petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

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. 

Yes, that's the list I referred to. The question referred to the Sarbanes Oxley Act not the "Final Rule".

Facebook upset because someone else beat them to it.

I'm currently tuning solarwinds (I'm new here) to remove the noise storm they get. We have the metrics but really need to focus on what's important when alerting and reporting. Too many irrelevant alerts and people stop responding or miss the really important stuff. Too few and some really important stuff doesn't get…

Spot on. I usually ignore the 1 & 5 start reviews and look at the rest with a cynical eye. Like you say, most bad reviews are from people who don't know what they are doing or have bought something that wasn't what they thought it was. I've seen some give a 1 star review for a product that they said was excellent but the…

Nordstrom. Nice of them to hide their fault by blaming a contractor. Surely they should have had processes and procedures in place to prevent this happening. After all, it is their data and therefore their responsibility. You'll probably find the contractor was far more aware of data security than they were. 

I don't think there was any need for that. If you can't be polite then it might be best to say nothing. I did get the correct answer. I was just pointing out that the question setter has made assumptions that are not valid for all corporate environments.

Self driving cars and people recognition. Yet another reason for why they just aren't ready. You would think motion would be a key here. Maybe just try to avoid the moving thing that they are about to hit and stay off the footpaths / pavements / sidewalks.

Why print them when we could be materialising them as in Star Trek. 

Why would you trust anything to do with hire car companies. They have been rip off merchants for years. Stealing your data to sell on would just be a logical extension of CDW insurance, exorbitant fuel surcharges, false damage claims etc.

You could extend this a bit. If you clone the digital twin when it is showing a problem you could potentially test fixes against the clone to see what works before actually sending spare parts and getting a spanner out. This would lead to first time fixes every time in the field.