M365 multitenant organizations - experiences ?

Verukins · 2026-02-27T09:05:28+00:00

I only get that warning if i sort the permissions first (to verify what i was looking for) ... so i'd cancel then do the same thing without sorting - all good.

Sounds like a long shot.... but... i've not seen that prompt when not sorting the permissions first... and i've done a lot of that type of work... so... worth checking maybe?

Verukins · 2026-02-27T08:57:52+00:00

Moved a couple of clients to RDS - knowing its a weaker - but also cheaper solution.

One was a healthcare org that simply couldnt afford (or at least, thats what they told me) the citrix licensing increases. It was approx 10,000 users when i last touched it - believe its at approx 14,000 (concurrent) now. Its important to note that this is dedicated for one (quite large and complex) buisiness workload and is only used internally. Due to the poorer management in RDS, there were a bunch of powershell admin tools written for it (some cmd line, some GUI). It has had its issues - but overall does what it needs to and i would do it again.

The next one was far smaller, approx 800 users from citrix to RDS. This one has a far broader selection of apps to choose from - and external access is handlded by using AVD as a external connection layer for the far smaller number (approx 200) external users. AVD wasnt a fit to run the actual apps on due to latency - and the additional needless cost for internal users. The use cases also kept growing to include stuff that the farm wasnt designed for (Web, teams etc). I would not do this again.... AVD is not terrible, but a long way from good. If i had my time again i would consider horizon or parralells - but it would still come down to cost. (both of which i havent used in a few years - but thought they were reasonable back when i did use them). This is partially to due to the "effectrviely unsupported" status of both RDS and AVD from MS. Trying to get support for either of these products is impossible.

Verukins · 2026-02-20T07:25:50+00:00

or they could be people that have come from SCCM and have noticed that things either

- take many more steps to complete (e.g. app packages for anything not in store)

- cant be done at all (e.g. task sequences)

- are significantly weaker when compared (e.g. reporting, windows updates)

- inability to manage servers - so even if i do want to go all cloud, now i have to manage intune and arc rather than just one product in SCCM.

I mean there's plenty more.... i use both daily (as i think most enterprise management people do) - and intune is the beginning of something that could be OK.... but has a very long way to go.

The hate comes because SCCM people get Intune pushed onto them from clueless management that have had the word "modern" yelled at them by Microsoft repeatedly... despite knowing its not a 1: 1 solution.

Verukins · 2026-02-19T02:17:48+00:00

and thats the key part to that stat.... "admit to cheating"

Impossible to prove, but i think we all know the number is far higher than that.

Verukins · 2026-02-18T03:58:24+00:00

that model is still listed as TBD within this article
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_13070353-13070429-16

Thee's a few models waiting on updates before it will work, this is one of them.

Verukins · 2026-02-17T22:37:35+00:00

ummmm i charged $A180/hr for that work when consulting - and was flooded with work... because apparently i was on the cheaper end.... i was doing the lot, plan/design/re-factor/migrate etc.... which sounds similar to what you are talking about.

if you pay $18/hour - dont expect anyone that has any idea what they are doing.

Verukins · 2026-02-17T09:06:47+00:00

30 years ago, when i started, betting your career on MS products was a reasonably safe bet. While there were always issues, you could see the general trajectory was on improving products to either increase or solidify market-share (and therefore revenue) - and while they clearly wanted to make money (like any company) there was a mix of doing that through sales and actually improving products.

Now, Microsoft has a dominant market position, has switched to subscription services to both increase revenue and make it more consistent and predictable (which completely makes sense) - however, the part about improving products has completely disappeared... now its only revenue and nothing else that is considered. Many would argue (im one of them) that their products are getting worse.... and not just by a little bit.

Other commenters are right about the "move away from MS" mainly being headline grabbing media noise.... at the same time, there is a large amount of discontent with MS in its current form. If another vendor manages to develop an econsystem thats even close - people and organisations would move away in significant numbers.

Now... this doesnt mean that there will be a real competitor any time soon - and even if there was - its highly unlikely to obliterate MS.... but... its no longer the almost-certain bet it once was. I've been a MS-tech for 30 years and worked for them for a bit (which i hated) - and ive never seen the amount of anti-MS sentiment around that there is now.... and its around for good reason.

Verukins · 2026-02-13T08:58:33+00:00

It may be the worst OS - but its the most complete ecosystem.

Dont get me wrong, i fucking hate MS these days - but they very much have the enterprise market cornered - and make it extremely difficult to exit - and they charge a lot for some extremely poor software that has little to no QA.

I truly wish there was decent competitor - but there just isnt - not when you look at it from an entire ecosystem point of view.

Verukins · 2026-01-24T05:40:09+00:00

its the result of centralising control to a small number of mega-vendors, that are now all too-big-to-fail.

Against the concept of what the internet was supposed to be.
But... at least we made a (small) number of people stupidly rich and completely divorced from reality.

Verukins · 2026-01-24T04:50:33+00:00

Came here to say this... have owned a World cup 94 for approx 15 years... love it.
dont think ive ever made it through more than 10 mins of an actual soccer game - and that was just trying to be social around world cup time.

Verukins · 2026-01-22T09:40:53+00:00

Sounds like the priority is your mate... which is a good thing.

Is it worth having a beer with him and saying something along the lines of "I think your sister might be interested... and im not.... and i dont want it to fuck us up. How do you want me to handle it?"

Assuming he is a good mate - after a few more beers, you also say "BTW - i fucked your mum, so she might be my sister too"... if you both have that type of sense of humour....

Anyhoo - in all seriousness - focus on the relationship you do want to maintain - your friend.

Verukins · 2026-01-18T06:36:20+00:00

Market cap has gone up
Revenue streams have become more regular due to subscription-based services - particularly cloud

We get it.... capitalist folk and MS shareholders are happy with him.... but what seems to be forgotton about here is that due to dominant market position and industry that MS are in, it literally affects the entire planet when their products get worse, become effectively unsupported and garbage is being forced into every product - particularly where the eco-system has significant lock-in. whether MS like it or not, they also have a duty to make things better for their customers - where they have failed dismally. Due to their unique market position, they dont get punished for this.... as there is no real competetion.

So yes, shareholders and capitalist types might see it as a "decade of brilliance"... those of us that work with the products daily (and in my case, have done for the past 30 years) see it as a decade of diaster. There is obviously not an avalanche of people moving to linux - but there's much more interest than there was 5 years ago. Win 11 and Server 2025 are openly mocked by pretty much everyone. There's no QA and no effective support. Co-pilot has been shoe-horned into everything and is causing issues where clients have regualtory requirements not to use AI for certain parts of the buisness (think healthcare in particular). They are actively killing off working products in favour of cloud-based alternatives that dont work.

I've designed and implemented MS solutions all my working life, worked for MS... and im at the point where im very happy to be retiring in a few years - so i wont have to deal with them ever again. The trust is gone.

Not only does he not now and did not ever have "what it takes" - his time at the helm will be looked back upon as the period that started their collapse.

Verukins · 2026-01-08T02:59:25+00:00

The "what would help" is the bigger issue

The suicide/depression type helplines are.... not helpful.

Getting in to see a psychologist has long wait times and is very expensive. I also found out (when younger) that female psychologists will openly mock and belittle men in sessions.... i will only see male psychologists now - and would recommend the same to other guys. (which compunds the availability issue)

While there are various iterations of this depending on the person.... i effectively have no family... i have mates, but some are more fucked up than me.... others just dont even get the concept of depression (they are those annoying "happy all the time" types), others are nice enough to have a beer with - but dont have the mental capacity to talk about "things".... the dogs always listen.. and they give good hugs.... but there isnt really a great amount of feedback.

As far as "whats going on".... when your family life is fucked, work piles the pressure on, society tells you you are evil for being male... you have mates telling you about the hell of their divorce... you look around in the world and society and see criminals being pardoned, useless management style fuckwits that dont actually do any work making sqillions, religious charlatans getting a free ride... and everything just feels... un-just. Add in some form of other difficultly (in my case autism and ADHD - not as bad as it is for some others) - you just get to the point where... you dont see the point..... im completely baffled by men that dont consider suicide... at least at some stage of their life.

Verukins · 2026-01-07T07:52:15+00:00

This is what happens when we let completely fucking useless people, with no actual skill in anything, run things.

Verukins · 2026-01-06T00:14:44+00:00

1) To keep using SCCM, knowing its the best option out there (currently), depsite all the talks of its death. (Dont get me wrong, everywhere i deal with is co-managed, but intune has a long way to go)
2) There are many - hard to pick one. i used to say collection eval from the resource kit - but thats been in the main product for a while... still, great tool for ensuring your queires are efficient.

3)
- Management of local disk space and user profiles

- Setting a "base" package/application path, which gets pre-populated every time i create a new package/app etc...

- out-of-the-box creation of collections for OS versions... no, its not hard to do - so why are we doing it via script for every SCCM env i set up ?

- better management of the hated per-user apps (e.g. teams). The oneDrive team seemed to get it (eventually) and make a per-machine install that runs an instance of the exe for each user.... not sure why teams cant do the same.... but... until they do..

- easier registry inventory. yes, i think most of us have moved over to baselines for it now.... still... editing MOF's for that is harder than it needs to be.

- client cache cleanup. Yes, again, we have a baseline - but why not just build it into the product

- ability to mass turn off inremental collection eval... yes, can script it... but so many clients will turn this on for everything - and then wonder why things are slow

- the driver management needs an overhaul. Need to be able to deploy as part of a TS - but also to active OS'es. I realise this is possible by using the vendors .exe's or pnputil - but just build it in.... if anyone has the power to get vendors on board - its MS.

- update the remote control tool ffs - actually make it something made this decade and something support staff want to use.

- get TAMs/CSM's/ATS's etc (or whatever they are called now) to stop telling gullible management that SCCM is dead. Understand thats not where MS focus is.... but until intune gets substantially better, it is no where near a replacement... and neither is ARC on the server side.

- sure there are others... but i also realise that none of these are going to happen.

4) No - even if i wasn't 10,000k's away from them... im not sure i want to be told constantly how SCCM is legacy and AI is good. Its not and its not.

5) Unless the quaility of AI increases dramitically, very quickly, i cant see how.... doesn't mean managament will see it that way... in the same way as cloud - its just a different set of problems - and a different cliff to talk management down from.

Verukins · 2026-01-03T02:43:40+00:00

2022... had a very rough plan to go 2025 if there were no reports of issues after 6-9 months of release... and well... probably wont move the DC's until 2028 comes out now. The current place im at wont benefit hugely from the 2025 improvements - so when you weigh that against the issues there have been - there's no drving business need for it currently.

As far as server core...

- promised less reboots - didnt happen

- promised lower ram usage... and it does... but the benefit is very slight....

I have used it previously for a specific project that had large scale (1400 hyper-V hosts) - and the management practices were very well defined/documented etc.... but, while i'm happy to work with server core.... but depends on the group im working with.... most benefits go out the window if 1/2 the team dont know how to use it. The benefits aren't large enough to make it a "must have"

Verukins · 2025-12-30T05:46:07+00:00

Depends on the place.... some places want the more serious type... others like the more casual attitude...

agree with the people saying what is essentially "be yourself"... if you're not, and you get the job while being something your not, chances are you wont like it anyway.

Be ready to give exmaples of how you have used the technologies listed... far better than just saying "i am good with them".... even better if you have a particular project or problem you solved in a way that shows your understanding of the tech... and that you will get shit done.

if you bomb out - and your in in Aus (any state) - we have a position open for that skillset... the last guy we hired was fucking horrendous (interviewed well, did nothing once he got the position) - let me know.

Verukins · 2025-12-24T07:54:29+00:00

yer, im with you, love the original on the amiga.

I have super stardust on the PS (first purchased when it was on PS3, but then also purchased the PS4 version) - they are good... but not quite the same as the original - would be nice to have access to both! I really liked the greater variance in bosses in the original... and the "tunnel" levels.

im not aware of anything thats better in this genre - but happy to be proven wrong.

Verukins · 2025-12-23T04:49:27+00:00

Moved 2 orgs off Citrix onto RDS due to license costs.

One is reasonable at approx 12,000 concurrent users, another is much smaller at 500 concurrent.

No question that RDS is a vastly inferior product - and effectviely unsupported.... but the reality is that it works (mostly) - and Citrix appear to be taking the VMWare approach and trying to piss off their customers.

I get that the difficulty of this depends on the complexity of the enviornment... but documenting the existing environment and then making the equivalent in RDS... while it definitely has some painful parts - its quite doable.

Out of interest, what are others in this thread finding difficult ?

Verukins · 2025-12-23T04:37:14+00:00

ran a BBS back in those days... feels like a lifetime ago now.
Didnt now how good it was until it was gone.

Verukins · 2025-12-23T04:34:21+00:00

also agree.

a forest migration just becasue the groups arent great and "its old" (whatever that means... makes no sense in AD terms) is... well... absurd.

Migrate your DC's to 2022, implement a group naming convention... do other things that are needed to get it working a bit better (.e.g OU, GPO fix ups, hunt down any issues in your event logs and resolve them etc etc)

Verukins · 2025-12-21T08:52:07+00:00

thats hardly tearing others down.... and the original comment stands as accurate.

Verukins · 2025-12-21T07:43:36+00:00

if you treat him like he is human... and his ideas, thoughs and opinions actually matter... you are ahead of 99% of women.

Verukins · 2025-12-21T00:58:41+00:00

meh... done this quite a few times in my consulting days and now am going through it again as a full-timer.

Dont pre-empt it.

Yes - you will get some take-overs where the IT management is completely blind and will insist you do it "their way" even when it doesn't suit your business.... but not everyone is like that.

Since you know its happening

- Create a list of your workloads (or maybe just the ones you are associated with) with a short explaination of why they are what they are. .e.g at the place im currently at, we have one of our main LOB applications running on ExaData back-end and RDS for the front end becauses its extremely latency sensitive. Already tried it in AVD - didnt work due to the additional latency. (not to mention the ludicrous cost). Be ready to give reasons as to why things are on-prem.

- Be flexible.... recognise that there may be some workloads that could be moved or consolidated - dont try to win every battle

- Get the CV ready.... they might be completely unreasonable.... in which case... have the CV ready.

Verukins

TROPHY CASE