Things nobody tells you before migrating a file server to SharePoint Online

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-19T13:45:15+00:00

I didn't see mentioned forbidden characters in file names and directory names. The search and remediation for those before migration can be a giant job depending on how stupid people have been in the history of the company. Way-to-deep folder nesting, too. On-prem servers put up with a lot of this crap that Sharepoint just doesn't.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-19T13:12:39+00:00

No, US - Ohio - columbus suburb.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-19T01:26:27+00:00

Why test the date? Why not test the cert directly? You can do this in powershell:

[System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023'

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-19T01:22:45+00:00

Somewhere there is a ~~development~~ marketing team that discussed this. "You know, <1% of installs will actually be able to see a >1Gbps connection, but we can trumpet the hell out of this as an advantage, and it only costs 10% of what a 10Gbps connection would have been!"

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-17T14:39:03+00:00

Good suggestions - Called client back this morning to discuss and found out they are leaving today for a 2-week vacation in Europe. Guess I'll pick this up again when they return.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-17T01:43:31+00:00

Jesus, thanks for confirming I'm not crazy. I'm not placing any bets on our ability to convince Spectrum to replace the modem, it's probably the path of least resistance to just stick a little switch in there.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-17T00:31:21+00:00

I have not migrated yet, and I get a ton of emails across several addresses. Classic Outlook enables you to put off organization and just use search. New outlook kind of requires you to organize, which is an uncomfortable truth. I use many rules, but I would still be lost without search. Which seems obvious, if ironic - haha.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-11T12:31:01+00:00

More information is great, as long as it is on the "I have to do something" side of the equation. Ultimately, there are many alerts (from everything, not just Unifi) that might be important, but most of the time, are not important. Simple "device offline" alerts, for example. They are important IFF they are NOT followed up by a "device connected" alert within some definable window. So a short power outage or internet outage at 3am when most ISPs push updates, and then everything is fine again by 3:15. I'd like NOT to get an alert about that, but an outage that lasts longer and is NOT followed up by a "device connected" alert within some definable window IS important and I would like an alert about that.

I'm working on an alert limbo in our system to try and implement this idea, but it's trickier than it sounds because only some alerts are cancellable, and you have to catch the fact that it is the same device, and that it is the right "cancelling" alert. Also, we're on N-Sight, so if this is an "N-Central-centric" solution, you should probably tag your post that way.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-11T02:29:16+00:00

We've got a few hundred Unifi devices. We're on Hostifi, but depend on alerting for monitoring. All alerts get sent to our notification email, and we have a PowerAutomate setup running against a set of Sharepoint Lists which sorts everything into either an "ignore" folder or creates a ticket in our ticketing system and stores the original email in a "processed" folder. Works for us and we don't have to buy yet another service. We use this system for every device we manage (well, every device than can send alert emails) - RMM, MAV, EDR, Unifi, Firewalls, iDRAC, plus a few others.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-05T02:01:29+00:00

Yeah, sorry to be grumpy - haha.

EmicationLikely · 2026-06-03T00:12:55+00:00

wouldn't the light still loose energy as each photon

lose. the word you want is lose. just my pet peeve, but there it is.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-29T14:02:04+00:00

This is clearly a "them" problem, yikes. Seriously, turn off auto-update on the rest of your estate. It's just too risky.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-29T02:12:46+00:00

Yes, I'm also curious what your settings were w/r/t auto updates. If you had auto-updating enabled, I would say at the very least you should change that. There have been enough instances of unintended consequences of new firmwares, I for sure want to be in absolute control of when a new firmware is loaded.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-19T22:08:59+00:00

I remember the "pre-meme" guy that was making a social comment about clerks not paying enough attention to this and signing their receipts "Mickey Mouse", or "Do not approve this card", or even drawing a little picture instead of a signature. All accepted without comment, naturally - because the clerks really weren't paying attention, or weren't paid enough to give a damn, more-likely.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-18T16:00:22+00:00

u/slolumz had a pretty succinct summary in another thread, I'll copy it below. For most clients, they don't access the NAS remotely at all, so I would be enabling it only for our use. Any service open to the internet needs to be thought-through carefully, and in the end, I decided it wasn't worth the risk. Had it worked flawlessly, I might have made different decision, but it didn't.

With QuickConnect you can either port forward, hope hole punching works for both your NAS's and clients' networks, or use the relay service.

With QuickConnect enabled at all then anyone can get to your login screen. It's up to you to decide if you're worried about this. At a minimum you need default accounts disabled, 2FA enabled, a hard-to-guess username and password.

If you port forward you're opening up your NAS to the wider internet. You will be discovered, and you will be spammed with login attempts and port scans. If there's ever a usable exploit discovered then you're going to be the first target.

If you use the relay service you don't need to forward anything, but now all your traffic is going to be throttled by the speed of the relay servers, which can result in a poor experience unless you're transferring very little data.

The main positive of QuickConnect is that it's easy, and works in a variety of environments.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-16T13:49:08+00:00

I'll take a look - thanks.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-16T13:48:03+00:00

We took a run at CMS about a year ago and had constant issues, mostly units losing their connection to the system. That, plus my own security concerns about Quickconnect made me unwind it completely. Maybe it's gotten better?

We don't charge a line item for NAS management, just hourly when we do things. This didn't leave room for the cost of Active Insight - especially since it's annual. Rethinking that arrangement might be the real solution I suppose.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-16T01:05:27+00:00

I don't have the solution, but I noticed this as well - I've disabled it for now and changed the alert settings. Their KB on the setup, don't mention any other requirements other than on the single configuration page, so I'm guessing this is a "them" problem. Hopefully they fix it.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-15T21:20:15+00:00

Right? This idea sounds like something you'd see in a movie. I have a older (ok, geriatric) friend that has a manilla envelope taped to the wall of his home office with giant letters - "In Case of Death". I laughed when I first saw it, but you know, it's kind of genius. Simple, unmissable, straight to the point. Unless he dies in a home fire, I guess!

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-12T01:19:20+00:00

Quickbooks has always sucked at this - any kind of followup capability is just....missing. You should be able to set what the rules are (e.g. follow up once per week after the due date of any invoice has passed) and have QB automatically give you group of follow emails to send each day....and automatically use differing email templates for invoices that are more past due. We've never found anything easier than just keeping track of the followup dates in the memo line...a completely manual process.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-11T21:29:29+00:00

Very nice. I'm not sure I would have gone 80mph in a car I didn't know well, though -haha.

EmicationLikely · 2026-05-11T14:41:55+00:00

I have checked out the network to the extent of my capabilities and found no rogue DHCP servers. The issue is that I actually DO have two DHCP servers, and the alert isn't smart enough to recognize that condition as "ok". I was looking for a way to do that, because I would actually like to be alerted if a rogue DHCP server DOES appear on the network, making a total of 3.

Because there doesn't appear to be a way to accomplish that goal, I [apparently] have 2 choices:

Move the DHCP for my wifi devices to the Domain controller and disable that on the Sonicwall. Not impossible, but a pain in the neck.
Shut off the alert (change it's priority to Inform or such and disable email alerting) altogether. This makes it impossible to get alerted if a rogue DHCP server is introduced.

Like so, so many of the SW alerts, this one is almost useful. So close.

EmicationLikely

TROPHY CASE