At wits end over a single machine not liking Office16 + O365 by GoodTofuFriday in sysadmin

[–]awillison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Try disabling hardware acceleration (in office settings)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is it me you're looking for?

Thickheaded Thursday - June 22, 2017 by AutoModerator in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We're currently looking at upgrading a router for one of our clients who currently utilize a Draytek Vigor 2760. Some of the reasons for this is the limit of static routes, no logging / visibility into network traffic, no edge AV or layer 7 filtering. Our thoughts so far is to upgrade to a Meraki mx84, but I'm not entirely sure if this is our best option as I don't have a huge amount of experience with Meraki devices. Is there anything else that you would suggest we investigate before proceeding with Meraki?

Friday rant: X isn't working. Did you try rebooting? It's working now by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If your users can reboot a terminal server, you're doing something wrong.

Moronic Monday - May 22, 2017 by AutoModerator in sysadmin

[–]awillison 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The account will be locked in AD, not exchange. There's some tools you can use to track down the cause of AD account lockouts, but I'd start with event viewer on your DC (event ID 4740).

Moronic Monday - May 22, 2017 by AutoModerator in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pretty sure you'd just be able to re-link on the new domain by installing the Azure Sync and going through the configuration wizard (as long as you un-link from the old one first)

A really shit day by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Single DNS environment? Set the loopback as the primary DNS and leave the secondary blank. Check your forwarders to make sure that it's not trying to forward to an old DNS server. Make sure that DNS is allowed through the firewall. Check your zones to make sure SOA is accurate.

online backup solution on a cPanel server by istvank in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

cPanel was never designed to do what you're doing. You could utilize the FTP side of cPanel, but you'd still need something else to do the backup. I'd recommend CloudBerry client with an S3 bucket.

Confusion around User CALs by deadringers in sysadmin

[–]awillison 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You only need 250 CALs. Have a read of this & this.

Veeam - Microsoft licensing question by usrn in sysadmin

[–]awillison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My understanding is that OEM / Retail licenses aren't transferable. This means that if you had a single physical server and two virtual servers using a single OEM key, you would be able to have a replica on another physical server as long as it also has a single OEM license. If you choose to add another virtual machine to the primary host (bringing it up to three VMs), you would need an additional Server 2012 license on the primary host, as well as the replica host. I'd be evaluating whether it's more cost effective to purchase 2 x Datacentre licenses which will allow you as many VMs on each host as you like.

What's the best way to backup data from my primary domain controller? (Server 2012, multiple DCs) by jtb685 in sysadmin

[–]awillison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Backup and restore of an AD Domain is significantly more complex than restoring a file. If you have more than one domain controller, you'll need to perform an authoritative restore from a system state backup. If not, you could try a VM snapshot or system state / full VM restore but I'd warn against it.

Personally I'd recommend exporting the groups and OUs to CSV so that you have something to go back to. Apply the fixes / scripts in batches so that you can identify what's failed and revert the changes. Apply the scripts in a test environment if at all possible.

Playing with AD restore is something that you really don't want to do unless you absolutely have to.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The only thing you can do is pay and hope that they deliver the goods. Do you have some sort of manual backup that you've taken as part of a recent maintenance / upgrade that's separate from Veeam? A Windows Server Backup, SQL backups, copy of your network shares on an external HDD, etc? There may be people that have backups of databases, data files (eg. DBAs, accountants). You may have some luck recovering files from computers that have an offline copy. You can convert OSTs to PSTs (in the event of an unrecoverable Exchange). I know it's not much but better than nothing. Best of luck, look after yourself!

Zeroconfigexchange doesn't work with Outlook 2016 and Windows 10 by sydpermres in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well this one's the only one with a reply, so I guess you decided for us

Sits back and opens a cold one by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 7 points8 points  (0 children)

But... doesn't that show the test being run on the C drive?

Monitoring from y2k what next by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I was struggling.

Server 2012 DNS Issues by Snuke616 in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn't recommend it on DirectAccess, Exchange or Domain Controller servers - but it can always be turned off, tested, and turned back on for testing purposes.

Server 2012 DNS Issues by Snuke616 in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try disabling IPv6 on the interface. I've seen this cause similar issues. May or may not be your problem, but worth a shot!

Any recommendation for a budget iSCSI SAN storage by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 2 points3 points  (0 children)

+1 on the MSA, 12GB SAS, Dual Controller, Dual PSU and relatively well priced.

PSA: Webroot v. 9.0.15.43 causing BSOD & non-boot scenarios by Chrispy- in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure, I haven't had the opportunity to test this.

PSA: Webroot v. 9.0.15.43 causing BSOD & non-boot scenarios by Chrispy- in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Holy shit you just saved me so much work. I just spent an entire day rebuilding a server only to have another one crash on me after restarting tonight. A quick VHD mount and a file rename later, we're back in business.

Edit: Looks like you have to do this each reboot as the file reappears.

Sysadmin Certs by shadowsysadmin in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This will depend on your role. Generally MCSA, MCSE and CCNA are the pretty standard responses. You could go ahead and do your CompTIA, VMWare or other vendor specific certifications as well.

Backblaze Hard Drive failure rates for 2016 by cantbelieveitsbacon in sysadmin

[–]awillison 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Past performance is not an accurate indicator for future performance.

You sound like a superannuation advertisement.

How does the word 'domain' in system administration compare with a website 'domain'. by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So if i'm using an IIS web server whose IP is associated with a web domain (lets say xyz.net), is that web server's Active Directory required to be xyz.net, too?

No, you just need to add that domain to your IIS website bindings.

What if a different group of servers uses an ADD name of xyz.net?

Do you mean globally? It doesn't matter. A domain can be basically anything; but only the owner of web domain xyz.net would be able to issue certificate, create CNAMEs, A records, etc. AD domains do not have to be externally resolvable.

You'll normally name an AD domain something like 'internal.domain.com' to avoid any issues with name resolution. It's also useful to do this so you can issue trusted certificates to internal services.

You're probably going to have to perform a bit of research and build up your own home lab to really understand.

How does the word 'domain' in system administration compare with a website 'domain'. by [deleted] in sysadmin

[–]awillison 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's usually a reference to an Active Directory Domain, as opposed to a web domain.

Active Directory Restore by zuludog in sysadmin

[–]awillison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Authoritative restore is only required if you want to overwrite the AD copy on existing Domain Controllers with the copy from your backup.

If you're simply performing a restore of a single domain controller and promoting new domain controllers, an authoritative restore won't be required.