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

blue tally for 120-laptop youth nonprofit?

We are a small after-school youth nonprofit with about 12 staff, 160, 180 teens per semester, and roughly 120 laptops plus some tablets and a handful of desktops.

Right now all device tracking is in one Google Sheet I inherited. It is… messy. I have been looking at moving to an actual IT asset management tool instead of spreadsheets. BlueTally came up a lot in searches, seems focused on hardware, talks about lifecycle logs, integrations with intune/jamf, SOC 2, etc. But most of their case studies are big companies or higher ed, not tiny nonprofits.

Given our scale (120-ish laptops, maybe up to 150 in a few years, no full-time IT), is a dedicated tool like this worth the money and overhead, or is it total overkill and I should just fix the spreadsheet and processes?

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

Trying to prevent them shooting themselves in the .... foot

Background ... I work for an MSP. This particular client has a PUBLICLY VISIBLE service that I manage behind a proxy. The proxy has been having issues for the last couple of weeks which is causing availability issues in my application. The client has decided to pull the service off of the proxy. In other words, they want me to put a Windows-based server bare to the internet with no proxy, no edge scanning, no nothing .... just basic firewalls.

Now, I recognize that the platform is THEIR property and they can do whatever they want with it. But I also think that the biggest thing they pay me for is expertise to protect them. And so I feel like I have a moral obligation to just tell them no. I'm the one who has to turn the wrenches, so to speak, to make this happen. I could just flatly refuse to do it. Or maybe just demand it in writing and suck it up.

IN short ... client asks you to do something INCREDIBLY stupid. Do you cheerfully pick up the ticket and work it without complaint? Do just do your best to warn them and then work it? Or do you tell them "I don't want my name associated with something this stupid."?

https://redd.it/1pexfa9
@r_systemadmin

Sooo, what brand memory to buy now?

Buying Crucial RAM has been the default for me for many years. I never even looked at any other brand.

Now that Crucial is gone, what are you guys doing for memory upgrades? I realize this is a difficult time now with the DRAM shortage and price hikes. But assuming normal market dynamics (which will hopefully return), who do you trust for DRAM?

https://redd.it/1pf158c
@r_systemadmin

CIO and CTO want Office icons back on desktop again....

Way back in the day the Microsoft Office Pro installer had the ability to create shortcuts for the Office programs on the desktop as part of the installation by using the /admin switch and then configuring the option to do so.

We have not done that in some time now, obviously, since the Office installer is C2R and not MSI and apparently there is no supported way to do this with the published configuration information for the XML file during the installation of Office.

The CTO and CIO now want the icons back on the desktop again. I am hoping that I am just missing some obscure entry in the Office deployment tool documentation, but short of that am I looking at noscripting this out with PowerShell and then keeping up with asinine changes to directory struct for Office when and if Microsoft makes some?




https://redd.it/1pf2qn0
@r_systemadmin

Restrict ChatGPT access to company plan only

We allow a small group of employees to access paid ChatGPT Business. How do we enforce sign in / ensure that they do not log out of the company accounts and start using their personal plans instead?



https://redd.it/1pf08g7
@r_systemadmin

I tried read only Fridays today

Decided to just read through emails and see if anything was an emergency. In the mean time I focused on certification training and testing out some things. Was absolutely glorious.

https://redd.it/1pf6o7f
@r_systemadmin

New CIO without technical background relying on consultant

We've got a new CIO with a Finance background and the first thing they've done is brought in an architect to assess everything and create a roadmap for us.

They were an internal hire and have never worked in IT before, so they've needed almost everything explained to them between the IT team and the consultant. I can see the Finance experience coming in handy when trying to optimise costs but it still seems odd to me - bringing someone in that needs to outsource most of the relevant technical skills? Is this normal?



https://redd.it/1pf7awb
@r_systemadmin

How do you guys develop better relationships with colleagues outside of IT?

Hi all, after having been in IT for around a decade, I've been reflecting on a problem I can't necessarily troubleshoot or google my way out of.

Social skills.

Not necessarily technical, but a skill that is needed in order to progress in most corporate environments. I find myself struggling to socialize and foster relationships with others - in that I'm not necessarily an introvert, but have a hard time socializing and developing relationships with colleagues.

How do you guys do it?

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

Cheapest NAS/SAN you would risk your boss' job on ...

You don't have a budget for a hardware refresh, your ESXi hosts can only support up to version 7. Your current disk arrays are a PS6100 and Unity 300.


A Synology RS1221RP+ isn't an insane choice? With the Western Digital Ultrastore? This can buy me some time?

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

Mystery "password spray"

MS Defender is reporting a user account was hit with a password spray at 2AM this morning and that it's assigned the user a high risk... but, when I look at the logs in Entra, there are zero logins or login attempts since the 3rd of December. There is no filtering in place that would hide any logins and when I look at the risk information for the user it shows a last login of the 3rd. Why would there be such a discrepancy between the MS Defender security alert and the Entra logs?

https://redd.it/1pfs0e9
@r_systemadmin

Windows 11 is Microsoft trying to be Apple without doing Apple’s homework

Just tried to map a network drive. Simple, right? Clicked “Browse” in the Map Network Drive dialog and got “Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.”
Opened cmd. Ran net use \\SERVER\Share. Worked instantly.
The GUI is literally a broken wrapper around functional tools. In 2025.
This is Windows 11 in a nutshell. Microsoft is having an identity crisis:
• They want Apple’s clean, idiot-proof aesthetic
• So they keep making the Settings app prettier while half the options still dump you into Control Panel from 2009
• They removed easy access to adapter settings, group policy, proper right-click menus — power user stuff
• But the underlying system still NEEDS those tools because it’s the same janky foundation
Apple gets away with “simple” because they control everything and will burn legacy support to the ground without hesitation. When Apple simplifies, the complexity is actually gone.
Microsoft wants the Apple look without doing the work. So we get:
• Rounded corners on top of Win32 spaghetti code from the 90s
• TWO settings apps (neither complete)
• Ads and Bing in the Start menu of an OS we paid for
• Copilot shoved everywhere while File Explorer still chokes on basic network operations
• Features removed “for simplicity” but the complexity is still there, just hidden behind extra clicks
It’s the worst of both worlds. A dumbed-down interface that pretends everything is fine, while the same old demons run underneath. Power users get gaslit by a pastel UI while troubleshooting problems that shouldn’t exist.
We’re not asking for much. Just stop hiding the tools we need while failing to fix the problems that require them.
/rant

https://redd.it/1pfx0mp
@r_systemadmin

Managing multiple M365 tenants without losing your sanity – how do you do it?

He Fellow Sysadmins,


We’ve ended up with multiple Microsoft 365 tenants thanks to acquisitions and some “business logic” that made sense at the time (you know how it goes…). Now I’m the lucky one trying to keep them all under control.

Curious how others handle this mess:

Do you have a single pane of glass for monitoring/admin, or is it just a bunch of browser tabs and prayers?
Any tricks for keeping security policies consistent without manually clicking through each tenant?

For context: i have to manage around 5 tenants in total. 1 of 75 user, 3 of 40 users and 1 more with 60.

Also i'm thinking to do tenant to tenant migrations and keep everything in 1 tenant in the end. Feedback on that would be appreciated.

Basically, I’m looking for war stories, best practices, or even “don’t do what we did” horror tales. Anything that makes life easier when you’re juggling more than one tenant.

Cheers!

https://redd.it/1pfzry1
@r_systemadmin

Is there a version of OneTimeSecret where you can REQUEST one from someone else? Password.link ticks all the boxes but it has almost no online mention or community presence which is a red flag.

So basically I am trying to help a client who often REQUESTS credentials from their clients. I'd like to set up a secure request method for this, but the only elegant solution I found was password.link. However, I'm seeing almost no community discussion online which is skeeving me out a bit.

I basically just want OneTimeSecret to send a request to someone to fill in a secret, and then send it back to me.

I assume there's a reason something like this doesn't exist because the use case seems pretty obvious?

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

Reassign Global Admins to lower privileged roles?

There are too many global admins in the organization that use it as a catch all role when they don’t know what permissions or role meets the minimum permissions to perform their daily job tasks. They are active as a global admin all day everyday when they may only do global admin-specific tasks for a few hours per month.

We could use PIM for global admins, but it won’t help much if they just activate the global admin role all day everyday because they don’t have another role assignment available that provides the access they need for the majority of their work.

Is there any kind of Azure activity analyzer that audits what tasks certain admins have actually been doing with their current roles and can point you to new roles to assign to replace their global admin role assignment?

https://redd.it/1pg2ocn
@r_systemadmin

How much power does Cloudflare actually have?

The recent hiccups have caused me to look a bit deeper into cloudflares services (very much a beginner) and why everything dies when they do totally scheduled and planned for server maintenance.
I came across a lot of "What to do if I am blocked from a site by them" comments. The answer is invariably "contact that sites admin and tell them u are a good noodle."
How do I contact the admin of a page I am blocked from?
Maybe the cloudflare blocking page thing is supposed to give you an address, but the sites I encountered where badly set up?

What promted the question above was running into a complaint by a (admittedly questionable) website, that cloudflare was placing restrictions on their domain.
What does this mean for a website?
The CF FAQ and Forum don't seem to give a lot of info about their ban-hammer.
Is that only an issue if I was previously their customer, or does this mess with everything?

Thanks in advance!

https://redd.it/1pg3iyx
@r_systemadmin

How to make your SQL injection attacks obvious

I have a very old website, in ASP, running on old Windows IIS, with old SQL Server. The server itself is isolated, and the database is read only, so I'm not worried. Get regular attempted attacks, but fail2ban slows them down.

Today, I've had almost 164,000 (oops 344,000, forgot the other server) SQL injection attempt requests so far.

The user agent string starts: "Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS 9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97-1/10.0.012"

I think I might be able to blanket block that with no worries.

Edit: since the first two comments were critical of my skills and decisions:

it's read only, and there's a proxy in front of it
it's for reference only
it was for a customer that went out of business well over a decade ago
but it's the archives of a magazine that I'm keeping online in case it's useful to some member of the public

It's not "security by obscurity" as one suggested - nothing obscure about it - it's read only - that's the security.

Edit 2: This web site has been running like this for close to a decade, on an isolated VM. Which could be restored from a snapshot if it was ever needed. Never needed it. I only noticed because - for reasons I don't know - fail2ban on the load balancer decided to stop banning anything early today. So fail2ban on the proxy started complaining.

https://redd.it/1pg495f
@r_systemadmin

Hired but worried about underperforming.

So I went through a number of interviews and was hired on for a sysadmin position and I start soon.

I was in the military as a sys admin, but not for long, and never was in one position long to gain a lot of proficiency.

I know a bit of linux, and I know a bit of windows, I've done password resets and everything, but just not a ton.

The interviews were pretty straightforward and asked pretty open ended questions that weren't very technical in nature, but I answered with the experience I do have and was hired, and I'm just worried about not being up to speed.

Thoughts? Advice?


https://redd.it/1pg67l1
@r_systemadmin

How did you find your sysadmin mentor?

As the noscript says: how did you find your mentor? I’m new to this role and I’m looking for a mentor to help navigate me to be successful in this role.

https://redd.it/1pg3r2y
@r_systemadmin

AV recommendations

I run a one-man IT services business on the side and can’t yet call myself a Managed Service Provider (MSP). My focus is currently on helping small businesses. Now I need to deploy antivirus software on all users’ desktops. I’m currently using Action1 but might switch to NinjaOne or something similar. I don’t mind patch management.

So, back to the main question: what antivirus or endpoint detection and response (EDR) software should I use? I’m leaning towards BitDefender but I’d appreciate any suggestions.

The software should be easy to use on a cloud level and manageable remotely. It should be low on system resources or at least not hog the entire computer. Additionally, it should allow remote uninstallation and the ability to send users a URL to download and run the software.

If they already have my Action1 agent installed, I’ll use Action1 to deploy it.

Finally, the price must be reasonable. My clients are small businesses, single individuals or traders who can’t afford expensive services.



https://redd.it/1pg5enr
@r_systemadmin

Higher Ed: The IT environment I will never work in again

Yesterday, I put in my 2 weeks at a large university that I've been at for less than a year. I feared I'd feel like a failure, but honestly, all I feel is relief.

Relocated my family across the country last March when my wife got an offer for a dream job, (legal). My former job was not keen to let me work remotely, so I quit after 14 years the last 8 of which was basically being "the guy" around anything server or data center. Thought I'd stay in that job until retirement, but it wasn't it the cards. Worked a contract job for about a month, and then landed what appeared to be a fantastic job at a large public university supporting their data center infrastructure.

In hindsight, there were some red flags I overlooked when I interviewed, but at the end of the day the reality of working in higher ed has been nothing short of a complete dumpster fire. Dysfunctional doesn't do justice to how awful things have been.

Senior leaders who have been at the university for 4 decades refusing to act on anything that isn't a rubber stamp. Directors and middle managers who have their heads so far up their own asses that they prefer to ask CoPilot for decisions on proprietary software and policy rather than listen to recommendations from myself or any of my colleagues who literally run the goddamned core infrastructure of the university. Conflicting edicts that both openly violate established policy and the industry norms. Making policy decisions, then leaving the explanation and justification to junior staff members, and refusing to communicate changes to the larger university until "things are going smoothly".

Some faculty members thinking they walk on fucking water because they have an advanced degree, which in their mind somehow makes them exempt from any sort of security standard (especially muti-factor auth). The situation had me so disgruntled that I came to the conclusion that I will never understand how the actual fuck competent people are supposed to work in higher ed.

My interview process required me to have a 1 on 1 interview with the CTO. I have not seen or heard directly from him since, despite him being the project sponsor of 4 of the projects I'm currently serving as lead on. My boss's boss's boss (there are 6 levels of management between me and the CTO) refuses to talk to more than half of my colleagues because of some bullshit argument they had over a decade ago. Pettiness everywhere, and more effort from management to clamp down on dissent than to actually accomplish anything.

Everything came to a head the first week of October. I was asked to present a plan to upgrade some of the oldest hardware in our datacenter, which involves porting an in-house built application that hasn't had a full time employee supporting it since about 2014. The director of my department decided to use the presentation time to try to grill me (with an audience of \~100 university employees on why a bunch of projects I have no part of were off schedule, and spent an entire hour telling me that he didn't believe I had "it". He said that higher ed was likely not a great place for me. When I asked for examples of what I had done wrong, he blabbered for an hour about ITIL and how critical it is to success - aka, he didn't bother answering. All of this in a public forum.

To my fellow higher ed IT folks, I sincerely hope you never have to deal with this level of dysfunction, and I hope my story is an anomaly. Or, at the very least I hope you have a chance to escape any toxic environment.


EDIT - Spelling

https://redd.it/1pge29t
@r_systemadmin