Random Tech (or IT Work!) Fail

[Ratatapa]

We have a deal with a tech company where we buy the specialized services it's not practical for us to have our own people on top of since it's used so rarely (mostly firewall&security stuff), they have their own department dealing with licensings, and their own subgroup there dealing with MS since it tends to be such a fucking mess, when we get audited, we do all the main work, then have them come in and "proofread" before we send it off and help us deal with the inevitable comments and follow-up questions from MS.

Because make no mistake, there WILL be ungodly followup questions.

I know we are stuck with it since January

the issue is that the M$ shit guy says 'you have 7 days to send us the proof and then we will answer is max 5 days"

We send the files 3-4 days after then we wait. M$ sent us an answer 3 weeks later. /sigh

[Hellfury]

I know we are stuck with it since January

the issue is that the M$ shit guy says 'you have 7 days to send us the proof and then we will answer is max 5 days"

We send the files 3-4 days after then we wait. M$ sent us an answer 3 weeks later. /sigh

I feel your pain! I never truly understood the beef some people had with MS before I started dealing with those audits.

[Ratatapa]

After they told us we need a CAL for every device that access any windows servers (including printers) I gave up on M$ and will now look for a linux solution for AD and shit like that

[Cutriss]

A few years ago, I noticed that the Citrix server my counterparts in Quebec configured was set up with 8 GB of RAM, despite the server running a 32-bit OS. Nice job, guys.

Today, while doing a bunch of very overdue patch installs, I see that at some point in the last six months, one of them upgraded a SQL server running 2K8R2 Standard Edition from 32 GB to 40 GB. Literally SMH.

I'm looking forward to getting those fuckwits out of Domain Admins.

[Coren]

32-bit server OS as far back as 2003 Enterprise could support more than 4gb ram.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...8VS.85%29.aspx

Physical Address Extension (PAE) is a processor feature that enables x86 processors to access more than 4 GB of physical memory on capable versions of Windows. Certain 32-bit versions of Windows Server running on x86-based systems can use PAE to access up to 64 GB or 128 GB of physical memory, depending on the physical address size of the processor.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...its_windows_xp

Unsure why they'd do the other... unless they just had it laying around and it was close to being pegged.

[Cutriss]

32-bit server OS as far back as 2003 Enterprise could support more than 4gb ram.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...8VS.85%29.aspx

It was Standard Edition there too.

Unsure why they'd do the other... unless they just had it laying around and it was close to being pegged.

So, this cluster isn't exactly overflowing with RAM, so we don't exactly have it to throw around. Presumably someone got a complaint that the application running on this system was slow and they thought they'd throw more RAM at it.

Of course, since it's Standard Edition and already at 32 GB...throwing more RAM at it wouldn't do anything, and nobody bothered to circle back and check to see if whatever problem they had was solved.

The application in question may as well be built with Jenga blocks, it's cobbled together by a third party that barely knows what they're doing but we paid them for it and so by god they're going to support it (but not in any practical way).

[Rooney]

Our IT dept. just sent out an office-wide email informing us that we shouldn't be using company internet/wifi to run certain unmentionable programs to download files. I can understand people being dumb enough to try that at the office, but what kind of IT allows those programs in the first place?

[Byrthnoth]

My impression is that tor-renting programs are fairly difficult to block, particularly because many of them have evolved to defeat college campus attempts to control them. Is that not the case?

(I had to - to dodge the filter)

[Hellfury]

Part of the problem is that some resources use some kind of p2p tech as well for downloads/streaming etc. so outright blocking can be challenging unless you want to do a fair amount of whitelisting etc.

[Yabby]

My impression is that tor-renting programs are fairly difficult to block, particularly because many of them have evolved to defeat college campus attempts to control them. Is that not the case?

(I had to - to dodge the filter)

No, it isn't hard to block if you force all the traffic through a filter. That said, it costs a lot of money to do this without a TON of work, if you have the money it takes all of a few days to get setup and working. The best way to go about it tho is to not block it. You allow it through, but you track who is doing what. Then you send that nice e-mail to let them know you know what they are doing and they need to stop. If you outright block something, you are only giving them a chance to figure out a way around it, which there is always a way around if you can do trail/error.

Plus the e-mail allows you to show you told them to not do it, which if you just outright block and they get around it, they can still play dumb.

[Rooney]

Talked to a couple older employees, apparently there is no filter on internet usage at all. And IT has to take several network drives down for restoration a couple times a year because they keep getting infected.

[Yabby]

I don't know if that is your IT failing, or upper management. You would think if this happens that often, they would be able to get some funding to get a good webfilter, or at least put the fear of God into the staff that doing anything but company work = you are fired.

[Gustave]

One of our remote sites with their own internet connection and no filter gets hit a few times a year. The management there doesn't care enough to make a change. The main business critical software the use was/is probably written and supported in someone's basement. The first time it got crypto'd we were freaked. Called the vendor that supports it and they were like "yea it happens, we have a script to fix it".

[Ratatapa]

Client hire a company to redo their website, and they ask us to change the DNS.

OK NP we see on the DNS that www.domain.com is there and redirects to an IP, so we change the IP for the good DNS name

Website company call and ask at the end of the day why the site is still in 'maintenance' and they want us to give the mthe IP adress of the server.

In the end they tried to root the website to domain.com instead of www.domain.com

ffs people you never play with the domain DNS you always play wit hthe subdomain

[BerenTebogo]

Our IT dept. just sent out an office-wide email informing us that we shouldn't be using company internet/wifi to run certain unmentionable programs to download files. I can understand people being dumb enough to try that at the office, but what kind of IT allows those programs in the first place?

Just got one of those today at the fucking Smithsonian. That's some extra-special summer student shit.

[Arkanna]

Happy Sysadmin Day!

For the special occasion, I was gifted a stale danish (it sat out all night uncovered) which had been gifted to our inside sales department the day prior because SALES SALES SALES!

[Yabby]

Yea, been a great day.... one of my SAN controllers haven't come back up since preforming a systems upgrade. Nothing is down, but if i can't figure out how to get it back up from here... i will be driving 200 miles tonight to get to the site.

[Ratatapa]

Client built a new building, ISP doesn't go there for internet

lol

[orinthia]

I made the mistake of getting a rosewill brand 80gold powersupply for my friend's pc build, because it was at a great price (I think it was in a bundle, it's been about 7 months since the build). I later had to replace it since it was the root of a lot of problems when anything used any vid hardware, even the integrated intel stuff. Thank goodness for one-day shipping on amazon (evga brand 80bronze, had 4.5 star rating with a ton of good reviews on it, $40).

I nearly bought a new vid card instead since the issues almost went away when I took out the card and used integrated. I was still able to crash it on integrated in different ways on different games/tests.

Symptom was that the machine would reboot whenever the vid card was revved up for anything: full reboot with no bluescreen or crash log. Anything 3d did it and even a 2d window could be dragged around real fast and cause it too. Switching resolutions and quality settings at the same time would sometimes cause the reboot while on integrated but not all the time. With new psu, I wasn't able to replicate any reboot/crashes with a couple hours of tests.

I knew better than to trust rosewill; got burned again.

[bluefan]

My corporation deals with Oracle now, who bought out the company we initially were dealing with for our store registers. 50+ stores that do hundreds of transactions per day per register, most store having at least 2 active registers. Now before the company was bought by Oracle, they were fine to deal with.

But now with Oracles policies and procedures in the mix and combined with them merging some of the idiotic managers, it takes weeks now to say just replace a hard drive instead of days. Tonight I had to liaison between Oracle and my crew because the 'tards at Oracle didn't do their job during regular business hours.

And they still weren't done when I left at midnight....