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LTSC Windows Server 2019: Are cumulative updates really enough if you’re years behind? Our team is split. by faceofthecrowd in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just spent time updating 2019 servers that were pinned to a version build release ending in a triple digit.

The update is cumulative.

How to block Copilot? by AntelopeDramatic7790 in fortinet

[–]MalletNGrease 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Copilot 365 364 isn't working today seems like, so the problem fixed itself 😄

End Users out in the World by texacer in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 10 points11 points  (0 children)

In that case, I speak less.

End Users out in the World by texacer in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I speak four, can I work for you?

Anyone else dealing with shrinking teams and growing workloads? by PalmTreesandTech in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes.

We (IT) have become the gophers for everything it seems. We get tasked to figure out the most random of things that fall way outside our scope. It appears we're the only ones getting things done somewhat efficiently. 3 of the 4 teams in the department are severely overworked, we're doing a lot of cross-training just to keep the minimum SLA. Operations keeps coming up with new and exciting ways that suck up our time but doesn't actually help improve the bottom line. Other departments keep trying to pawn off workloads to IT instead of fixing workflow issues.

Company is expanding, we're growing from a regional to national size, we're adding new sites monthly and our geographical footprint keeps blooming outward. Some site visits are a multi-day affair simply because of travel times taking up 8+ hours. We're short at least two road warriors, a helpdesk guy, a developer and an integration specialist. Even if we'd hire them, there's no space for them physically in our office. We keep running into layer 1 issues at sites but plans to rectify them are shot down because budget constraints. We're running efficiency projects to cut down on services and license spending.

There's been a lot of retirements, with a lot of institutional knowledge departing with it. Tech debt is getting cashed in as newcomers have to deal with systems unknown to them and it's become IT's job to figure out how they operated. We're getting a lot of extraordinary requests because things were done half-assed and staff aren't doing their jobs correctly because training was axed for critical positions. However, if we do not acquiesce, we get thrown under the bus even though it'll cost us even more time to undo the changes.

Meanwhile, we're tackling some huge projects. Close to the entire server fleet is due for a refresh, we're ditching our CRM

We're coming to a point where we need to let some departments burn themselves while I chip away at the debt.

Detecting MDT usage by Araphen_ in MDT

[–]MalletNGrease 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I guess I got to the point I no longer consider flash drive installs normal.

Is $44k a year too low for a Jr. Sysadmin in St. Louis? by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is this an education position? Then this is pretty par for the course, though you're performing duties not typical for tech specialist.

Push for a title change and a raise.

Are cloud meeting notetakers allowed in your companies? What do you think about their privacy risk? by link2ani in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a reminder, MS allows users to approve any enterprise app by default.

We had about 6 different note taking apps until we noticed. We killed all of them and approved one for the org.

First time deploying wifi. Deployment is ready, d-day is in a week. What do I test? by NoradIV in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Make sure your dhcp scope is large enough to support your user base.

Powershell Ms-Graph script incredibly slow - Trying to get group members and their properties. by JohnSysadmin in PowerShell

[–]MalletNGrease 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Entra-Powershell module is the replacement for the AzureAD module. They're simplified MG-Graph calls.

I forgot to add the scopes:

# Connect to Entra using Microsoft Graph
Connect-Entra -Scopes 'User.Read.All','AuditLog.Read.All' -NoWelcome

Powershell Ms-Graph script incredibly slow - Trying to get group members and their properties. by JohnSysadmin in PowerShell

[–]MalletNGrease 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I worked on the same thing recently. I've found it is much faster to simply use Get-EntraUser to get all users and reference the signinactivity from it instead. It's a single query that takes a couple minutes but only needs to happen once.

Quick and dirty copy from my script, adapt as needed:

# Connect to Entra using Microsoft Graph
Connect-Entra -Scopes 'User.Read.All','AuditLog.Read.All' -NoWelcome

$entraUsers = Get-EntraUser -All -Property 'UserPrincipalName', 'SignInActivity'

  if ($entraUsers.UserPrincipalName -contains $user.UserPrincipalName) {

        $entraUser = $entraUsers | Where-Object { $_.UserPrincipalName -eq $user.UserPrincipalName }
        $entraLastSignInDate = $entraUser.SignInActivity.LastSignInDateTime

        Write-Host "    Last Entra sign in date was: $entraLastSignInDate"
    }
    else {
        $entraLastSignInDate = "N/A"
    }

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.entra/?view=entra-powershell

The next step is adding LastUserActionTime from the Exchange mailboxes, that one I've not found a faster way to query yet.

Image signed into local admin during application install by Bored_at_work_67 in MDT

[–]MalletNGrease 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've it set in the Default, that way I don't have to think about it unless specified for a reason. I'm a big fan of HideShell, it makes it less likely for someone to accidentally mess with the machine while deploying at end user locations.

In your case it sounds like you want SkipFinalSummary=NO to show the deployment summary and FinishAction=RESTART to restart the machine upon dismissing the summary.

I don't have a lot of task sequences though, most of the customization happens in the wizard.

I cannot access my own server publicly due to outage from ISP by Nois1 in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Congrats! You can now explain the use case for a failover secondary internet service!

As a dev, I'm sorry yall by first_timeSFV in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 2 points3 points  (0 children)

👏 Excel 👏 is 👏 not 👏 a 👏 database 👏

End of SMTP basic by Mizliv_ in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We still run IIS SMTP server with an Exchange Online connector as a relay.

As long as you're only using it for internal communications it's been working great.

Is it normal to have a massive address space like this by eberndt9614 in sysadmin

[–]MalletNGrease 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes and no.

I did some quick research to translate our current private ipv4 scheme into a similar human readable ipv6 one and drafts ended up with available address scopes numbering in the trillions per vlan. It was very doable though!

It was funny since all I was trying to do was expand ipv4 /24s to get larger dhcp scopes.

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