilities at a startup (a kind of modern MSP).

This is quite important, so I'll spell it out here: it's chat support, and we're contractually required to respond to every message within 10 minutes, which means that even while we're working on something else, we have to respond to messages at the same time.

There are two of us in this job, and between us we have about a hundred tickets (which is more than at Level 1), quite a few projects on the go, and a bunch of other stuff to do (procedures, different configurations for our clients, helping Level 1 support).

Recently, things have started to go pretty badly. I've lost quality in my daily work with all this flow to manage, and I can feel that it's starting to annoy my superiors.

I talked to my superiors about it, and they confirmed that there is a lot of work to be done, but “it's that time of year, it's normal, we're not going to hire a third person.”

How do you know if you have too much work, and how have you dealt with it ?

https://redd.it/1pb69pk
@r_systemadmin

Building a family Cloud Storage on JioFiber: How to bypass NAT for remote access?

Hi all,

I am in the process of building a personal cloud for my family using NextCloud. The main objective is to have a centralized place where everyone's mobile photos and videos automatically sync (mirroring Google Photos).

The Challenge: I am on a JioFiber connection, which puts me behind a double NAT/CGNAT. I had previously set up the LAN for single-user personal use, but now I need to open it up for remote access for the rest of the family.

Current Setup:

Storage: 1TB Primary Drive + 1TB Mirror Backup (RAID 1).
ISP: JioFiber (Wired).

Has anyone successfully set up a stable remote connection on Jio without a static IP? I am looking for the most reliable method to get around the port forwarding restrictions so the sync works seamlessly for my family.

Thanks in advance!

https://redd.it/1pb77s1
@r_systemadmin

AI drafted support tickets: Curse or blessing?

I honestly don't know where to stand on this one. The uptick in support requests that are clearly AI drafted is increasing steadily.

Pros: Legible.

Cons: A five paragraph word salad that either mentions the core issue in the opening line, or just wastes 10 minutes of my life while I try to unfuck whatever the user is trying to explain. With emoji-sirens.

Thoughts?

https://redd.it/1pb51xp
@r_systemadmin

December Microsoft 365 Changes: Quick Updates Roundup!

That was a busy November, right - where you started diving into all those Ignite updates! From Baseline Security Mode and Work IQ to Agent 365, the new Intune Agents, and the latest from Entra Internet Access, there was a lot to take in.

And now that we’ve officially stepped into December, let’s walk through what’s coming your way this month so you can plan smoothly.

In the Spotlight:

Tenant-owned Team Impersonation in Teams\- Teams will enhance security by expanding impersonation detection from brand-focused checks to include tenant-owned domain impersonation.
Retirement of Mailbox Audit Cmdlets \- The Search-MailboxAuditLog and New-MailboxAuditLogSearch cmdlets will retire by late December 2025. Admins must transition to Search-UnifiedAuditLog for audit searches.
Improved Identity Alert Precision in Defender XDR \- Microsoft will provide finer control over Entra ID Protection alert ingestion, letting admins choose whether to pull in only High-risk, High + Medium-risk, or all detections.

Here’s a quick overview of what’s coming:

Retirements: 6
New Features: 10
Enhancements: 7
Functionality Changes: 3
Action Required: 2

Retirements:

Microsoft will retire the Favorite Contacts feature in early December 2025, standardizing contact behavior across Microsoft 365 using the more accurate Frequent Contacts intelligence model.
The App Skills feature in Copilot for Excel, which provided automated insights inside spreadsheets, will be retired, as Microsoft shifts toward newer Copilot-driven experiences.
The TeamworkDevice (beta) API used to manage Windows-based room devices through Microsoft Graph will be retired, requiring admins to transition to newer device management APIs.
PowerPoint will discontinue the Reuse Slides feature on Windows and Mac, encouraging users to adopt modern content reuse and collaboration workflows.
Teams support for Android 8 devices will fully end by late December 2025, including all security updates and bug fixes.
For Viva Connections modernization, the Assignments and Courses ACEs and associated SharePoint dashboard web parts for Education tenants will be retired.

New Features:

Purview Data Lifecycle Management will introduce Priority Cleanup, allowing admins to override existing retention or legal hold settings to delete OneDrive and SharePoint content when necessary.
Teams presence will become more accurate by evaluating full device activity, ensuring users stay “Available” even when only the Teams tab is inactive.
Data Security Investigations will gain improved cost visibility with a lightweight estimator and a detailed usage dashboard for better budget planning.
Teams will automatically detect and set user work locations when devices connect to corporate Wi-Fi networks.
Purview IRM will integrate with DSI, allowing admins to initiate pre-scoped investigations directly from IRM cases for faster response to risky activities.
Backup-related events like policy updates, backup triggers, and restore operations will be captured in monitoring logs for better audit visibility.
DLP email notifications will soon let users take corrective actions such as stopping file sharing or deleting files directly from the notification.
The new Outlook for Windows will support seamless import of .pst files into user mailboxes, simplifying migrations and data recovery.
The ChatGPT Enterprise Connector will be added to the Purview Compliance Portal, enabling auditing and retention of prompts and responses generated through organizational ChatGPT use.
Purview eDiscovery (Premium) will support importing and reviewing non-Microsoft 365 data sources alongside traditional M365 content.

Enhancements:

Parent sensitivity labels will be replaced with Label Groupings, offering clearer classification while ensuring users assign actual labels rather than grouped parent buckets.
Organizational Messages will begin supporting Entra ID Hybrid-joined devices, expanding

message reach across mixed environments.
Purview Insider Risk Management limits will expand significantly: Variants per indicator: 3 → 10; Total variants: 100 → 400; Detection group items: 200 → 500
IRM policies will allow multiple DLP policies to act as triggers, enabling broader and more accurate risk detection scenarios.
Exchange Online GCC High and DoD tenants will gain inbound SMTP DANE with DNSSEC, improving email authentication and security.
The Microsoft 365 Backup service will roll out to GCC environments starting December 2025.
Microsoft Planner will receive Data Lifecycle Management support, allowing retention policies to protect Planner tasks and related content.

Existing Functionality changes:

The Teams app usage report will be replaced with the Integrated Apps usage report, offering a redesigned layout with improved charts and actionable usage insights.
Microsoft Intune network endpoints will move to Azure Front Door IPs. Tenants using firewall allowlists including those relying on Basic Mobility and Security must update them.
SharePoint agent usage reporting will shift from per-site views to a unified tenant-wide report, simplifying insight gathering for admins.

Action Needed:

Managed connectors for syncing UKG and Blue Yonder data into Teams Shifts will retire on December 7, 2025. Organizations must build custom integrations to maintain data sync.
The Visio Data Visualizer add-in will be removed from Excel on December 8, 2025. Admins should disable the add-in and instruct users to save diagrams locally as .vsdx files.

Act now to stay ahead and ensure these updates don't impact you!

https://redd.it/1pb9hdc
@r_systemadmin

Suspicious of new co-worker

I work fully remotely for a company based in the UK. We primarily work in both the UK and US with the odd worker scattered around other countries. If they work from these other countries they need explicit permission to do so.

The new worker supposedly works from Texas and appears to be a US employee. But I've seen quite a few red flags and I wonder if anyone has seen anything similar or what to do in this situation.

His LinkedIn doesn't make any sense. He supposedly worked as a technical architect over 10 years ago but now works in a more junior role. He has no links to any of his certifications on his LinkedIn. His last company was based on the "US" but when I went to check on the employees they were all based in Africa. His first few companies that he worked for are from Nigeria too.

His English isn't great either and it takes him a long time to say what he needs to say. He's supposedly very knowledgeable in devops but it's been 6 weeks and I've barely seen him do anything.

So I obviously had my suspicions and I have access to our logs which shows login location and IP. He has two IP's which he uses to login which are based in Boston and Texas. But when I look the IP's up they are both VPN's. This seems highly suspicious to me because that would mean he's using a VPN on his router and not his actual ISP IP.

Has anyone had anything similar? Is it worth worrying about?

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

Suggestions for alternative PDF-Tool?

We're running a Remote Desktop Services environment where we previously used a licensed Adobe PDF Reader. After migrating to Windows Server 2022, it seems that version is no longer supported. Adobe's new licensing model for Acrobat/Reader looks pretty terrible to me, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

We have around 60 users working directly in the RDS environment, and I'm looking for a solid alternative that can handle opening, merging, and ideally some light PDF editing.

Does anyone have reliable recommendations?

https://redd.it/1pb8fq8
@r_systemadmin

FreshService down?

I saw the UI update but I doubt it is the reason why.

https://redd.it/1pbd8cq
@r_systemadmin

Why is Microsoft documentation always accurate until you actually try to use it

Every time I troubleshoot something in M365 or Azure I start with the docs.

And for the first 30 seconds everything looks perfect.



Then I try to follow the steps.

Half the screenshots are from old portals.

Buttons are in different places.

Settings moved last week.

The important part is hidden behind a “See more” link.

And the feature behaves nothing like the example.



Feels like the docs are written by a version of Microsoft that does not exist in reality.



Is this just my luck or does everyone else hit the same wall?

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

Why are a lot of IT companies suddenly starting to push Hourly consulting roles

Why do companies feel the need to hire on an hourly basis and pay you less than 40 hours per week? Is it on prerequisite knowing that they can have you work overtime on overnight shifts? I want to know the reason for this shift

https://redd.it/1pbcka1
@r_systemadmin

How does your company handle on-call compensation?

I know this question gets asked every once in a while, but I feel like it's always good to have fresh input from folks.

The place I'm at currently is pressuring me to join the on-call rotation (something that, when I was originally hired, was exclusively handled by a different team).

The compensation for being on-call is as follows:

- No standby pay (no pay for simply being on-call)
- Only paid for calls that come in that result in work (i.e. if I get called at 2am, but the client declines the afterhours cost, no remuneration)
- With the current number of people in the rotation, it would be once every 12 weeks or so.

I'm inclined to decline it, mostly due to the no standby pay. I dislike the idea of putting portions of my personal life on hold on the off chance someone does call in, and not getting compensated for that. I'm curious what the common standard is currently for being on-call.


EDIT: In response to some of the answers already - I am salary, but would get no comp time unless the call was excessively long, i.e. no leaving early if I started my day early due to a call.

https://redd.it/1pbf49u
@r_systemadmin

Anyone Actually Tracking DORA Metrics in Their Org? Worth the Effort?

I keep hearing about DORA metrics lately (deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, change failure rate) and how they’re supposed to help teams measure “DevOps performance.”



We’ve got a decent CI/CD setup and some monitoring, but none of this data lives in one place. Management keeps asking if we can start tracking the DORA metric stuff, but I’m not sure if it’s actually useful or just another vanity dashboard.



For those of you who’ve done it, did it make any real difference? How hard was it to set up? We’re mostly Kubernetes + GitLab + Grafana right now.





https://redd.it/1pbi2zx
@r_systemadmin

CSAM - What do I do?

England.

Hi 😕.

I work for a small MSP (5 of us, I'm the most senior under the owner, but most decisions are made by him). One of our clients have a specific software that is installed on the users profile. There was a new PC delivered, we removed the password from the user yesterday as the vendor has specific, shitty requirements for them to install. I know this is bad, but it's not up to me. Either way, that's the not the point.

Today, I remoted in to ensure everything was good and put the password back on etc. I saw in the chrome history searches for CSAM overnight. It looks like chrome had been signed into a non work Gmail as well, and was syncing the history. The history was full of similar stuff. It's important to note that it was mainly searches etc, and very little evidence of the user actually having found what he was looking for. I was very thrown and escalated it to my CEO. After a bit, he got back to me and said it's none of our business and to ignore it and move on.

Any advice? It does not sit right with me as unfortunately I know a few people that where abused as kids so it's personal to me to ensure pedophiles are punished. However I'm not sure where to go from here? I do not want to go the police as I'm pretty sure the evidence will be gone by then.



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

Ram rant...

Just a rant on how ridiculous the price hike on RAM... I ordered 128GB of DDR5 6400 for $593.59/USD on 11/10/2025. Checked it out today(12/01/2025) for another build I need to create for a specialized PC for one of my design departments. Now it's priced at $1,484.99/USD. Absolutely unreal and sad.


I can't even imagine what Dell and Synology are going to charge me for the new servers and NAS's I need for my near future upgrades... The RAM price for upgrading is going to drive me through the roof.

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

What temperature is your server room?

What it says on the tin. We have a mildly spacious office-turned-server-room that's about 15x15 with one full rack and one half-rack of equipment and one rack of cabling. I'd like to keep it at 72, but due to not having dedicated HVAC, this is not always possible.

I'm looking for other data points to support needing dedicated air. What's your situation like?

https://redd.it/1pbiw10
@r_systemadmin

Best phishing simulation tools

We’re reviewing our internal security stack and one of the things on the list is tightening up how we handle phishing awareness. I know everyone has different environments, user bases and tolerance levels for “gotcha” tests, so I’m curious what’s actually worked for you in the real world.

What phishing simulation tools have you had good (or terrible) experiences with?
Did any of them actually change user behavior long-term, or did they just annoy people?
How important are things like automation, reporting or integrations with M365/GSuite in your setup?

Would love to hear what you’ve run into before we commit to anything.

https://redd.it/1pbql4m
@r_systemadmin

The tech industry is dead and Wall Street is feasting on its carcass

Have you noticed how every path into the middle class mysteriously disappears the moment regular people start using it? IT was one of the last ladders that truly anyone could still climb. You could learn the craft, bust ass, build a career, and maybe even build some wealth for yourself and your kids. And right on schedule, Wall Street showed up, smelled money in a place they didn’t control, and tore the whole ladder off the wall.

They didn’t misunderstand what they were doing (they never do). They saw an industry that actually innovated, an industry run by people who understood their tools and did things differently, efficiently, focused on merit. And they reacted like the parasites that they are. Hijack it. Drain it. While they walk off with the cash.

Then, along comes AI. Not as an actual revolution. Not as anything real. Just a prop. A lights-and-smoke financial trick to tell investors. A magic word that lets executives fire whole teams while saying they are “innovating.” And the sad part is they believe it. They honestly think hype is worth more than working systems. They think a slide deck about “AI transformation” contributes more value to a company than the engineer who actually knows how the systems fit together.

Remote work made the whole thing worse. I love working remotely too, but let’s tell the truth: remote work gutted the entire junior pipeline. You cannot train a new generation of engineers through Slack and Jira. You cannot replace the moment a senior looks over and says, “Stop. Don’t do that.” That is where people learned this job. That is where skill was built. Those moments are gone. Seniors kept the comfort. Juniors got pink slips, replaced with chatbots.

Leadership decided mentorship was too expensive and hand-waved it away because AI was supposed to fill the gap. Spoiler: it won’t. And in a few years, when the remaining seniors are burned out or laid off, there won’t be anyone left who actually knows how to run the infrastructure that by the way holds the modern world together.

Which brings us to the MBA and PE geniuses who think they run this industry. These are people who reboot their laptop by yanking the power cable out, but somehow they believe they should redesign global infrastructure. They talk in buzzwords which they barely understand. They buy whatever SaaS vendor has the shiniest marketing. They strip out whole infra teams and call it “efficiency.” They replace everything with contractors and chatbots and then congratulate themselves for “disruption.”

Meanwhile the actual systems, the ones running entire economies, are held together with baling wire, duct tape, and tribal knowledge. Cloudflare knocks out a third of the internet for an hour and everyone acts surprised. Surprised? You could see this coming a mile away. This is what happens when you fire the people who know how anything works and hand the keys to people who think uptime is something that comes from a SLA some sleezy account exec sold you.

There is only one way this ends. Failure. Real failure. Not a red light on a dashboard. Widespread, grinding collapse in the companies and industries that have been hollowed out for short term profit. And the people who caused it will do what they always do. Cash their checks. Blame the people they replaced. Walk away untouched.

When it finally hits (and it will), remember who's responsible. Remember who took an innovative working industry and fed it to private equity vultures to be feasted on. Remember who profited. I'm talking about the investors and boards who bought thriving startups, promising to nurture and mature them, only to force feed them to flesh eating zombies. They made out like bandits, with the generational wealth that belongs to the people whose blood sweat and tears built this industry.

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

Who's about to have an end-of-year change freeze?

Starts next week and I can't wait. Everyone else in the company will be on vacation and just a skeleton crew for most departments until mid January. So sick of Friday night deployments where we basically roll the dice on if the latest enhancements will work then spend all weekend troubleshooting. Only time of year I get to relax!

https://redd.it/1pbyx33
@r_systemadmin

Question for the mods: what's acceptable?

I made a post this afternoon about the state of the IT industry. I am critical of remote work, which was a secondary point to my post. My primary criticism is of Wall Street influence. I am also critical of Private Equity influence. But secondary mentions of remote work seems to have been a bridge too far.

My post was removed. Messaging the mods was blocked via primary means. One mod replied via chat but my other attempts to engage were met with alerts "no DMs accepted - from you". I appreciate that this is a ultimately a private message board. I also appreciate that I critiqued remote work, which is extremely controversial amongst a majority of /r/sysadmin subscribers. Y'all have strong opinions and I salute you for defending them.

But I broke no rules. I was polite and thoughtful in my replies. And yet, the thread was removed, and the mods radio silent, nonetheless. Simply for discussing a professional opinion, informed by decades in the industry, which seemingly doesn't align with the mods' preferences.

I had a net 400 upvotes in an hour. 80% upvoted. Removed.

Absent any other explanation, this is obvious and apparent narrative control. Anyone who doesn't regurgitate the /r/sysadmin party line that remote work is better than in person: boom, banned, ignored. Silenced.

If you're pro remote work and anti free expression and debate, today is a great day for you. If you believe that robust debate makes us stronger, well, this is evidently not the sub for you.

So how long do you think it will be before this thread is locked by the gestapo? FWIW they truly do believe they're doing the right thing, stifling discussions!

https://redd.it/1pc03nz
@r_systemadmin