IT stories and rants

[MultimediaMan]

Synology is fairly decent, especially for the money.

I have about 45 server instances (about 1/3 of them are physical); we retired a large-ish Nimble storage array last week (sorry to see it go, it was very feature-rich for the money); migrated everything to pair of Dell MD3220i (each with an add-on MD1220 Tray) - about 44TB of Usable Storage in RAID10 (in total 8 Storage LUNs). Previously, they were running Thin-Provisioned disks on Thin Provisioned LUNs and it took a long time (months) to determine how much storage they were actually consuming on the SAN; Thin Provisioning and De-Duplication can work against you from an IOPS and Throughput perspective, and this was no exception. The old storage was provisioned haphazardly as well (no planned failure domain, no regard for disk controller ownership boundaries): it took a long time to get those issues smoothed out. Still working on Jumbo Frames (we have Cisco Meraki as core Switching - which is less than ideal for our server environment): our network is extremely simple, and our "network engineer" has no interest in talking to me about private VLANs, broadcast domains, or subnetting (He is more of a security guy than a network engineer). It is getting better, but I have to email, meet, cajole and beg for every niggling expenditure just to keep the Shitshow running... it is beyond tiresome.

[UtwigMU]

Oh, so you're not completely alone, you have a network engineer.

I did VLANs in 2020: 3 new Aruba PoE switches with optical uplink between new data room in new building and old building. Vlans for guests, corporate, video surveilance and management (switches, APs, NAS for backup). New wifi with 15 Ubiquity APs with corporate, legacy 2GHz and guest networks. Guests are VLANed.

Let's talk about video surveillance and alarm retards. In f#cking 2020 instead of doing IP cameras with POE they ran fscking coax and power cable to every camera. Their network closet is a rat nest. They use ancient chinese videosurveilance box and wanted it open to web with admin123 password. I insisted on using better password and limited access to that from CEOs home static IP only.

[Umfriend]

I insisted on using better password and limited access to that from CEOs home static IP only.

I can RDP into my SOHO-Server but only from two IP-addresses. I wonder if it would be easy to set up some two-factor security so I could access it as well based on some sort of token sent by SMS or mail or some such. It works fine (esp. w. Covid, I work at home anyway) but if I should go to France again this summer I'd really like to be able to get to the Server as well.

[UtwigMU]

I would go with VPN. You can set wireguard on Mikrotik router (costing from 50€ up) with RouterOS 7 (beta but it's very stable and out for more than a year).
Or you can link your AD with Azure AD and use MS Authenticator.

EDIT: You can set RDG gateway - add role to windows server and buy SSL cert every year or use letsencrypt.

On topic: IT job market is vibrant provided your Linkedin profile looks more devopsy. I got sent pre-interview test from 3d company in 10 days. Since they are MacOS heavy I needed Macos and rolled Fedora + KVM + MacOS Catalina

[TransformX]

My instant answer to such questions is: you didn't invest enough money to get this.
There are two options:

1. you pay for a state of the art backup solution and network infrastructure.
2. you hire a FOSS backup specialist and you still pay for a proper network infrastructure.

Then they ask what other options are there and I'll say, crossing your fingers or turn a blind eye the way you did so happily so far.

I'm toxic, I know.

[MultimediaMan]

pfSense, Smoothwall, MikroTik all support some sort of VPN - this is probably better than having a Windows device directly exposed to directly to the Edge, especially long term.

Too many folks think that Cloud equates to Backup. It doesn't, not even close. Most Cloud Bulk Storage providers are the digital equivalent of a heroin drug-dealer/drug-pusher: everything is cheap and easy until you need to copy it back; Then you get squeezed.

Small businesses IT managers thinking they can save money going to cloud are crazy unless they are ALREADY Cloud Native (then they don't care). The development money to convert in-house apps to something Cloud-consumable just isn't there.

[UtwigMU]

I have two job offers on the table so I need to brainstorm:

company1 manufacturing automation, linux heavy, Swiss owned, around 15 people, 1.5M turnover on Slovenian subsidiary
company2 phone apps, mac heavy, Chinese owned, 400 people in Slovenia, Spain, Cyprus. 20M annual turnover on Slovenian subsidiary

Salary is same ballpark and higher than my current salary. I want to change because I don't like the chaos and the stress that boomer management style in current place is causing. Textbook of how not to run IT. I want to feel like I'm part of team although I'm a bit invididualist.

With company1 I'm through the process, I go there and sign contract and resign.
With company2 I went through expertise test and interviewed with their IT guy who liked me and will pass it on. There's a chance of dropping out of process as there are 2-3 more steps.

Company1 is 8am to 4pm hybrid, I'm not a morning person although I've been striving to be active by 8 (normal was 9) for a few weeks now
Company2 is more liberal and hybrid few days office, few days home, start from 7 to 9:30

For both companies I'd move closer since I'm renting. Company2 is in big city with more expensive rents where I grew up and have family+friends. Company2 is in smaller city with cheaper rents, 1h drive from big city. One good friend lives there and have few friends in nearby towns.

[dZeus]

I have two job offers on the table so I need to brainstorm:

company1 manufacturing automation, linux heavy, Swiss owned, around 15 people, 1.5M turnover on Slovenian subsidiary
company2 phone apps, mac heavy, Chinese owned, 400 people in Slovenia, Spain, Cyprus. 20M annual turnover on Slovenian subsidiary

Salary is same ballpark and higher than my current salary. I want to change because I don't like the chaos and the stress that boomer management style in current place is causing. Textbook of how not to run IT. I want to feel like I'm part of team although I'm a bit invididualist.

With company1 I'm through the process, I go there and sign contract and resign.
With company2 I went through expertise test and interviewed with their IT guy who liked me and will pass it on. There's a chance of dropping out of process as there are 2-3 more steps.

Company1 is 8am to 4pm hybrid, I'm not a morning person although I've been striving to be active by 8 (normal was 9) for a few weeks now
Company2 is more liberal and hybrid few days office, few days home, start from 7 to 9:30

For both companies I'd move closer since I'm renting. Company2 is in big city with more expensive rents where I grew up and have family+friends. Company2 is in smaller city with cheaper rents, 1h drive from big city. One good friend lives there and have few friends in nearby towns.

With company 1, would there be a growth path for you to move to their Swiss parent company in future if things go well for you?

[UtwigMU]

No, their IT and the other 33% owner are in Slovenia. I would travel but it's a remote company. HR person is based in Ukraine.

Company 1 has more growth potential since it's smaller and I could become bigger there. Also I would gain connections from industry. Company 2 has been doing same apps for some time but they are starting some new stuff.

In both companies i'd have senior admin above which is fine as I don't know everything.

At current place my career is dead end. Last week they hired some sort of woman as head of r&d who now emails me to put what I do in sharepoint. I was thinking of mentoring one of 2 guys who had potential into junior admin so I could focus more on projects. One of them left, the other resigned but they convinced him to stay because things "will become better".

[Umfriend]

I have no clue. What are career opportunities like in the manufacturing automation sector compared to phone app development? Or would you not work on either of those but support the IT that they use to do what they do / would your duties be similar in both jobs?
You've spoken to both: How did they come across? Easygoing professional teamsprit?

[UtwigMU]

I think managing fanuc, scada controllers is big and will only get bigger. I think phone apps are stale as few apps take bulk of the market and market is saturated. In first case I'd work on supporting servers installed in plants, in 2nd case I'd support developers, cloud servers and local servers.

The manfucturing place seems more easygoing and I feel I could work with my leads better.

[Umfriend]

Now as your responsibilities, I think, won't differ to much between the two, if you expect growth in manufacturing , they're more easygoing and better leaders (leads?) and it allows you to stay closer to family and friends and you basically already got that job if you want it...I'm not giving advice but it sounds like that may be the better option. I may miss a lot of other considerations of course, but which?

On location, is where you are renting now closer in rents to the Manu or the App place? And how do you feel about the quality of life in bigger vs smaller city?

[UtwigMU]

Now as your responsibilities, I think, won't differ to much between the two, if you expect growth in manufacturing , they're more easygoing and better leaders (leads?) and it allows you to stay closer to family and friends and you basically already got that job if you want it...I'm not giving advice but it sounds like that may be the better option. I may miss a lot of other considerations of course, but which?

On location, is where you are renting now closer in rents to the Manu or the App place? And how do you feel about the quality of life in bigger vs smaller city?

I live 1h from App place and 2h from Manu place. Manu place is 1h from App place which is in Ljubljana where I have family and friends.
Manu place will be cheaper to rent. I feel living in slightly smaller cheaper town is better. On typical day you go to work, lunch, supermarket and maybe gym or walk. Small town is OK. If I need anything in big town it's 1h drive or train ride away.

[Umfriend]

I got that the wrong way round then. Have you reached a decision yet or is there anything else you want to address in the brainstorm session?

[UtwigMU]

Based on cluster**** at work I think getting out sooner is better so I'm leaning towards Manu.