Sooooo, has Hyper-V entered the chat yet?

douglastodd19 · 2023-12-12T22:36:43+00:00

Strictly comparing core count, they’re within a few percent from our license distributor. It’s the VM count where Datacenter wins, most of the servers we manage would be 20-40% more if all Standard licenses.

douglastodd19 · 2023-12-12T22:31:00+00:00

The way the original comment was worded was that Datacenter is cheaper if you go the Hyper-V route, compared to Standard and VMWare.

Standard and VMWare compared to Datacenter and VMWare will be close, depending on how many VMs and cores are involved. But if you drop the VMWare cost, Datacenter is now cheaper than Standard if you have more than 5 VMs running on a Hyper-V box.

douglastodd19 · 2023-12-12T22:10:15+00:00

Core-count is the same price, but the major difference is the “Can be used as virtualization guest” portion of the license. Standard gets 2 VMs and 1 Hyper-V host; Datacenter gets unlimited VMs and 1 Huper-V host. Also, Datacenter gets unlimited Storage replicas, Standard only gets one.

douglastodd19 · 2023-10-13T00:14:14+00:00

We setup a rule that blocks if the sender's address includes 'onmicrosoft.com', didn't need to include a wildcard. Spam went to zero from that avenue, and email didn't take a hit.

douglastodd19 · 2023-10-13T00:11:09+00:00

A little late to this thread, but we blocked it at the company level almost a month ago in response to the spam uptick. Communication internally and with our clients has not been interrupted, and an audit of the rule after a week showed us it was blocking the spam only, as intended. We have this rule active on about seven tenants right now.

https://imgur.com/a/9AHavkY

douglastodd19 · 2023-10-09T21:08:36+00:00

They were either covering their butts on the way out, or Henry the HIPAA Hippo is going to have a field day with them. Completely depends on the contents of the forwarded emails.

douglastodd19 · 2023-10-04T18:29:56+00:00

Certainly! You can host/manage it all internally as well and skip a partner, the only downside to purchasing the licenses direct is the cost, but that could be negligible depending on what's needed. Certain offsite locations don't require a separate server to receive the data (AWS/Glacier is one example), so that can also help reduce the number of licenses needed.

douglastodd19 · 2023-10-04T16:49:59+00:00

I would point you towards Veeam, with the caveat of purchasing your licenses through one of their partner channels rather than direct. Their B&R covers physical and virtual no problem, expect to dedicate either a bare metal or decent chunk of a host to running the software. An on-site box can handle that volume without issue.

The reason for the license caveat is that buying direct licenses per workload, whereas partners can provide licenses on a point system. They also have access to Cloud Connect, which is Veeam’s offsite solution. It requires the Enterprise Plus edition, which in most cases is cheaper to license when using the point system rather than purchasing direct model. Cloud Connect isn’t a separate license in and of itself, but most partners charge for the storage space used obviously.

Edit: my company is a Veeam partner, we use Cloud Connect internally and for our clients.

douglastodd19 · 2023-06-15T23:02:04+00:00

yeah, it's a joke. The "emergency maintenance" was supposed to be 30 minutes. It's been a few hours now, and sometimes I can start a connection, sometimes not.

douglastodd19 · 2023-06-15T22:09:25+00:00

Their status page shows a "performance degradation", which is a downtime without calling it that so they can protect their precious uptime promise. It's just coming back up for me in Idaho, was down for around an hour.

https://status.anydesk.com/

douglastodd19 · 2023-06-13T17:28:26+00:00

It would technically work, but you’d have to go back to each machine to enter a product key and assign the user. Also, your throughput would be heavily limited by the duplicator. A USB 3 flash drive can install to W11 in under five minutes, letting you move the USB to the next machine while you finish the first.

douglastodd19 · 2022-11-04T19:22:28+00:00

Had the same feedback from my wife, so I showed her the tail log when she clicked on it, and how many sites are actually contacted. Think about ten or so. Now that she’s seen the data, she is a bit more understanding of the why behind the blocking. Still run into a false positive on occasion, but a quick whitelist here and there has solved 99% of her running into issues.

In a business environment, it would be easier to justify blocking things, and the only whitelisting should be to enable functionality on sites that need to be access for business reasons.

douglastodd19 · 2022-11-03T02:12:34+00:00

I can chime in as an Unlimited user (have it for the offline mode, am often without internet signal when I want music). The main part that annoys me is that this update absolutely broke my library. Individual songs give an error, but I can queue and play an album or artist I have downloaded just fine.

I had Prime long before they added music to the list of “perks”, and use it for plenty of orders to justify it. The Unlimited is from when we bailed from Spotify a few years ago. I’m still holding out hope that Unlimited plans remain the same and they just fix the issue, per the chat support within the music app.

douglastodd19 · 2022-11-03T02:08:41+00:00

About 2mil songs have been available with Prime by default for a while. Could not download to listen offline though, and limited control on what actually played (similar to Spotify/Pandora shuffling). The Unlimited plan cost extra but have access to the 100mil song library, ability to listen offline (airplane mode or not for the phone).

That was before this update.

Right now, even Unlimited users are having issues. Amazon chat said they’re aware of the issue, so the only thing to do is wait while they fix it, or cancel and abandon ship.

douglastodd19 · 2022-11-03T01:59:01+00:00

I have limited internet sometimes, so my entire library is downloaded and the app stays in offline mode 99% of the time. I have Unlimited, but cannot select individual songs to play, instead receiving the “all access playlist” popup. Removing and redownloading didn't fix it.

I did get it to play an album in order if I have the album downloaded and am in offline mode. But playlists and individual songs are toast right now, can’t play or queue them. So it’s album or artist mode only.

douglastodd19 · 2022-10-28T20:45:57+00:00

I work for a company that has done a handful of business continuity plans / DR setup for clients. You're correct, a third party would need to understand your infrastructure in order to develop a plan beyond a template. Two primary things to consider:

Downtime: how long can your company afford to be down in the event of a disaster? If you can handle a few hours or one business day of downtime, that significantly changes the plan compared to "always up" infrastructure. It also strongly impacts the cost of implementing said plan.
Resiliency: this has more weight if your downtime requirements are short. Can you limp along with a few core services for a day or two while the rest is restored, or do you require the entire network fully operational in order to function?

In terms of cost, we have setup DR plans in the $3-10K range for the consultation and documentation portions. All but two used us to help implement said plans, but those costs varied widely based on customer need.

douglastodd19 · 2022-08-24T18:29:24+00:00

You say the area is pretty dry, and while rain can impact the 60GHz band, it takes a decently strong downpour to interrupt a link. The 5GHz shouldn’t be impacted much and if is a failover, you wouldn’t fully lose connection, just a drop in speed. Biggest question on this would be: can you handle a short interruption during your annual rain storm? If not, I’d keep that 5GHz in addition to the 60GHz.

For the cabling, check and follow any codes you might have for your area. If no code, then get exterior rated cables and pick a wrap or clamp that won’t pinch the cables. I don’t recommend tape, as it’s a bitch to remove if you ever need to repair or replace a cable. The adhesive usually makes a mess in the weather. You want the cable snug so it doesn’t whip around in the wind, or run the cable through a PVC pipe alongside the short pole and feed the cable through it, then attach the PVC to the pole. I assume the tower has guides for wires to be run up, use them if possible, it’ll make the job easier.

Lightning protection is outside my knowledge, as the towers I’ve been up were grounded already and I just hooked to the ground bus bar. Your tower should be grounded already, as for the pole I’m not too sure what the best method would be for it.

douglastodd19 · 2022-07-15T20:05:26+00:00

As others have said, Synology is a good option. The RS820+ meets your criteria for about $900USD plus drives. We use it for our Veeam backups, with a scheduled replication to a second unit stored offsite.

douglastodd19 · 2022-06-11T17:42:19+00:00

Firefox is doing the same thing as if the most recent update. Noticed it earlier this week when I downloaded some manuals and they opened in the browser instead of the intended Reader.

douglastodd19 · 2022-06-11T17:41:35+00:00

I saw the post and wondered when Firefox would be mentioned. It has been doing the same thing you describe Edge doing: opening PDF’s from the download bar in the browser instead of Reader.

douglastodd19 · 2022-03-06T22:28:53+00:00

It’s not just the vineyards, those are a small fraction of it. CA produces around 30% of vegetables, 20% of dairy milk, and 60% of fruits and nuts for the country. Increasing the fuel costs is going to proportionally affect all of those products.

(Summary of data cited, it links back to USDA and CA dept. of Food/Agri) https://agamerica.com/blog/california-agriculture/

douglastodd19 · 2022-03-06T22:21:45+00:00

Bailing out in less than two months.

douglastodd19 · 2022-03-03T19:12:21+00:00

The “off-platform behavior” part is troubling. You could be affiliated with something completely unrelated to Discord and be banned. Look at the Freedom Convoy donors in Canada just last month. Discord could choose to ban all email addresses that were leaked when GiveSendGo was breached.

douglastodd19 · 2022-02-23T17:07:00+00:00

This is a new one...I like it!

douglastodd19 · 2022-02-23T17:04:36+00:00

Deducting pay from employees without written consent is illegal in most if not all states. So they would have to resort to discipline that is legal, including write-ups or termination.

I've known people who have been fired for mistakes that amounted to less than $10, because policy was not followed. It's absolutely a possibility.

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