@vhinzsanchez said in MSP Helpdesk Options:

@notverypunny said in MSP Helpdesk Options:

@vhinzsanchez said in MSP Helpdesk Options:

Had deployed SW on-premise in my previous employment, I do not know how it will fare out after reading the news earlier. It has been rock solid even when others had an issue logging in when a problem struck...it seemed that my installation was not affected then.

I've tried and really liked osTicket but I am now testing GLPI. I was looking into a ticketing system with inventory and the features which tied the ticket to a person and/or hardware and keep its history (like SW). GLPI with FusionInventory seemed to be just that.

Let me know if you need any help, I've been dealing with the inventory side of that combo for going on 3 years now. Going to be getting more into the data-center / server room management side of it with the management and financials stuff next week.

Yup, the network scanning inventory (fusion inventory) is where I stopped at. I have installed agent on 2 computers successfully but as it seems, it was not updating. It was not due to how it was programmed, rather, it is due to my limited understanding on how to configure it.

This should be set and forget so long as you're installing as a service (or daemon if *nix) and your configuration file / registry entries are good.

Another wall I hit is that all emails (new tickets and responses) have different time-stamp (15 hours late).

Sounds like a possible issue with the php timezone config on your server

@vhinzsanchez

There are a few touchpoints for SNMP scanning and inventory.

• setup and associate your ip ranges and snmp credentials in the plugin's network tab
• configure a task / job and associate it with one of your deployed nodes (typically the server)
• if things don't work, debug in command line from the server, hope you're using linux as it's much simpler to use for this. There might be additional perl dependencies if you're trying to use snmpv3. You might need to use an snmp testing tool from your workstation to validate that the devices are replying to the snmp values that you're using.

So if anyone else jumps down this particular rabbit hole, my hacky workaround is to add this to my auto-join cases:

sed -i -e "s#<LogonCount>999</LogonCount>#<LogonCount>1</LogonCount>#gi" $unattendfile

@openit Pihole with the upstream DNS of your choice.

https://pi-hole.net/

Keep in mind that you'll have to either block all dns at the firewall (except the pi-hole) or force all queries to redirect to the pi-hole if you want absolute visibility and control. If you're OK with the possibility of queries bypassing your DNS then this part doesn't need to be dealt with.

Offline files was enabled at one of my former gigs and it was HELL to troubleshoot with users, mainly 'cause it was all remote, often with inadequate remote assistance tools.

@wrx7m
We ordered a rugged Dell laptop for one of the sales guys last year and it's dock was still a "real" dock. Not E-dock compatible but similar style / execution.

We've just starting using JitBit. They took the full on prem with access to source so one of the programmers has been tweaking things. I'm not a huge fan but it seems to be working.

I can't say anything bad about GLPI but it might be more than what the OP is looking for.

Request Tracker provides a massive framework to play with for ticketing and such, I'm 90% sure that one of my former gigs was using it with some minor rebranding but it is really one of those situations where the sky's the limit on what it seems to be able to do.

@FATeknollogee said in Stuck supporting out-of-date Windows Servers, what options do I have?:

Not to threadjack...
Now that I've experienced Fedora WS & Server updates, why do/does Windows updates suck so bad?

Any reasonably mature Linux distro is light years ahead of M$ for updates.

If you do pursue this further, and IIRC there's 2 ways to get that particular PoS chip to work, depending on the revision. I haven't had to mess with one lately, but they were popular in HP laptops for a while.

We're running normal consumer SSDs in a bunch of 720XD units. Wouldn't be appropriate for all workloads but they're "good enough" for our use case.

@Pete-S said in HyperVisor:

@notverypunny said in HyperVisor:

@Pete-S said in HyperVisor:

@Dashrender said in HyperVisor:

Assuming Moore's law holds, 7 years newer equipment, you're looking at 6 to 8 times faster gear.

It doesn't hold unfortunately.

Per core it's 15-20% faster per generation when there is a major technology shift. A lot less otherwise.

So R710 is Nehalem Xeons.

We have the following major generations:

• R710 - Nehalem architecture, Xeon 5500 series, on 45 nm
• R720 - Sandy Bridge architecture, Xeon E5-2600 v1, on 32nm - PCIe 3.0 introduced on E5-2600 v2 series.
• R730 - Haswell architecture, Xeon E5-2600 v3, on 22nm - DDR4 RAM introduced
• R740 - Skylake architecture, Xeon Scalable, on 14nm

Expect cores on a R740 to be roughly 70% faster than R710 at the same GHz. It's a lot but not as much as you would think. Especially since clock speeds have gone down and core count has gone up.

We've got a mix of 720 and 730 units in production and the 730s deal with the spectre / meltdown garbage much better than the 720s.

That's interesting to hear. Did you notice this on the production workloads or is it from running benchmarks?

Production workloads, various versions of XenServer running W10 VDI instances.

@stacksofplates said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:

@Dashrender said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:

@black3dynamite said in Using GNU\Linux on your workstation is rubbish:

From a Linux Desktop, you can browse multiple protocols without additional applications. I personally use FileZilla Client but I've also use WinSCP too.

From a Nautilus File Manager:

I don't consider this quite a fair comparison. Linux distros are mostly made by and for techies. There need/desire for these tools to be included seems obvious. Windows on the other hand is meant for the masses, and those tools would be unused by 95% or more.
So sure - it's cool they are there, but that's about all.

I'd argue it's mostly because windows doesn't natively support other protocols. You can browse SMB shares from explorer because it's natively supported. I'd be willing to bet if windows supported NFS or SSHFS or SFTP or any other protocols you would be able to do it in explorer.

Windows server supports NFS shares... I honestly haven't looked into using explorer to browse NFS but this is adding some weak-sauce to the argument.... This post stopped being constructive a while back so I don't feel too bad for adding fuel to the fire.

I'll hitch my wagon to the "Linux is better" camp because the only time that I've seen any advantage to windows is if you've got to administer an MS environment (much of my day job), have to use windows only software (such as our ERP's client software), or are otherwise stuck in a MS ecosystem (users / processes heavily entrenched in the world of windows-only software and systems).

We run Zebra GX430t units in the shops... I can only assume that they're decent since I rarely hear the 1st level guys complain about them knock wood

Network and broadcast addresses are never usable is the explanation if my memory is correct so for your example:

NETWORK 1:
Network ID = 192.168.123.0/26
Network Address = 192.168.123.0
Usable IPs = 192.168.123.1 - 62
Broadcast = 192.168.123.63

NETWORK 2:
Network ID = 192.168.123.64/26
Network Address = 192.168.123.64
Usable IPs = 192.168.123.65 - 126
Broadcast = 192.168.123.127

Rinse and repeat for your other networks

@travisdh1 said in SAS to USB:

@notverypunny said in SAS to USB:

SAS to USB, does such a thing exist? (that doesn't cost a small fortune). Based on my own searching and research I think the answer is no, but figured I'd ask here in case I've missed something.

Found this, but can't justify the price
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/B07KZRCT8H/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new

I've got a bunch of 2.5" drives that we pulled when swapping SSDs into a few servers. We're using them as spares to replace dead drives in other machines for which they're compatible but they have to be cleared / blanked before being used as replacements in order for the RAID controller to properly accept the drive and rebuild.

Right now I've got to boot a spare server into the PERC's configuration interface and use that to clear the drive before I can swap it in. Ideally I'd like to be able to just connect the drive via USB to a workstation or laptop and use fdisk / gparted or something else to blank it.

Have you tried plugging them into a standard USB to SATA adapter? Should work from what I know, but I've never tried it myself.

The interfaces won't mate, there's a notch that prevents just that. We tried what looks to be a simple pin to pin adapter with a USB to sata that I found online and couldn't get anything to see the drive on the other end.

@Pete-S said in SAS to USB:

@notverypunny said in SAS to USB:

@Pete-S said in SAS to USB:

Just plug them into a server that doesn't have a stupid perc controller and wipe them there.

We're almost exclusively Dell, so finding someplace to connect a SAS that isn't a PERC is going to be difficult, if not impossible.

I'd like to avoid having to use a server at all to blank them, might have to dig through some of the boxes of "junk" to see if there might be a SAS-compatible card that I could throw into a desktop

That's probably your best bet.

Dell also makes pure HBAs, like HBA330. Maybe it's even called PERC as well, I don't know. Anyway, if you put the disk in a SAS controller that isn't raid it doesn't think it's part of an array or something.

AFAIK they use the PERC moniker on everything that's a drive controller for the servers. All of our HBAs are perc, mostly H710 if my memory is correct. From some research a while back I seem to recall that it's mostly LSI stuff that's either just rebranded or possibly tweaked for Dell

So just to throw another option into the mix:
https://www.virtualhere.com/

Basically a usb over IP... one of the guys at work was playing around with it, seemed to work OK, should be sufficient for label printing and would eliminate the concerns surrounding 3rd party print servers and driver updates.

Just in case anyone else has been fighting a battle with OpenManage Enterprise. For whatever reason - at least in my deployment - the appliance won't talk to the iDRAC of it's own host if they're using the same NIC.

Hopefully this spares someone else some frustration.

Cheers

@scottalanmiller said in OpenManage Enterprise Gotcha:

@dbeato said in OpenManage Enterprise Gotcha:

@notverypunny said in OpenManage Enterprise Gotcha:

@dbeato said in OpenManage Enterprise Gotcha:

@notverypunny said in OpenManage Enterprise Gotcha:

OpenManage Enterprise

That's why we put it on a VM.

Yep, it's a vm.... but the VM and the iDRAC were set to share the same NIC on the host (whoever did the initial hardware setup didn't want to / couldn't use the iDRAC's dedicated NIC)

Weird, We use dedicated iDRAC all the time.

I think "didn't want to" is the key language there

Yeah... dealing with things that someone else setup is always interesting to say the least

https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/19/microsoft-windows-package-manager-powertoys/

Not implying that ms is cribbing the choco code, but this could make for some interesting developments....