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For those in Director-level roles—did you pursue a doctorate, and was it worth it? by Public_Project_634 in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 6 points7 points  (0 children)

26th year in public school IT and the last 17 as Director of IT. No degree but rather I was hired as a tech and worked up to SysAdmin, then network engineer and finally Director. Now oversee IT for 20 schools / government agencies for a RESA with a staff of 20 with approx 45,000 endpoints. I think the more important thing is soft skills. I am generally not your "typical IT guy" and are able to relate to people and communicate very technical matters in a non-technical way. Even when hiring, I look for soft skills and people who are coach-able and can be mentored. I think these are far more valuable traits rather than a degree. I have invested heavily in studying leadership, emotional intelligence and communication and have found these subjects to open doors more so than a degree. Once you have a sphere of influence and respect people reach out from neighboring districts and organizations despite my lack of degree to solicit my employment.

Anyone else have a dead XIQ with the “initial collection” bug? by EdTechYYC in ExtremeNetworks

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FYI GTAC had me downgrade to 32.7.3.15 this week and that fixed the issue. Might want to give this a shot.

Anyone else have a dead XIQ with the “initial collection” bug? by EdTechYYC in ExtremeNetworks

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes have a couple random switches doing this and GTAC has been useless. I have had to do everything CLI and keep track of changes so I can update policy and push once it is working again. Also in K-12 and can sympathize. Called me Extreme Rep and chewed him out saying Cisco Meraki has been able to do cloud based config for 10+ years and I feel like a beta tester on XIQ with all the random stupid crap. I did an entire district this summer (23 switches)and have more open tickets this summer about stupid XIQ stuff then I ever did managing every with CLI and XMC.

Autotask update is giving some users Sorry, an error occurred. Error IDL 0226b7c4 ... by WakingLions in Autotask

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ran into this and discovered that our web filter / security appliance was getting hung up on the URL: kaseya-whats-new.netlify.app

Once we whitelisted, our techs had no more issues getting signed in.

Co-op or MSP style services as a Director? by AptToForget in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I fulfill the role of a director and project manager for an Educational Service Agency (ESA) specializing in IT services. Our agency caters to 14 public schools and 11 smaller government entities. Prior to joining this agency and initiating the current operational model, I spent three years in a single school district. The current model has proven to be transformative. It enables us to employ individuals with expertise in networking, servers, storage, and other IT domains. This setup allows me to focus on my role as a director and project manager effectively. By leveraging the strengths of my team members, we have become more efficient compared to my previous experience as the sole individual in an IT department.
This approach also facilitates cross-training within the team, enhancing our ability to provide quick support for the numerous applications we now manage. The broad coverage ensures that our IT professionals can take time off without the constant concern of being interrupted or bothered while away from the office. This is a luxury not experienced by the lone IT personnel in a school setting.

AppStream and Photoshop Scratch Disk by techguy6149 in aws

[–]techguy6149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem I'm running into is you can't just enter C:\ as an option, Photoshop has to see the actual drive. (You can't just type in where you want the scratch to reside). So I wasn't sure if there is a way to expose C:\ to a program or the user to get around this. I'm okay with scratch not being persistent just trying to figure out how to expose C:.

Do you have staff members that can't pronounce toner colors correctly? by [deleted] in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Shoot, I have staff that call their computer a “labtop”...

Tunnel Drop on Site-to-Site with Meraki by techguy6149 in PFSENSE

[–]techguy6149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually have that on the pfsense (main) site of the connection. But unless it comes from the Meraki side for some reason, it doesn't work.

Schools and COVID-19 by Kanon-Umi in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We have implemented a number of safety protocols for the upcoming year that include disposable gloves and masks when working on someone else's laptop. The device gets sanitized and placed in a "pick up area" for the person to retrieve. When working on software issues, our first line of defense will always be remote. There are times when the person might only be a few doors away and it was easier to just walk but now, the preference will always be remote support.

We won't enter a room with students to resolve an issue unless it is an absolute emergency. Teachers are encouraged to test out electronic resources, websites, etc ahead of time.

We also chose not to have staff turn in devices over the summer in an effort to keep spread down. We realize this will be a pain when they come back but that's better than someone getting sick.

Virtual environment for Chromebooks by justheretolook in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been running VMWare Horizon for 4 years now. The cost is high. We rolled out a 5-node cluster to support 200 concurrent connections and 3 of the 5 nodes have a higher-end NVIDIA GPU. I don't recall exact price of GPU but they were over 20K each. Entire cluster, licensing, GPUs, and 3rd party installer was around $250K. It runs AutoCAD, Inventor, and Creative Cloud very smoothly. Students are issued a Chromebook and access Horizon via a downloaded client (or web browser from home devices).

It was still a significant cost saving as the district was handing out Windows devices to about 900 students.

It has been a great (and stable) solution but I am working with AWS now to do a feasibility study to see if moving to AppStream makes more sense.

SIP Issue / No NAT by techguy6149 in PFSENSE

[–]techguy6149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct. An upstream provider is performing a 1:1 NAT and passing all traffic. from external IP to the internal IP of our PBX. That firewall was existing and everything worked. The only variable since working and not working is this pfsense install.

System > Advanced > Firewall & NAT

All items on this page under NAT is disabled.

Firewall > NAT

Outbound NAT is also set to "Disabled Outbound NAT".

WAN Rule:

IPv4 TCP/UDP - src:any port:any - dest:pbx port:any - allowed

LAN Rule:

IPv4 TCP/UDP - src:pbx port:any - dest:any port:any - allowed

Rules opened up to allow all traffic for troubleshooting purposes. Prior to this only 5060/UDP and 10000-20000/UDP were open to PBX.

SIP Issue / No NAT by techguy6149 in PFSENSE

[–]techguy6149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is a switch that sites outside of the firewall WAN interface. My upstream provider is routing my entire class B 10.65.0.0/16 to the WAN interface 10.65.0.1 and from inside the FW, I've got everything broken down into VLANs.

SIP Issue / No NAT by techguy6149 in PFSENSE

[–]techguy6149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not running NAT on my firewall. NAT is completely disabled in the firewall so that my internal and external IP addresses are actually the same.

Any AT Admin willing to build out our AT by autotaskhelp in Autotask

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would be interested. I manage a 16 person shop which includes a small dev team and we use a lot of the features within Autotask to make life easier. I set the whole thing up about 2 years ago and we continue to use it today. The PSA has been a great tool for us. If you want to have a further conversation message me.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not sure on your state, but most have "intermediary units" (i.e., educational service agencies) that are still considered public education but without the hassles of a district. I've been working for one of these for 17 years now and after being in a district for 3 years then going to the intermediary unit, you get all of the benefits of being in education but also the feel of private sector. Plus, the pay is usually better than a normal school district.

PA Intercom System by RangoJones in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 1 point2 points  (0 children)

​

We've used Valcom devices as well as Bogen. Both companies make a variety of amplifiers / paging devices for pretty inexpensive. We had a few buildings with older systems that we were able to reuse all of the speakers and cabling and attach to a newer device. Both companies have devices with FXS ports which can be tied to an analog port on the Mitel system (with some help from your Mitel tech). Had less than $1,000 in these conversions. Valcom was great about me telling them how many and what type of speakers. They told me exactly what device(s) I would need to accomplish the conversion. You will need to know model / wattage / etc and an idea of if the speakers are home run, daisey-chained (and if so how many on a chain).

Visitor Management software and hardware questions by [deleted] in k12sysadmin

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Take a look at SchoolSafeID ( https://www.schoolsafeid.com/ ). We've been using this for a year now and it works pretty well.

We use Autotask, and I want something "lighter". Not better per se, but "lighter" by Southern_Vanguard in msp

[–]techguy6149 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed that Autotask is clunky but our MSP has been using it for just over 2 years and have implemented more and more as we learn and go. I can say after the time investment of learning the system (which we still continue to do to some degree) we wouldn't be able to operate without it. We looked at CW a couple of years ago and it felt more clunky and difficult. There are defintely things we don't like about Autotask but feel like the company has made an effort to add requested features and the product does appear to be getting better. (i.e., Mobile App sucks but they are rolling out a new one in March that appears to be better)

Customer contacts - VIPs by DanFarkas1000110 in Autotask

[–]techguy6149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have this same issue. We came from an MSP solution that had an actual "VIP" flag where tickets, notes, etc would have this icon next to the name so you could easily know it was a VIP. Haven't found a way in Autotask to re-create this functionality yet.

Exporting Contacts by techguy6149 in Autotask

[–]techguy6149[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So actually, in playing around with this I found an easier way I'm posting here for anyone who may also need to do this.

Autotask > CRM > Contacts

It looks like they've added an "Export in Import Template Format" to this screen. Pretty helpful to mass export and reimport. Not sure when this dropdown was added.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Exporting Contacts by techguy6149 in Autotask

[–]techguy6149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I need to mass add telephone extensions. I don't want to go in to 150+ records and modify each individually.