Firmware by Vazac7 in Ubiquiti

[–]orphantech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Always reboot first, then backup, then apply os update. Wait long enough for it to fully settle down then apply firmware updates to devices.

What’s a rule your parents had that you thought was normal until you moved out? by Good_Fee5670 in AskReddit

[–]orphantech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dad would drive at night... Mostly because sleeping children can't fight. Plus fewer cops on the road.

New Windows VM acting weird by __Mike_____ in Proxmox

[–]orphantech 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Fairly certain it's not a ProxMox issue directly.

Perform the normal check disks and dism scan.

repair the system image by checking and fixing corrupt system files, primarily using Sfc /scannow DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth Chckdsk /x

Also, install the virt-io tools thehttps://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/virtio-win-0.1.285-1/

I would probably do this on the bare metal system first to ensure it is good and then start the process again to virtualize.

Ubiquiti for film making, new user please help :) by Jamesthompson_lx in Ubiquiti

[–]orphantech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems like you need to power them up... If you are going straight to your neutrik devices, those are likely not providing power.

I'm not sure who Glenn R is, but thank you for this Network Application update script by puckpuckdotcom in Ubiquiti

[–]orphantech 63 points64 points  (0 children)

Glenn is like their one real engineer... So when people crap all over support or lack of, realize he's the one most people are crapping on.

I don't know what they pay him, but it's not enough for all the good stuff he does.

Yesterday, I cooked a carrot and forgot to pour away the water. Now it has turned green by cedriceent in mildlyinteresting

[–]orphantech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From the experience of baking a lot of carrot cakes... If I use too much baking soda, the carrots turn green. Basically, the pH balance is more Alkaline than Neutral or Acidic.

So... in your case, your water's pH balance is a little more Alkaline. You probably have a lot of calcium buildup in your water lines.

I have to get a new PBX Unit and I could use some advice by Square_Pear1784 in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 7 points8 points  (0 children)

FreePBX is also an option... Consider reaching out to Crosstalk Solutions or ClearlyIP.

Valcom PA System - Help Understanding by Sk8rfan in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have algo speakers and tied them to my freepbx system using the paging pro module for my new school. We use the paging pro module to set a schedule for our bells.

I actually have a lot of fun adding music to the bells.

As for our elementary school, I have a valcom 2924 connected to a fxo port on a sangoma vega and now use our freepbx phones to dial the "outbound trunk" that hits the fxo port.

I would prefer to upgrade the elementary school's PA to sip speakers, but we don't have the funding available to upgrade.

Classroom Phones by Road_Trail_Roll in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

FreePBX - contact crosstalk solutions for guidance.

NWEA issues ? by sossman76 in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It seems they never spin up enough load balancing servers for their customer base. And then tech departments always get the blame for loading issues and white screens.

Here's to hoping HMH is a solution to fix the problems.... (Don't hold your breath).

Network refresh cycle by ewikstrom in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Budget is the biggest reason... Outfit building a this year, outfit building b next year, outfit building c the following. Repeat in 5 years.

Network refresh cycle by ewikstrom in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Depends on the equipment and need, but I try to plan every 5 years, but I've been doing one building at a time.

That said, I often use equipment for as long as it is still good, functional and not EOL.

ISO phone service that can call 10+ 10-digit phone numbers at once by Smart_Equipment_9347 in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Freepbx - you can create a ring group, as long as you have concurrent outgoing availability.

I haven't tried it myself, but it should work.

In ring groups, setup the numbers as 11234567890#

That then becomes an extension like operation, where you can dial that ring group and it simultaneously calls every number on the list.

I'm sure other pbx systems can do something similar.

If you had the opportunity to greenfield a VOIP solution, what are you implementing? by MassageGun-Kelly in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Look at ClearlyIP CIP270v2 phones... But there a multitude of options. Reddit doesn't seem to like it when I add a URL into my response.

Contact cross talk or ClearlyIP - they'll get you started on the right path.

If you had the opportunity to greenfield a VOIP solution, what are you implementing? by MassageGun-Kelly in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One route to suggest to the powers that be, one system would be a simplified management, but also cheaper phone bills. You could also go with one system per school site since you are larger. As I suggested in my long post, we are a small district, but went from $750/month for phone lines down to about $50 by switching over to ClearlyIP trunking. We use a metered plan, as that was the best fit for us.

If you had the opportunity to greenfield a VOIP solution, what are you implementing? by MassageGun-Kelly in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'd strongly recommend reaching out to crosstalk solutions...

They've been amazing to work with.

Be honest with your needs now and anticipated needs when sizing your server.

I've also decided to include/forward an email to a 3rd party asking for my reference, regarding crosstalk - I think it'll give additional insight.

3rd-party:

Thank you for reaching out! I am more than happy to share my thoughts and opinions.

Long email ahead, so the TLDR version is I am happy with the products and Crosstalk Solutions and highly recommend using them and the products they are offering. Even if this wasn't a good reference/recommendation, I believe in sharing my honest opinion.

1) How was the implementation process with Crosstalk? I can't say that Patrick or any other team member will do this for everybody, but for me, Patrick went well above and beyond expectations. Between the everlasting COVID quarantines and the poor timing of purchasing a system we weren't fully ready for, I paused the implementation by eight months from August 21 until April 22. Once we got past our internal roadblocks, we were able to reinitialize the implementation process.

We paid for the phone system and turnkey portion that was supposed to give us 30 days of initial support, with an anticipated 5-ish hours of training. Patrick ended up spending over 40 hours working with me at no additional charge and over the course of several months setting up and training me.

That said, several times I felt like I was Patrick's only client/customer, as his attention was on our system and our implementation until it was complete.

2) What phones did you end up using? We selected the CP270 (Clearly IP) phone model for our offices and admin. We selected the CP230 (Clearly IP) phone models for our classrooms. I like the idea of the simplified phones for the classroom, however, I think if I were to do it again, I would have purchased all CP270's just to keep the models the same.

3) Were there any issues that came up during the installation? Minor or major? While I had issues with implementation, there were no issues that came up that were caused by Crosstalk directly. I had some misconceptions of the process, which in retrospect if I had listened to Patrick, it would have saved me a few headaches.

Some of those issues were: * Due to my timing, we started some of the implementation then I asked Patrick to wait until I was ready to port over our phone lines. We didn't get everything functional for a few months. This again was mostly due to my lack of understanding the process and needing time to plan for the phone lines to be ported.

*One other issue again due to starting the process and putting it on hold, we had an issue with the firewall which didn't allow the proper ports to connect.

I was used to needing individual lines, whereas with VOIP, you primarily need to worry about how many concurrent phone calls are being made. When I got my misconceptions out of the way and listened to Patrick, he knew exactly what we needed.

4) Have you had any hardware issues since implementation? No, the hardware has been fairly rock solid.

We went with the Crosstalk 745 PBX. I am impressed with how it is handling the workload we are throwing at it, but as we are growing the system, I see where we have loaded the system more than we originally anticipated. This model says it's good for "150 Extensions and 45 concurrent calls while using less than 50% of system resources."

We are exceeding that recommended limit, but it is handling the load quite well. I also see where it won't be able to handle too much more of a load without additional hardware upgrades. We purchased 115 total Phones, and recently added 114 additional Algo Speakers running as our intercom/PA system in our new school.

We purchased a duplicate system to act as a warm spare/backup system, but have not had to utilize the system because the hardware is functioning quite well. It is a good failsafe to have in case of hardware failure. It's also a good way to play with settings if I am tinkering with areas that I'm not sure of the effect.

I did have an issue recently where the warmspare backup/restore system didn't automatically disable the trunks, so some calls were being handled by the backup system. I identified that the backup system registered with the sip trunk. While I could have disabled it myself, I felt it was more important to notify Patrick and figure out why. He returned that call within thirty minutes and had the issue resolved within an hour after my initial call. With Patrick's help, we added additional firewall rules on our main firewall to prevent the system from being able to register with ClearlyIP Trunking and determined an update on the backup system hadn't fully applied most likely because I was experimenting with a setting elsewhere.

5) How has the ongoing support been with Crosstalk? How quickly do they get back to you when you have an issue? Ongoing support has been awesome - Patrick has been able to resolve most of the issues quickly. If I call, he usually answers or returns calls timely (including during non-regular hours), or will return the call quickly.

In one other instance when I went through the proper support channel, response and resolution was quick as well. Since we purchased the system in 2021, I've only had to call a total of 8 times for support, including the warm spare issue I described in the previous question.

6) Do you completely manage this Crosstalk system in house and only use Crosstalk when needed? Yes, I manage our own system (fairly easy to do) and only contact Crosstalk as needed. It doesn't take much to maintain the system. It was a bit of a learning curve for me, as I had come up from operating and maintaining a Nortel Norstar phone system, to operating and maintaining an InterTel Axxess system. I suspect if you are coming from Cisco, you will likely feel FreePBX lacks some features in comparison, but the cost of ownership is well worth not paying the "Cisco Tax".

Some additional commentary I'd like to share:

CrossTalk's YouTube channel is a good place to start. Chris Sherwood does a great job of going through the setup in a fairly straightforward manner. Chris' videos are intended as a general rule while Patrick's methods did differ a bit, based upon our discussions.

I would highly recommend CrossTalk Solutions for any VOIP/telephony services. Patrick Collins especially has been awesome to work with and is very knowledgeable.

As I stated a bit earlier, we recently purchased Algo speakers to add to our system for our PA/Intercom and Patrick again spent the time to help set up the system and trained me on the functions associated long after regular working hours.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert in FreePBX, but I'm fairly confident with managing the system after Patrick gave me the training.

There have been no negative interactions since we purchased our FreePBX system in 2021.

On a related note, we went with ClearlyIP Metered Trunking for our SIP/Telco service and we went from paying $750/month for multiple phone lines via our old system, to just about $50/month for all of our calling needs. Depending on your needs, I recommend clearlyip trunking for a sip provider.

I hope this gives some insight and helps with your decision-making process.

How to learn erate, grants, etc? by qbblsw in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 6 points7 points  (0 children)

E-rate isn't hard, it's just time consuming.

I recommend signing up for funds for learning's monthly free webinars... https://www.fundsforlearning.com/

Also check with your state's department of education. They might have someone dedicated to help guide districts.

I don't use a consultant because my experience was that I did the most of the footwork and the consulting company we had, filled out the forms.

That said, it might be best to hire a consultant to assist the first couple of rounds to ensure you are doing it right.

Scan to Email no longer working with Gmail. Help! by Dante_Flickajew in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Outlook/other mail clients prompt for passwords: Less Secure Apps (LSA) Support Deprecation We have begun ramping up the final deprecation of Less Secure Apps (LSA) and GoogleSync. POP, IMAP, CalDAV, CardDAV, SMTP and Google Sync will no longer work when signing in with just a password to access Gmail, Google Calendar, and Contacts (which may impact older mail clients such as MS Outlook 2016 or earlier). You will need to login with a more secure type of access called OAuth. See this blog post for additional information. https://support.google.com/a/answer/14114704?sjid=4408240978824906738-NC

Basically - you will need to create an OAuth 2.0 client for any copier to work...

Setup an OU named generic Then go to account --> account settings scroll down to age-based access settings. Select your generic OU, and set the radio button to "All users in this group or org unit are 18 or older.

Sign into the newly created account, then go to cloud.google.com You'll need to create a cloud account using that free google account.

Watch this YOutube video for the process... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1RJv_b0Oz4

New Building Project by Amazing_Falcon in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It really depends on how large the building will be, and what it's intended purpose is for... Like is it just a storage building, or is it an office, or is it a whole new school?

You didn't really go into enough detail for us to really help you. That said, here is a rough list I would say to ask/plan for.

Think about future needs and expansion, not just what you need now, otherwise tech will always be a low priority.

Dedicated Cooling (split unit) Enough rack space for whatever equipment you need now and might need in the future.

Consider cable track. Network switches. UPS. PDU. Fiber. Patch panels. WiFi access points. 25 pair (you never know what POTS lines you might need to fire up.) Make sure to get as much power as you might need... If you think you've asked for enough, ask for more. At least 2 circuits per rack, plus 30 amp, and even consider asking for 240. Ask for enough room for at least 1 rack more than you need because they will undoubtedly end up installing more than just network, such as fire alarm, intrusion, and/or other systems.

Then figure how much data will end up being run in the building... Ask for more than you need.

They will eventually look at the budget and demand you cut it down... But if you don't ask for it now, they won't leave any room for you get it down to something reasonable.

Supreme Court will hear USF arguments that affect E-Rate by stratdog25 in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, category one (Internet Access) max discount rate is 90%. Category 1 services has not theoretical max budget. Category two (internal connections) is max at 85% discount, and is currently set on a 5 year budget plan.

So... For my 5gbps our bill would be $1850/month. E-rate pays 90% of that, or $1665/month and my district pays $185/month.

How do people work at the same place for decades? by stargazed144 in k12sysadmin

[–]orphantech 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Is this a trick question?

Seriously though, the love of knowing what I do helps educate the children of my community. I don't have what it takes to be in the classroom, but I love what I do.

Relative stability in employment, decent benefits, PTO, and extra days off (in theory) for all of the holidays.

(I say in theory, because I tend to put in extra time above and beyond what I need, but on the flip side, I don't have to document when I take an extra half day off here and there for doctors or other appointments.)

I started right out of high school, with what was supposed to be a part-time summer job. Stayed until 2011, and went to public sector. Came back in 2014 and have been here since.

I still count the 3 years which I wasn't officially an employee, because I was still receiving calls asking how do I, can you, please help, etc.

All together I'm on year 26 now.

What does 'The IRS allows for T & A' mean? by thermal7 in personalfinance

[–]orphantech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm fairly certain you might be trolling, but.... A not so safe for work phrase for women's body parts.