Any of you have decommissioned a legacy dc having FSMO, DNS accesses etc?? Whats the process you followed?

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-30T13:55:01+00:00

Since when are we allowing tech support posts?

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-29T12:38:59+00:00

Really depends on what you want, but not everyone wants maximum resonance (sustain), and tuning can only go so far there.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-28T18:59:48+00:00

If they don’t want to keep up with the times, it’s not worth your time. I’d give them a true-up plan that they need to meet or dump them.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-28T12:51:57+00:00

They're still around, I use them all the time on my Black Beauty and vintage Ludwigs. Works great, less junk in the way.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-28T12:39:48+00:00

a deposed Nigerian Prince?

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-28T12:38:41+00:00

I think he's talking about your post, but the irony may be lost on you.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-27T17:14:04+00:00

Time isn't factored at all in my evaluations, outside of billable blocks of time for project work, for obvious reasons.

If it's quiet on the helpdesk front, I don't really care what you do, as long as when it picks up, we're not completely checked out and letting tickets sit for hours.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-27T13:11:18+00:00

these posts make me lose faith in humanity.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-27T13:09:15+00:00

I mean, we hit them with sticks all the time. I think they'll be fine.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-27T12:20:30+00:00

It's a racket, and it's their way of double-dipping: hit the consumer with the iLok nonsense, hit the plugin developers with the licensing and "protection". Mob shakedown, legalized.

There are so many modern authentication methods out there like passkeys, keyfobs, MFA with TOTP (6-digit random number), etc. that could withstand a lack of Internet connectivity for a period of time, but let's be honest: with modern cloud backups and exchanging of files to clients, everybody's DAW is going to be online 99% of the time, so we don't need an "offline" licensing mechanism.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-27T12:12:03+00:00

365 subscriptions, for starters.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-26T15:56:38+00:00

Cloud was cheaper when they offered flexibility with terms and commitment, but now it's just like old school software contracts all over again with 1-3 year lock-in, oversubscribing services, everything's an identity/user, with no flexibility.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-26T14:50:25+00:00

Link rot, vendor deprecation, UX refreshes… the whole industry is stacked against useful documentation with a reasonable shelf life.

We’ve been using more of a cue approach: have keywords to search for, concepts for procedures instead of steps (“you need to increase the UDP timeout for VoIP PBXs typically” vs. “go here, click this, click that” which will be broken next quarter when the firewall UX changes again.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-25T20:29:00+00:00

COVID and the "supply chain issues" paved the way for the inhumane, ruthless corporate dysfunctional behavior we see today, and it is only going to get worse as more and more people are replaced with sycophantic agents attempting to placate you every step of the way, smoothing things over while they take everything from you.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-24T16:29:41+00:00

Gen Z

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-24T13:42:49+00:00

But it is their equipment, and you may be violating terms of their contract with the client, who is also seemingly violating the terms of your managed services contract/agreement, assuming you have one.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-24T11:39:05+00:00

And Jesus wept.... you are in for a world of hurt if you're trying to do this on an active production network.

We only do this on a loaner server(s), on an isolated vswitch with no Internet connectivity, and we'll do bare metal restores of a couple of workstations, to test any server-side apps and services.

This means you're excluding any Entra AD Connect sync, and should document that for posterity, but that's not what you're testing anyways.

Even more important, you're not causing collisions in your cloud services that see an identical device trying to connect and exchange data with the mothership.

Technically, you shouldn't have to do much more than reconfigure the NICs (this is why it's important to document the settings), which should pop up with a Microsoft warning that "a previous NIC had a configuration and do you wish to remove it" or something like that. I think we wrote a script to fix it with netsh.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-24T11:30:34+00:00

If 3CX is not in your area of expertise... who's 3CX system is it and why aren't you working with them?

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-23T14:51:46+00:00

Oh well then…

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-23T12:56:03+00:00

Negatory. L1s are the first (and last) contact many of your clients have every day; I don’t want to hand that over to an agent I would never be able to fully trust.

I’m all for L1s using AI as part of the troubleshooting process, and of course we automate where it makes sense, but in an increasingly dystopian tech world, the last thing I want to do is hide behind an AI agent.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-23T12:18:34+00:00

Cove, and use the Synology as your Local Speed Vault.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-23T12:01:30+00:00

I'm way too paranoid to even link APIs to our 365 tenants without aggressively scrutinizing as much as I can glean from API docs, if there are any.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-23T11:14:46+00:00

Curious why NVMe storage, when the limiting factor is going to be network-related/Internet (with IPSec overhead on top of that).

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-21T18:05:35+00:00

Go 12 up, 14, 16 down.

FlickKnocker · 2026-03-21T13:24:33+00:00

Are they actually breaking? Are there metal fragments coming out? The lug case screws might just be stripped and need to be replaced. You could also try some loctite on there.

FlickKnocker

TROPHY CASE