Posts made by alexntg

@Pol said:

@scottalanmiller We don't have privacy anymore

We haven't for a while. People are just now starting to realize it.

It's blue! Yes!

Not liking the tagging thing going on in the inbox, though. What is this, Twitter?

Sales killed me when I ran my own business. I couldn't sell my services at all. It's a skillset that I don't have. I should have waited longer before starting up so that I could have afforded to pay a salesperson.

@IRJ said:

I am setting up a terminal server today. From my understanding, only two users may login at a time until USER CALs are added. If I add 5 user CALs would that give me 5 users total or 5 + 2?

It's 5. The 2 is for remote administration mode, which you lose when you switch RDS server modes.

@JaredBusch said:

I hate writing documentation. I know it is important. I still do not like writing it.

This is why I get paid for documentation and technical writing engagements.

@scottalanmiller said:

Lonely time for me

Now you can do bachelor stuff, like go to Dave and Busters, the movies, Mario's Showplace, etc.

I write DR documents for companies, but it's quite specific based on the company's needs, compliance requirements, and size/complexity of the systems. From start to finish, it's about a 3-week project in most cases, but could easily go longer depending on the detail required in the document. The last one I did was for a 90-person company that was SOX compliant due to their parent company being a larger public firm. It was a week of discovery, a week of writing it, and a week of editing, presenting, and revising. It came out to about 27 pages before appendices/diagrams.

@Carnival-Boy said:

Nearly everyone posts their CV on LinkedIn which I find slightly weird when dealing with colleagues, suppliers and customers. I'll have a business meeting with someone I haven't met before and we've both read each others CV on LinkedIn before the meeting. The more detailed their LinkedIn profile, the keener they are to get another job. Slightly awkward.

With LinkedIn, once you have an account, it's a matter of poking it with a stick once in a while. A few minutes every couple of months is enough to keep it updated and "detailed".

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg said:

Does Office Home Premium include email now? I used it about a year ago, and it didn't.

Oh. Is it only the Office products?

It's a subscription to Office Home Premium desktop applications and extra OneDrive space.

I have a (somewhat neglected) website, and no one's given me any crap about it yet. Then again, I'm more of a project-based worker. People hire me for a project, I complete it, cross-train local staff, then move on. Sometimes, as with NTG, I'll come in longer-term and chain-run projects. This would be a bit different for a normal employee. If someone has a blog or a website discussing some projects (without giving out any company info), it shouldn't be an issue. If someone has a website with their resume posted publicly, I'd find it a bit awkward.

The original question's pretty broad, so I"ll break it into home and work.

For work, I go with AMD CPUs. They have good bang for the buck, and as a virtualization engineer, the workloads I deal with are highly multithreaded, so the more cores the merrier. At present, the Opterons have up to 16 cores to work with. For graphics, I go Nvidia, as several Quadro models are supported for use with VMware Horizon View in order to bring hardware-accelerated graphics to VDI. I don't deal with end-user hardware at all.

For home, I go with AMD CPUs. Partly it's bang for the buck, but partly it's due to history and a personal tendency towards vendor loyalty. After my 486, I moved up to a K6, and have been AMD ever since. Graphics-wise, I go with Nvidia. For some reason, I've had zero luck with ATI/AMD discrete graphics cards any time I feel adventurous and decide to give them a try. Beyond that, I was a 3dfx customer, and have kept loyalty through acquisition into Nvidia.

I'd like to interject a technical bit:

In this topic, people are referring to changing plans. If I want to change from an E1 plan to E3 or vice versa, I can do that at any time, with just a few clicks. That's changing plans. Changing from Small Business to Midsize Business, for example, is a change of tenant. If you want a comparison for an onsite equivalent, it's like changing over to a new AD forest. It's not something you can just do that easily.

@IRJ said:

I am working with a client who has recently bought Windows 8.1 PCs. They have 3 2008 R2 DCs. Currently they are not using a central stores for their ADM and ADMX files. I would like to create a central store for them, and copy the new ADMX files for Windows 8.1? Can I do both of these at the same time?

I think I'm misreading the question. In order to copy the files to the central store, you'd need to create the store first.

Does Office Home Premium include email now? I used it about a year ago, and it didn't.

A few years ago, I was recovering from burnout and took a helpdesk position. It was low-stress, low-workload, and extremely relaxing. Sometimes taking a step back isn't all that bad to do. If I hadn't been recruited away, I'd likely still be there.

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg said:

Windows 8.1 is not available in Ultimate. It's available in RT, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. Windows 7 Ultimate included XP mode, which was a single-instance more desktop-integrated VM designed specifically to assist with application compatibility issues. It did not include normal virtualization rights.

In the Microsoft official material it stated that Ultimate was a non-SA version of Enterprise that was identical in every way.

According to this chart the VDI licensing was the same between the two...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

Can you link the MS official material? I'm getting my info from http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/d/4/3d42bdc2-6725-4b29-b75a-a5b04179958b/licensing_windows7_with_VM_technologies.docx

@scottalanmiller said:

'Muricans

Merkins? (For those not familiar with the term, be careful searching for it, as it may contain NSFW results.)

That coloring is very loud, and the case shape is very familiar. Did an older Mac Pro eat a streetracing honda?

Perhaps branded laptops may be more useful? That way, clients get to see the branding when folks are onsite.

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg Is VDA still needed on a 1:1 scenario?

To start with, yes. The accessing device must be covered by either SA or VDA. If a Companion Subscription License (CSL) is added on to the VDA or SA for a user's primary device, they're able to use up to 4 additional devices to access the virtual OSE.

So you can't remote into a VM on your own desktop?

Without SA or VDA licensing, there's no licensed usage of a Windows desktop OS on a VM, even if on your local machine. This is the reason I have SA on my home computer.

But they sell Ultimate explicitly with that option. 4 VMs on your desktop, no SA.

Windows 8.1 is not available in Ultimate. It's available in RT, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. Windows 7 Ultimate included XP mode, which was a single-instance more desktop-integrated VM designed specifically to assist with application compatibility issues. It did not include normal virtualization rights.

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Can't just revert back a DC.

In that case, it'd be a simple matter of tossing the old DC and spinning up a new one. More of an annoyance than anything else.

Yes. Mostly stateless. Would be scary if you put all DCs on azure though. Or any live/live system like this where an environmental change might lock out the entire environment.

I have my entire environment on AWS, spread across two geographic regions with a site-to-site VPN. Upping it a level would be putting one part on AWS and the other on Azure, with a site-to-site VPN between the two.