Have we hit rock bottom for tech support yet?

I don't know if this is just me getting old. But I feel like the standard for tech support is at an all time low at the moment.

Over the past year I've had to raise cases with vendors & manufacturers & it just gets more & more painful. It seems that we've gone from

support being generally good > support being generally bad > lucky if support even know about the product > lucky if support will even attempt to address the issue insead of asking you to re-raise with another team.

Naming & shaming a few:

Microsoft (obviously): Like most IT operations worldwide, we use more than 1 MS product. Sometimes we use (wait for it....) more than 1 MS product at a time. But good luck raising a case with MS. As soon as they find out your using another MS product, or even the same product but a different version. Case closed, please do the needful & re-raise.

& yes that's with the top tier MS support.

Broadcom: It used to be the case that VMWare support was helpful. Now, the general level of knowledge on the support teams is shocking. Getting answers to basic questions can take weeks in some cases.

Cisco: I have an account issue with Cisco. 2 transfers later I'm still not with the 'right' team that can help me.

MSI: Personal one this time. Bought a new monitor last year & it's already broken with a failed LED. Product is under warranty but MSI won't repair because I don't have the origional box the monitor came in...

I know we're in an 'expensive IT' era where tech firms are slashing costs to compete on AI. Or maybe it's just because so many of these firms are quasi-monopolies.

But surely it can't get any worse?

Right....

https://redd.it/1pdxp69
@r_systemadmin

Cold calls are one thing. Unsolicited meeting invites are a whole new level of unacceptable.

I'm having to clear multiple pending appointments from my calendar every week because these shitbirds think it's acceptable to just send unsolicited meeting invitations.

Christ, I hate salespeople...

Rant over.

https://redd.it/1pdz65u
@r_systemadmin

Just got my cease & desist letter from Broadcom

Title. Small manufacturing company with an on prem setup & 6 vms. We are about done swapping over to hyper v, the Broadcom quote for a 1 year renewal for us was 25k, three years ago we renewed for 5k, absolutely crazy. Luckily I knew ahead of time the quote was going to be outrageous thanks to other posts in this sub, now to finish the upgrade before the 10 day deadline. Happy Thursday!

https://redd.it/1pe06o8
@r_systemadmin

Proxmox Datacenter Manager in stable version 1.0 available

« Proxmox Datacenter Manager is an open-source, centralized management solution to oversee and manage multiple, independent Proxmox-based environments. It provides an aggregated view of all your connected nodes and clusters and is designed to manage complex and distributed infrastructures, from local installations to globally scaled data centers. With multi-cluster management it enables management like live migrations of virtual guests without any cluster network requirements. »

Announcement post : https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-datacenter-manager-1-0-stable.177321/
Release notes : https://pdm.proxmox.com/docs/roadmap.html#proxmox-datacenter-manager-1-0

https://redd.it/1pe10v0
@r_systemadmin

Phishing simulations helping ?? harming, or just annoying people?

We all know why they exist ...phishing is exploding, and no tool can catch everything.
But in real life? Some teams say simulations actually help. Others say they just frustrate people and break trust.....and there’s no decrease in click rates.

What’s your experience? Helpful, harmful… or just annoying?



https://redd.it/1pe25zc
@r_systemadmin

Microsoft being... not cheap??

Advancing Microsoft 365: New capabilities and pricing update | Microsoft 365 Blog

Am I reading this right, that they're now going to include some of the InTune suite capabilities as part of the M365 E5 licenses? Remote app, enterprise app management etc.? Has anyone had experience with those add-ons? The pricing for them previously was extortionate compared to 3rd party options.

https://redd.it/1pe3r94
@r_systemadmin

Does the “I feel dumb every day” phase ever end?

Looking for perspective - posting on a throwaway account for obvious reasons.

I’ve been in a new sysadmin role for a bit, working on a big project I’ve been labbing and POC testing for several months. The tech is somewhat interesting, but I’m realizing I don’t think I enjoy the work of actually building things. My previous job was mostly analyzing and monitoring. This one is all about building, architecting, and being responsible when something breaks, and I’ve been having a hard time with that transition.

I know I’m in a good situation and many on here would kill for problems like I have. I also know I can’t just shift careers and make the same amount, which adds even more pressure.

The part I’m struggling with most is that I want to be competent and confident, but the path to get there feels overwhelming. I feel dumb every day. It’s always “why won’t this box talk to that box” or “why did this work just now and now it doesn’t.” The stress of being responsible for a large network makes it worse, and the frustration makes it hard to study, hard to learn, and hard to stay motivated.

I’ve realized that confidence doesn’t actually come first — confusion does — but sitting in that confusion and frustration day after day is incredibly draining. I keep telling myself that growth is supposed to feel uncomfortable and that maybe the only way out is through, but right now it just feels like I’m constantly behind everyone else. The voice in my head tells me that they're regretting hiring me.

I don’t really click with my boss either, which adds its own layer of stress - I don't feel supported and left on my own.

I know this might sound like whining, but I’m genuinely looking for perspective or encouragement from people who’ve been in this spot. Did you go through this phase and eventually grow into the role? Did the constant “I feel dumb” feeling ever ease up? Did moving from monitoring to building click eventually? Or did you realize the work just wasn’t a good fit?

I’m trying to figure out whether this is normal growing pain or if I should be rethinking my path before I burn myself out.

Any insight/encouragement would really help right now.

https://redd.it/1pe3zl0
@r_systemadmin

A coworker died yesterday. There's an important lesson that some need to hear.

Yesterday, the company sent out an email announcing that Bill, who had been with the company 20 years, had passed away suddenly. Everyone liked Bill. He was one of those genuinely good people.

Today (the very next day), we had our annual catered lunch. The entire staff was there. And not a single word was said about Bill. No moment of silence. No acknowledgment at all. For 20 years this dude had been there, and everyone just went on with their day, eating and chatting like nothing had happened. Like the guy never existed.

We spend 40 hours a week with our coworkers, that’s more time than many of us spend with our own families. And I want to be clear: I like where I work. It’s a great place. The pay is good, and the people are solid. Truly.

But this really drove something home for me. As the holidays come up, management LOVES to pile on projects for IT on these days when everyone is gone, system upgrades, network changes, “quick” maintenance windows. And I say fuck. that. noise.

No one will remember you swapping a phone system on New Year’s or replacing a UPS on Christmas Eve. But your family will sure as shit remember you not being there. And if you die suddenly on a Monday, odds are your coworkers will have moved on by Wednesday.

Say no. Stand your ground. Protect your time. Be with your family.

https://redd.it/1pe971k
@r_systemadmin

What tools did you use to automate onboarding?

Onboarding for us, and some of you I’m sure, is a very annoying, labor-intensive process, all because there is very little automation.

For the past year as a back-burner side project, I’ve been gathering requirements from each department that touches the new hire process in any way.

At this point, I’m just blind to my options because I’ve never done this before in my career. In my research, I am considering Power Automate and set up as may triggers and dependencies as I can, and leave certain things to manual process, but other than that, I have no direction or knowledge of the COTS solutions out there.

What do you do for onboarding? I’m not looking for what happens during your personal business process. I’m asking specifically about what tools and solutions worked for you in your org? Hoping to get some traction and places to look.

https://redd.it/1pe09dz
@r_systemadmin

Sys admin sucks update

Prev post

I was going to post this update sooner as I recently walked out one day due to harrassment.

This rant will include things that I have heard or that a colleague has heard.

storage of plaintext passwords for crucial staff members

you require AD to run a simulated phishing campaign through email

Scripting is not allowed as it'll automate us out of a job. "Scripting isn't allowed because there's no way to know if it worked." (I noscript anyways)

It isn't possible to have a netlogon noscript not include their password in plaintext

"You can't be expecting these changes to happen right away it takes time" you've been working on AD for how long? there is no progress.

in my interpretation, privacy law violations. (plaintext passwords)

no longer required to use 2/3 of the programs I described in my last post

So far I've heard an IT guy at another organization receive more on the job training from the sysadmin than I have (not that I want to learn anything from this guy anyways)

One of my colleagues set up AD for one of our departments and the sysadmin convinced a higher up that we "weren't ready" for AD and then he got paid overtime to delete the entire server and rebuild it from scratch with local accounts.

There was a day where he had a 30 minute rant about AI hacking your pc and uploading everything if you use it once (chatgpt, copilot)

"Hackers are in the cloud, so we don't recommend storing anything there."

If you get "hacked" through your email on a work laptop you have to let him wipe your personal phone if you at any point logged into your email on your phone or if you even use teams.

He does not wipe work laptops when they've been infected, just runs virus scans.

I'm just collecting a paycheck at this point and have mentally checked out. There is still so much more but this is more of the current stuff.

https://redd.it/1pe6291
@r_systemadmin

Replace Server 2008 DC with Server 2025?

EDIT: Great news! We convinced the customer to terminate the old domain with extreme prejudice and just create a new one. Every single employee was a domain admin on the old domain and there were tons of other problems with it. Win-win.

Am I fucked? Everything I'm seeing says I literally have to install a temporary 2012 server first.

The 2025 server won't promote because the forest functional level is too low. The 2008 functional level says it is as high as it can be.

Do I really have to do a temporary server?

edit: because I have a tiny amount of pride, this is a customer. I've done some stupid shit, but I take zero responsibility for having a 17 year old DC.

https://redd.it/1pe8955
@r_systemadmin

Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 end of support Nov 30 – new signed PDFs already broken, need cheap 2024 perpetual / term license alternatives fast

Inbox on Dec 2nd ruined my week.

380 seats of legit Acrobat Pro 2020 we bought outright back in 2020.
Adobe email hits: “EOS Nov 30 2025, your installs no longer validate ISO 32000-2 signatures. New signed docs already show validation errors.”

Every single contract or invoice we get now opens with the giant yellow “SIGNATURE VALIDITY UNKNOWN” banner. Legal is losing their minds, compliance audits looming.

Adobe quote to stay legal:

$72k one-time for 2024 3-year term licenses
or $90k+ yearly subnoscription forever

Foxit pilot was a disaster, redaction sucks.

Anyone found a real volume reseller still moving cheap Acrobat Pro 2024 term / perpetual licenses with proper CLP paperwork? Or are we all just getting forced into the subnoscription hell at this point?

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

NSF I-Corps research: What are the biggest pain points in managing GPU clusters or thermal issues in server rooms?

I’m an engineering student at Purdue doing NSF I-Corps interviews.

If you work with GPU clusters, HPC, ML training infrastructure, small server rooms, or on-prem racks, what are the most frustrating issues you deal with?
Specifically interested in:

• hotspots or poor airflow
• unpredictable thermal throttling
• lack of granular inlet/outlet temperature visibility
• GPU utilization drops
• scheduling or queueing inefficiencies
• cooling that doesn’t match dynamic workload changes
• failures you only catch reactively

What’s the real bottleneck that wastes time, performance, or money?

https://redd.it/1pem1yl
@r_systemadmin

Does anyone else feel like they can't predict how long anything will take anymore?

And how are you dealing with this in terms of setting expectations/SLAs with clients or end-users and not constantly feeling like you can't make even minor guarantees/promises about providing a reasonable level of service?

I keep having situations where the same tasks, projects or issues vary wildly in their turnaround/TTR simply due to stupid, unpredictable, inexplicable sh*t like:

Progress bars getting hung for no reason or the same compute tasks on the same hardware just magically varying in completion times because the devil inside the silicon knows you're in a rush so fuck you and your weekend plans
Downloads taking way longer to complete than normal
Servers being unresponsive/busier than usual, again for no obvious reason
Random service provider/SaaS outages or service incidents that prevent timely access to urgently-needed resources and platforms
Never-before-seen error messages, bugs or crashes in the middle of something you've completed 1,000 times before without issue
Major players like Microsoft/Amazon constantly making rug-pull-stealth-changes to major parts of their ecosystems, core services and UIs that you never see coming until you're frantically trying to do something you've confidently done many times before (like I don't know... logging into a portal) and now you're confidently flailing aimlessly until you submit to relearning their processes for the 1,000th time.

It's these kind of side-tracking bullsh*t detours in the middle of already insane workloads and razor-thin deadlines that I can never find a good workaround/Plan B for.

Am I supposed to be operating triple redundant workflows and processes like I'm flying an airliner or something?

Or is the answer supposed to be that I start every single planned piece of work days in advance of when I normally do, even though that is obviously impossible most of the time?

I feel like I just end up delivering everything a day late and a dollar short because of circumstances that are largely out of my control but that still reflect poorly on me because clients and end-users don't realize all of the complicated, moving pieces at play in performing task X or fixing problem Y.

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

Cloudflare down again?

Can't reach anything cloudflare-hosted from Sweden right now.

https://redd.it/1peq658
@r_systemadmin

Weekly 'I made a useful thing' Thread - December 05, 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/1per9qg
@r_systemadmin

Cloudflare is down again. Two outages in two weeks. Anyone else concerned about the dependency chain here?

Cloudflare is having issues again today and it feels like a repeat of what happened two weeks ago. Same pattern. Perplexity stalls, Claude stalls, auth flows stop responding, and random internal tools start throwing cryptic errors until someone checks the status page.

Two outages in this short a window really highlight how much of our infra hangs off a single external point. It is not just websites that stop loading. It is SSO, API calls, AI platforms, monitoring dashboards and even internal automations that have nothing to do with Cloudflare on paper.

I am curious what the sysadmin community thinks. Is this just the reality of relying on massive edge providers, or are we getting too comfortable with architectural bottlenecks that fail in unpredictable ways? Are any of you actually planning around this or is it just accepted cost of doing business now?

https://redd.it/1peqk0l
@r_systemadmin

Which is the Best EML to PST Converter For 2026?

I am looking for reliable and best EML to PST Converter, which can easily convert bulk EML files to PST as I am in trading firm so get wide range of EML files from small to large sized EML file. I want to access or import EML files to Outlook PST format. That's why, I need a reliable solution.

My recommendation are simple, the tool can easily convert large number of EML files into PST format without losing any data. I have thousands of EML files collected from different email clients so it should be able to handle batch conversion smoothly.

The tool should also maintains the original folder structure, preserves email metadata, and keeps attachments intact throughout the process. The tool must offer simple user-friendly interface and support to Windows and Outlook versions.

Recommend a professional EML to PST converter for bulk migration

https://redd.it/1pes12h
@r_systemadmin

I think its time to look Cloudflare alternatives.

The Cloudflare centralization risk is no longer theoretical. It’s time to talk about "Eggs in One Basket."
We are watching half the internet go dark again today (Dec 5), barely a few weeks after the November 18th outage.
20% of the web went down because of a single bug in their Bot Management logic that "failed closed." When a single vendor's feature update can inadvertently wipe out that much traffic globally, we have reached a dangerous level of centralization.
we talk about high availability and redundancy for our own stacks, yet we are routing everything through a single proxy that is becoming a SPOF for the entire internet.


https://redd.it/1per48w
@r_systemadmin

Cloudflare down again?

Is Cloudflare down again? Started receiving a lot of "500 Internal Server Error cloudflare" error messages now on various websites.

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

Cloudflare outage now in status page

From https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/

'These issues do not affect the serving of cached files via the Cloudflare CDN'


... I think they do

EDIT: That line has already been removed from the status page

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