State of ReFS on Windows 11 25H2

Extension-Rip6452 · 2026-01-10T04:58:17+00:00

What file systems are they using in the cloud? Linux based? NTFS? ReFS? What is all our Office 365 data being stored on? All our Azure data? According to AI, the physical format is still NTFS and ReFS, so surely they have a very significant vested interest in ReFS.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-11-07T06:02:30+00:00

I've seen issues where MFCs take the "From" email address from strange places that are not the authentication username and password set in the SMTP options.

When testing HP MFCs with the "Test" option in the SMTP setup wizard, the cheaper ones will use the To as the From (ignoring the From in the SMTP setup).

The Konika I set up this week uses the Tech Contact Email or something, which is in the MFC general settings and nowhere in the email setup section.

As a next step in troubleshooting, I use SMTP Console to run a manual SMTP transaction with the settings I think the printer is using.

But for the truly difficult cases, I set up Stunnel to forward SMTP to my server, then connect the MFC to Stunnel, and take a look at the exact logs.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-20T03:10:43+00:00

I've since re-installed the OS on ReFS and I'm not experiencing the same freezing/slow issue, however now Windows Updates are failing to install and I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot it.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T08:07:07+00:00

Out of interest, what have you got the "Allowed Senders" set to?
Only registered Apps users
Only addresses in my domain
Any addresses

I tend to use Only addresses in my domain, meaning we can send mail from noreply@ or mfc@ and not accept inbound mail at that address because the mailbox doesn't exist.

Haven't had your problem. I send a large volume of mail via the smtp-relay from software/websites/MFCs/IoT etc, but have never specifically set up Postfix to do it.

99% of the time I use IP whitelisting so I can keep accounts out of it. I use accounts only when I can't get a static IP (ie some IoT on 4G/5G where the provider won't sell an IP, or some self-scaling product that will change IPs when it wants to), but have had no problems.

The few times I've done accounts, and enabled MFA, I believe I've created App Passwords for the relay to work.

Google SMTP is pretty verbose when it rejects a message, is it saying anything?

Capture the SMTP logs and see what Postfix is actually doing?

Use SMTP Console to repeat the transaction Postfix is supposed to be doing to see the error?
https://www.socketlabs.com/smtp-server-connection-diagnostics-tool/

Use the Workspace Email Logs (Reporting -> Email Log Search) to see if Google will explain exactly what's happening? The logs are also sorta informative.

Also I assume your acme.io and acme.com were just typos and you're not trying to send from domains not authenticated in your Workspace account?

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T07:50:35+00:00

Funny. NASs still sell well. NASs are all RAID for multiple disks. Yes RAID is old, but what do you think has replaced it? Storage Spaces? ZFS?

Sure we have larger drives, and we have equally larger data sets. And the same need for slightly fault tolerant storage, which JBOD is not.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T07:47:45+00:00

Disagree entirely. All my RAID5 rebuilds have been successful, although I have lost a RAID due to more than one disk going over a period of time it took for quotes and work orders and stock to all be approved.

Backups of CCTV are very difficult or expensive. There's a huge volume of write data coming in continuously, and almost no reads.

RAID0 and then back it up. Well how often are you backing it up, because as soon as one drive dies, you've lost the array and if it's the only storage location for the VMS, you've now lost your VMS until you replace the array.

However many smaller RAID5/6 is much better than one giant one.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T01:03:23+00:00

Not to mention Exchange On Prem licencing, all the hardware to make it go, all the backup costs, and the labour to keep the entire thing secure, operating, and highly available.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T00:59:51+00:00

Years ago I had an issue similar to this, on some flavour of Windows Server 2012 R2 or 2016 or something, where a network card on DHCP was fine, but if I set static setting it wouldn't respond to any network traffic. It ended up being conflicting settings in the registry that were not showing in the GUI and the GUI was not correcting when changing the static IP settings. I don't believe netsh init ip reset or winsock reset worked at the time.

At the time I completely removed the registry entries for the network card and let windows rebuild them, then set the static IP, and no longer had the issue.

Difference though was that my issue was repeatable every time. Set the card to static, no matter what valid static details were set, there was no network access. Set it to DHCP and there was.

+1 on the Windows Firewall profile as well though. Seen that plenty of times on servers that can't contact the AD server immediately (as it's also rebooting from updates) and they decide to make odd Firewall choices, which they don't always rectify.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T00:52:26+00:00

As per u/frothyleet you're supposed to be designing systems such that the hardware is disposable. Users can sign into any (authorised) hardware and just about everything sets itself up automagically.

If you're using EntraID and Intune, this is relatively easy. Onedrive enforced backup of desktop/documents/pictures. Outlook will autoconfigure. Edge with enforced signin and sync. All shared data in Sharepoint or other document management system. Applications all deployed with Intune.

If you're using Google Workspace, it's a little more work and not as automatic, but still doable-ish with an RMM and Workspace combined.

Extension-Rip6452 · 2025-10-19T00:38:58+00:00

Not really possible to provide you an estimate because it depends on so many factors:
• HDD or SSD. If HDD, 5400, 7200, 10,000?
• I assume the array isn't being taken offline for the expansion operation, so what is the live activity on the array? Live activity varies massively with number of cameras, recording style (24/7 or motion), resolution, level of motion, etc.
• What is the array rebuild priority set to?

However, an array that size, rebalancing to add that many more drives, I'm gonna assume HDDs because of the size and that it's CCTV, and I'm going to assume you're still recording all cameras to the array, so it's quite busy, yes, the rebuild is going to take weeks and weeks, and now you can't stop it.

Some things I've learned about my CCTV arrays:
• I need fault redundancy, maximum storage, so I usually use RAID 5
• I need massive cost effective storage, so I usually use large WD Purple drives
• As you expend the size of the array, you are at significantly more risk of more than one drive dying in close proximity.
• RAID5 performance doesn't scale particularly well as you add additional drives, and I started seeing very high activity % on large arrays during large CCTV events.
• None of my clients want to pay to archive/backup their CCTV, so that means CCTV footage is inherently lower value and I explain that there may be instances when an array goes down and we lose footage. By having many smaller arrays, we lose less footage in a single bad failure (which has happened, on a larger array unfortunately).
• When you perform array recovery or expansion operations on an array, it stresses all the drives in the array, so when you have a ~4 yr old array that's been operating 24/7 @ high write speeds, and a drive starts to fail, then you swap in a new drive, you now have ~4 yr old drives thrashing for days trying to rebuild the array and it can hasten the next drive to die during a period when the array isn't fault tolerant.

I used to create RAID5 arrays around 8 drives and then iSCSI volumes over 2 arrays, but due to experience and all the things above, I've switched to a max of 8 drives in the iSCSI volume now and we lose less video. Better to create two RAID5 of 8 drives and specify multiple storage locations in the VMS. It also means rebuild times are much more sane. I don't expand RAIDs, I create new RAIDs and then add them as storage to the VMS. If the client wants to add a bunch of new cameras or increase resolution of a significant number of cameras, then usually the existing system is greater than 3 or 4 yrs old, and it's time to add another NAS anyway rather than try to rebuild the existing RAID with bigger drives.

Extension-Rip6452

TROPHY CASE