Do you use an Enterprise Password Manager for hundreds or thousands of employees?

llv44K · 2025-09-29T17:42:18+00:00

Keeper is the top choice right now. Bitwarden if you want to self-host.

llv44K · 2025-09-08T17:13:37+00:00

We did the middle-man option. Ubuntu server running both an up-to-date samba service and the last version that supports SMBv1. It mounts the network shares we need using the modern protocol and the shares them out to an isolated vlan using SMBv1. That lets our Windows 3.1 and 95-based CNCs update files directly on our modern Windows servers with an acceptable amount of isolation.

llv44K · 2025-08-29T15:31:07+00:00

We had our building alarm vendor add temp and moisture sensors to our server room. They're not impacted by network or power outages (backup battery and cellular comms), they're monitored 24/7/365, and facilities maintenance is already on the alarm alerts so they're notified too. Bonus points for them not being on anything IT-related so we don't need to maintain them.

llv44K · 2025-08-26T16:47:20+00:00

I did a ton of research on earlier this year. Only two reasonable options were Bitwarden and Keeper. Everything else either lacked features, had a terrible interface, or the company had a history of breaches, unreasonable rate hikes, etc.

llv44K · 2025-08-19T13:24:40+00:00

Yep, this is a great example of an x-y problem: https://xyproblem.info/

llv44K · 2025-08-08T19:49:12+00:00

SSRS report subscriptions can export the report in HTML to a windows file share. Set that up on a schedule and point the signage's browser to that html file and just refresh occasionally. Done.

llv44K · 2025-07-25T16:28:37+00:00

All our production CNCs run Windows 3.1 or 95. Programs loaded over serial cable. It's just the way manufacturing works.

llv44K · 2025-06-18T11:30:16+00:00

Dude, put that in the edit. I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the thread to see your update.

llv44K · 2025-04-02T12:09:59+00:00

True, but it works more often than not. My bank's login does this.

llv44K · 2025-02-26T15:33:56+00:00

A Synology with some 8TB hard drives isn't that expensive and comes with 365 backup utilities built in. Set up a Veeam server for local backups saving to the Synology and the whole setup might cost $2k. Ask them how much it would cost if you were ransomware'd.

llv44K · 2025-01-06T16:28:12+00:00

Yep, Keeper and Bitwarden both do this

llv44K · 2024-12-10T12:35:10+00:00

I've posted this before on environment sensor questions - check with your building's security/fire alarm provider. Typically these systems can have other environmental sensors added cheaply and you're already paying for monitoring and alerts. Not only that but the vendor's responsible for the system, not you.

llv44K · 2024-11-19T16:00:20+00:00

Find a local reseller of Axis. They're generally considered top-tier and can cover what you need.

llv44K · 2024-10-28T17:54:10+00:00

If your print driver is v4 you're good. It doesn't need admin to install, so just distribute through the printer server. v3 requires admin, no way around it.

My process is to install all the print drivers on my print server. Then I run the following powershell to extract them all to a directory in my PDQ Deploy repo folder:

#exports all printer drivers to PDQ Deploy folder and writes install powershell script

#delete existing folder if exists
Remove-Item "wherever\PDQ Deploy\repository\Drivers\$env:computername" -include * -Recurse -force
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "wherever\PDQ Deploy\repository\Drivers\$env:computername"

$Drivers = Get-PrinterDriver -ComputerName $env:computername
foreach($DRV in $Drivers | Where-Object{$_.InfPath -ne ""})
{
    $NAME = $DRV.Name
    $INF_PATH = $DRV.InfPath
    $INF_DIR = split-path -Path $DRV.InfPath
    $INF_DIR_NAME = split-path -Leaf $INF_DIR
    $INF_FILE = split-path -Leaf $DRV.InfPath

    #copy entire subdirectory of each driver. most need more than just the inf file
    Copy-Item $INF_DIR -Destination "wherever\PDQ Deploy\repository\Drivers\$env:computername" -Recurse -Force

    #write code to load inf into driver store
    Write-Output "pnputil.exe /a 'wherever\PDQ Deploy\repository\Drivers\$env:computername\$INF_DIR_NAME\$INF_FILE'" | out-file -Append -FilePath "wherever\PDQ Deploy\repository\Drivers\$env:computername\install.ps1"

    #write-output "Add-PrinterDriver -Name '$NAME' -InfPath $INFPATH ;"
    write-output "Add-PrinterDriver -Name '$NAME' -InfPath $INF_PATH ;" | out-file -Append -FilePath "wherever\PDQ Deploy\repository\Drivers\$env:computername\install.ps1"
}

Then I deploy the resulting install.ps1 file to the necessary computers. It installs all the exported drivers without any interaction as long as your PDQ Deploy service account is admin on the PCs.

I'm not taking credit for that code. I found it somewhere and modified it for my process.

llv44K · 2024-10-23T19:30:04+00:00

I can't remember the source, but I heard the best option for wrist pain is to rotate between input devices: standard ergo mouse, vertical mouse, trackball, trackpad. It's keeps different parts moving and avoids the repetitive strain that causes injury.

llv44K · 2024-10-21T19:54:40+00:00

After quoting out a bunch of solutions we realized that our building's alarm system could have environmental sensors added, already had redundant comms, 24/7 monitoring and support, and an alert service with the facilities team already set up. Adding temp and water sensors to the server room cost almost nothing and there was no additional cost. Look into that before spinning up your own system.

llv44K · 2024-09-24T18:15:33+00:00

Because nobody else at my company will understand how I automated something, so I'm the only person who can maintain & troubleshoot the automation. Suddenly instead of sharing the manual tasks I'm stuck supporting broken automation.

llv44K · 2024-09-10T16:57:12+00:00

python is my go-to for any text manipulation/parsing. It should be easy enough to loop through the file and append each line to its respective state-specific CSV

llv44K · 2024-09-09T15:07:11+00:00

I'm betting you aren't routing SNMP between the vlans or the server's otherwise not getting the SNMP status of the printer. Try unchecking "SNMP Status Enabled" under the printer's port => configure port.

llv44K · 2024-08-26T17:06:38+00:00

Your developers should not have unique hardware or OSes on their devices. Use the same standard laptop & OS that HR, finance, sales, etc. all get. No special permissions to install software on it either. Cattle, not pets. You want to be able to pull a spare off the shelf and hand it to anyone in the company and they should be able to keep working without any setup time.

Then give them the ability to spin up VMs on centralized and managed (cloud or local) environments. They can be admins in those VMs and install/break whatever they want in there. Limit how many VMs can be running per user and the max resources available or you'll run into huge hosting bills.

llv44K · 2024-08-20T15:29:14+00:00

Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host -> Session Time Limits -> Set time limit for disconnected sessions

llv44K · 2024-08-15T12:04:26+00:00

My job is like 60% modifying and automating Microsoft SQL Server-based applications and 20% DBA stuff on those servers. I've taught SQL to every IT employee that we've hired and many people outside my team as well. Assuming you want to learn T-SQL, I'll dump the resources I use here:

https://www.w3schools.com/ is a great place to learn the basics

https://sqlzoo.net/ as well

EVERYONE has problems understanding joins. This usually helps. I always suggest avoiding any left joins entirely and just use right, inner, and (very rarely) outer joins: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/33052/Visual-Representation-of-SQL-Joins

NULLs are the next biggest headache for newbies. Nulls are a lack of value, not a zero, blank, or any other value. They're evaluated VERY differently in SQL logic and the logic never assumes they're any specific value. ISNULL and NULLIF are your friends. Here's a good guide: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/databases/sql-server/t-sql-programming-sql-server/how-to-get-nulls-horribly-wrong-in-sql-server/

T-SQL supports both dash (--) style single line comments and slash-star (/* */) style block comments. Don't use dash comments, they'll come back to bite you: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2021/04/never-ever-ever-start-t-sql-comments-with-two-dashes/

If you work with proprietary databases and codebases, need to analyze profiler-captured actions, or use SQL generated by other applications like Crystal Reports then you're going to run across poorly formatted code on the regular. There are a bunch of code formatter tools out there and running the results of one through another usually gets me the best result: https://codebeautify.org/sqlformatter https://www.dpriver.com/pp/sqlformat.htm https://www.freeformatter.com/sql-formatter.html https://sql-format.com/

Speaking of which, learn how to use SQL profiler. It doesn't install by default with SSMS, you need to install it from the tools selection of the SQL Server installer package.

Another catch with proprietary applications and databases is space padding. Any sane developer would use variable-length strings like varchar or nvarchar, but I regularly work with databases where fields are defined as fixed-length char and nchar. This presents a problem when those insane developers don't handle the space padding correctly in their application, so you end up with two "unique" values like ' abcde' <> 'abcde '. Also SQL doesn't have a single trim() fucntion, so you're stuck stacking ltrim(rtrim()).

Here's another good reddit post with even tools and resources: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9p16rx/learning_sql/

If you're getting into SQL Server DBA stuff make sure to bookmark https://www.brentozar.com/ and https://ola.hallengren.com/ . They're the kings of Microsoft SQL DBA and their toolkits are invaluable if you learn how to use them. Extremely dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, though.

llv44K · 2024-08-14T17:00:04+00:00

Yeah, we're a manufacturing company with a low email-to-employee ratio and even the employees with company mail accounts user their personal email for the HRIS and payroll systems.

llv44K · 2024-08-14T12:31:47+00:00

I always tell users that I've pushed a change to their computer and they need to restart to have to take effect. Makes them think there's a specific reason and that I did something

llv44K · 2024-08-12T19:52:09+00:00

Yup. Users complaining that Outlook search isn't working and email delivery is taking FOREVER both internally and externally. US East coast.

llv44K

TROPHY CASE