petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

Yes. Please bring back the 2 day events. They had a lot more technical stuff. The half day stuff is just marketing.

Proper 2 day in person SWUG please.

I was contracting at a local authority in London. A remote site stopped. We jumped in a car and drove down there. It was a very hot day and we found the site server in a small, non air-conned room in direct sunlight. The case had melted so much that we had to cut it open. Everything was fried. Went to look at a Zilog…

Don't forget it is all FREE. Give them a chance.

We've just had a client get a 150% price increase for licensing and are now looking at alternatives. Well done Solarwinds.

Similar story. The IT department was in the basement (isn't is always) and we were starting to notice a lot of flies in the room. Nothing we did sorted it out until we found a fried rat in the external part of an AC unit mounted on the wall just above a well hidden air vent leading down into the room.

Same for me. Can't access the mission and therefore can't complete.

Yes. Really miss them. It was great to meet all the people I got to know from previous events, meet the people behind the names on Thwack and share stories. Also great to meet the Solarwinds peeps face to face and explain our problems properly. Also the food was good and I was away from the office / customers.

It all seems to be common sense to me but I've worked at too many places where management won't spend the money on monitoring then rant and rave when things go down. They never seem to stay late when there are issues though. It's just us techies, who have asked for monitoring for years, who stay to sort it all out. 71…

I was sent on a team building event once. Two days in a posh country hotel. Morning of day one we were all outside on the terrace. I was told I was a sheepdog and everyone else were sheep. I had to round everyone up in one place. I invited everyone into the bar for a drink. Job done. Apparently that wasn't what they were…

No. It really is about the money 

Congrats on the 11 years.

Oh no it isn't (cue pantomime season).

Server sprawl is a problem for me. I took over as SysAdmin 9 months ago and found a 250+ server estate with over 40 Domain Controllers mostly virtualised. Nothing worked. There were tombstoned DCs and AD replication didn't work. Every time something broke they just spun up a new server instead of fixing the issue. I…

We've got Commvault too. I really really hate it and am looking for a suitable replacement. Zerto provide a great system for VM server replication (and backups in v7.5). We already use Zerto for DR and BC so I am looking at the new backup features.

True. I had a job advert sent to me recently where they wanted an expert in Microsoft, Linux, VMware, Cisco and a whole host of other skills. Certifications were mandatory and it was in the centre of London. The salary should have been about £100,000 but they were offering £21,000. Helpdesk numpties get more than that. I…

As for Turkey. I'd rather have chicken and slow cook it whilst I'm in the pub with mates. 

Corporate networks not secure. Of course. Look at how many major data breaches have been reported over the last year. It's no surprise. I've seen too many clients where they won't spend the money required to secure stuff. They would rather pay the fine if they are caught as that is usually much less then the cost of…

I always encourage people to own up to their mistakes. You can't learn from your mistakes if you don't acknowledge them. I also encourage management not to adopt a 'blame culture'. That just encourages people to hide their mistakes. Unfortunately people are more interested in covering their own backside and less interested…

Hmmmm. Think I will dig up my garden and tarmac it over. Good thinking batman.

I don't have an accent. Everybody else does. 

I do support wabbott and think she is doing a great job. Keeping us Thwacksters happy must be a difficult job but ambiguous answers to questions where points are involved are really irritating if, like me, you are saving up for some items. I'm just a point monster. 

Yep, Hybrid is here to stay. Users only care about the application. It is up to us IT bods to deliver so we need to use whatever technology is the right one for the job.

The only problem is that hiring the right staff and training the ones you already have along with buying the tools required and spending the time implementing safeguards all costs money. We in IT understand that but the business doesn't. It doesn't matter how we explain it to them, they don't get it. We are left doing what…

No. Not having voting on a holiday. I'd rather go away somewhere that stay near home so I can vote for any of our muppets (UK politicians and no names only to avoid getting rejected again).

I'm right in the middle of this as we are about to replace out monitoring solution. I want to CapEx the solution as Solarwinds on prem and then OpEx the annual maintenance. In my last place it was all SaaS from a supplier and therefore all OpEx. That was quite expensive and we had no control.

Mine arrived today. Cheers folks. It actually fits too. Not like my AC/DC one from Wembley Stadium. 

Electric cars to make noise. Good idea in principal but I see mobile phone zombies every day walking out into noisy traffic because their own little world is more important that taking time to watch where they are going. If they can't hear a fire engine with lights and sirens on max. what hope have they (yep saw that one…

I think I hate you. In the UK we only get the Beef Jerky Original, Sweet & Hot, Teriyaki and Biltong Original. All are very nice but there is a proper South African jerky shop near me that does loose. Expensive but worth it. I've usually buy it by the kilo.

In IT using a D20. Rolling anything other than 20 is a fail (varying degrees of fail). Throwing a 20 is what management expect as a minimum. We strive for a 20 but are usually happy to get anything between 1 and 20 (inclusive) because there somehow is a chance of getting a zero and who knows what that means.