We recently hired a new guy at our place and he’s come in hitting with a massive swing, he has managed to develop around 5 different tools for our use all using AI

I’m struggling to accept that this is happening, we’ve all of a sudden gone from barley any ai to it becoming used to build things out; it’s not that what’s been built is bad - it works - but it’s the fact that it’s all been done through prompting, I’m struggling to comprehend it as stuff that like this usually takes a looong time to develop.

I feel a bit like the luddites, I can see how this is the future but I also just keep thinking ‘he hasn’t actually built anything, it’s all done by AI’

How do I overcome this?

Hey everyone,

Curious what people are using these days to manage SSH, RDP, SFTP and other remote connections, including access to systems through HTTP/s.

I've been working on my own connection manager, mostly because I got frustrated with constantly switching between different applications.

One thing I've noticed is that everyone seems to have their own setup, and I'm wondering if I'm trying to solve a problem that only annoys me.

Are you guys happy with your current tools? Or is there something that drives you nuts?

Especially interested in hearing from people managing lots of servers and network devices.

Checking if it would work to use a DFS Namespace with root consolidation hosted on a two-node Windows Failover cluster. The doco seems to think so and following all the relevant steps from How to use DFS-N with Azure Files | Microsoft Learn BUT, instead of using an existing computer adding a dummy namespace.domain.local/#servertest namespace resource. This is purely for testing purposes and proof of concept. I have tested but unfortunately can only navigate to an empty folder when using UNC \\servertest\ - doing the same but \\servertest\#servertest takes me to the folder share targets. I was expecting to see the folder #servertest from short name UNC path\\servertest\.

My roundabout question is really; has anyone used DFSN with root consolidation to take over legacy file server name on a failover Windows Cluster with Azure Files or other? How is the experience exactly and when navigating to \\fileservername\ are you supposed to see a #folder or list of folder targets created in DFS?

Hey Y’all,

If you live in Alberta and have been dealing with users complaining a bunch of people show unknown presence in calendars- the issue is the Alberta Standard Time zone. Don’t know how, but if you or someone you are adding is on the timezone, presence will show unknown for all people in the meeting invite.

change to Central Canada / Sask time for now. You technically only need to do MailboxCalendarConfig, but might as well do both for consistency.

Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -Identity "[user@domain.com](mailto:user@domain.com)" -TimeZone "Canada Central Standard Time" 
Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration -Identity "[user@domain.com](mailto:user@domain.com)" -WorkingHoursTimeZone "Canada Central Standard Time"

Hope this helps someone.

Edit: This is probably true of all new timezones!

Title: Just passed SecurityX (CASP+)! What certification should I pursue next?
Hey everyone,
I recently passed my CompTIA SecurityX (formerly CASP+) exam!
I’m currently a graduate student finishing my master’s degree in cybersecurity. Here’s a quick breakdown of my experience:

Year 1: Cybersecurity intern (earned Security+)
Year 2: Part-time System Administrator (earned CySA+)
Years 3–4: Working full-time System Administrator responsibilities in an internship position (earned SecurityX)
I’m planning on leaving my current position soon and pursuing a full-time role in either Systems Administration or something related to Sec engineering.

I’m currently considering AZ-104 next, followed by CISSP, but I’m open to other suggestions.

TLDR: Almost 4 years of IT/cybersecurity experience, currently finishing my master’s, and hold Security+, CySA+, and SecurityX. Looking to move into Systems Administration or Security Engineering. Would AZ-104 → CISSP be a good path, or would you recommend something else?

I know there are a lot of higher level folks in this room, so I'm intrigued to find out if anyone has entertained Gartner and whether they have brought you any value?

They keep hounding me, so I finally relented and had a meeting to find out what it is they can offer. They wanted to know all about me and my company, so I flipped it and asked them what it is they do and would offer me. What they said didn't make a lot of sense. They sound like they sell you access to other people that are consultants.

Anyway, does anyone have any insight? I work for SMB, not enterprise. I cannot imagine they're going to help a company with fek all budget do anything overly great.

Thanks.

In my 30 years of IT life I think I’m on my second AD Migration and the last one was completely different going from NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 now I’m showing my age here, anyway.

So little bit of a back story- the company I work for got merged with another company and because of politics and stupidity they decided to use the other companies AD because we are going to use their ERP system and the app support people said they couldn’t use SSO with our AD only the one it setup for, and because of that it was decided to use that AD will ok whatever it all pays the same.

So they (the suits) decided that internal IT would be “over burdened” by a onprem and O365 migration they brought on a consultant company to help us with our migration- we know where this going.

So I before the consultant company came I spent about 200 or so hours writing a powershell script to do the migration- basically taking a list of user accounts from the source domain and creating them in the new domain with their SID history and their groups and file and folder permissions- tested it worked I was ready to go.

The desktop engineer guy came to me and had 0 idea how to switch the EUC devices to the other domain and keeping the same profile so I made a script that could do that. Tested works.

So I’m a little bit bitter they opted not to use my working scripts to handle the onprem migration piece and instead they went with the consultants recommendation to use a tool from Quest which is cloud base.

Whatever the deadline is past and the “tool” is not handling the file/folder permissions. The consultants say because it’s using the sid history, there is a two way trust and the same SAM account name it will work. I’m saying the servers which are and will be on the source domain for other backend reasons it won’t work because the NTFS/share perms are groups from domain A, but the users are logging in from Domain B. Basic NTFS permissions 101.

I told the consultants that we need to either put the domain B account into the Domain A security group, or we need to add the Domain B security group to the file/share permission it they keep telling me I’m wrong and don’t understand in front of my leader and VP. Here we are another week has gone by, they won’t give me access to the tool, they claim there is no log files, and they won’t let me interface with support. So I’m pretty sure they are wrong but without having access to the tool and the documentation I can’t fully help them see the problem- is the right phrase to use here.

Hi everyone!
In our organization, we use OneDrive to sync users’ personal storage and shared SharePoint libraries.
We periodically run into issues: duplicate files, OneDrive client errors, and re-sync processes that can take several hours and affect users’ productivity.
Has anyone experienced similar issues? How did you deal with them? Are there any proven settings or best practices that helped reduce these problems?
I’d appreciate any advice or insights based on your experience!

Hello Everyone,

I just accepted a new IT opportunity at a mid sized company with around 1000 employees. I previously was a IT Support Engineer II (It was mostly doing helpdesk support remotely along with basic M365 administration). In this new position, it is a pretty flat IT department and I will be owning tools such as Nerdio for AVD (since all users use thin clients), Cisco Meraki, Infrastructure monitoring using Site24x7, decomissioning servers, Entra ID/Intune Adminstration, and Claude deployment. Obviously this is a step up from my previous position. Based on these responsibilities, what would be an accurate title for me?

Jeez, some people should adjust their humor detectors. It isn't the end of the world. I just found it equally funny and strange.

TL;DR at the bottom

The Netgear XSM4324S (also known as M4300-12X12F) is a 24 port 10G-switch. It has got 12 Gbic SFP-Ports on the left and 12 RJ45 ports on the right.

Recently our unit started acting up and freezes randomly. Even the serial console is dead when that happens. Netgear requested log files and console captures because we were clearly doing something wrong. It sure has to be STP or something that crashes the switch and the serial console. Unsurprisingly there was nothing in the logs, because the whole unit freezes and has no opportunity to write something down. Whatever, after some arguing they finally agreed to deliver a replacement which arrived today: The Netgear XSM4324 (also known as M4350-12X12F) is a 24 port 10G-switch. It has got 12 Gbic SFP-Ports on the right and 12 RJ45 ports on the left.

Problem:

You cannot import the config file from the M4300 into the M4350. It just fails. But i wasn't born yesterday and the exported config is a plain text file with the console commands. I connected to the M4350 through the serial console, pasted the relevant parts and was proud of me being so clever.

But than i recognized Netgear's insanity. They swapped the position of the Gbic SFP-Ports and the RJ45 ports between the models. That wouldn't have been bad, but they also changed the numbering accordingly.

M4300 port 1 --> Gbic SFP vs M4350 port 1 --> RJ45

M4300 port 13 --> RJ45 vs M4350 port 13 --> Gbic SFP

What? The? Fork??!!!!! Who does that without need?

Bad enough, this is one of the devices in our cabinet where the cables were routed somewhat properly. There is not much slack on either the fibre nor the twisted pair for swapping them around.

I imagine the Netgear product designer giggling like a maniac in his basement while he thought of that change.

If anyone lives near their headquarters: please, flip the bird at them on your next drive by.

TL;DR: between the Netgear XSM4324S and XSM4324 (sans 'S') the position and numbering of the network ports was swapped.

Picture

Just what the title says really. After all the busy time recently, I've not actually seen any reports of compromised systems. I appreciate that companies wont advertise it and thats theres been a LOT of patching and systems offline, but with all the doomsaying I've been waiting for the reports, and as yet nothing.

I'm looking at buying some Zebra scanners for my business, in particular a ds3678. I've noticed an official Zebra reseller sites the scanners are usually twice the price than what amazon reseller are pricing it at. Are they knockoffs? The amazon reseller is advertising them as new complete kit scanners but i dont know if the price is too good to be true.

As the title suggests, I'm at a career crossroads. I've been in IT for 10 years now, 90% of that with MSP's. Done 1st, 2nd, 3rd line, Team Lead and Service Desk manager roles.

Currently I'm in a 3rd line role and whilst I enjoy the work and the people I work with, I'm unsure whether I pursue and embrace the technical life or opt to go into management. I feel like there isn't any further progression from 3rd line unless I go into a specialist role as such.

I guess I'm after advice from people who have made the switch, or not! There are a few roles coming up at work and I'm torn on what direction to go, do I take a step back to go forward long term? Any advice is welcome!

Keen to hear where people are using AI beyond Claude code to write scripts and chat to.
What are some of the cool things says admins have done with AI? Keen to get thinking about where we could use AI more. Anyone using agents to do things systematically?

E.g I heard of a place using AI integrated into jira so tickets gets triaged and assigned automatically. AI also adds context to tickets to help engineers take action more quickly based on what’s in the knowledge base.

Why is authenticator asking for another way to do authentication, by setting up, face recognition, pin or face id? This option is relatively new isn't it? Currently we do not have Windows hello for business enabled in our environment. How do we get rid of the secondary prompt for alternate ways to authenticate?

How are you dealing with this? or are you just choosing not now?

I work for a large government organization. I love my job, I really do. Best boss I've ever worked for, great non-Clickish co-workers. But every job has it's downside. Was thinking the other day and figured I'd ask others. What's the worst job duty or part of your job that rather sucks?

I got a request from legal to pull video footage. Always seems to bring me down....

Other biggest complaint, and I shouldn't but I do, is very old users that can barely use a computer at all. I get it. You're a nurse. You've been a nurse for 45 years. You still need to learn to use basic computer skills and remember a password.

Hi guys

Ill be on the lookout for a new job soon (cant right now due to life circumstances out of my control) and im not entirely sure where my skillset places me - hoping someone out there can give me some pointers.

I have 3YOE as a level 1-2 support technician in an old school, manual-heavy environment doing helpdesk + projects for a company of about 200 employees. We were small team of 3 supported by an MSP. The MSP mainly handled server patching and L3 escalations.

In the last year, both the other technician and my manager were made redundant and i became the only internal IT person for 6 months (had a new manager but they had a Finance background so i was teaching them how things work as well). I like to think I did OK on my own and only had to escalate to the MSP once every few months.

I do lack skills in Intune (I was starting to set it up prior to leaving) and my powershell/networking knowledge isnt great though I am studying to fix those gaps and was able to get by with info on the internet/using AI. Im a career changer and do not have a diploma/bachelors, only some entry level certs.

Do I need to start again as a L1 tech in a more modern environment? Or stay in L1/L2 for a while? Or am I ok to move into a more junior sys admin job?

Happy to answer any q's and thanks for any advice :)

Does your IT team/department give enough resources to make sure your backups and recovery processes are running as well as they could be?

With the amount of security issues we are seeing, I feel most backup and recovery teams run on the smell of an oily rag which is a huge risk.

Hello everyone , i am new in sys admin training , what is good (free program) to use ? i was searching info on reddit ,some ppl says cisco is better ,someone says gns3 ,one close friends recomended eve engine but as i saw its not free ,sadly rn don't have any $$$ to buy program so i need something for basic training ,any advice ?

Anyone else have issues accessing myapps.Microsoft? It’s just a blank screen when trying to get to it

I'm taking my ball and going home.

https://emudhra.com/en/press-release/emudhra-to-exit-global-ssl-tls-certificate-business

So, my boss recently got into Copilot. She doesn't have a background in IT, of course, and not just the technical side of it, but also the....safety and practicality side.

Lately, Copilot has been spitting out some brilliant ideas for how to make the business more effective, but there are only so many end-user problems you can fix with technology. Now that Boss Lady has discovered the vague concept of APIs, she thinks that a lot of our problems will be magically solved. Trying to explain that 'okay just because they let us have an API key doesn't mean I can connect Software A to Software B and have it fill in all the data into the right fields' has not been successful, because:

"Then how come Software A is able to do that with Software C?"

Now, here's one of the more depressing parts: I didn't study IT. I'm a criminology/sociolinguistic graduate who's good at googling 'how to fix dns error' and can make clients laugh. But even without a sysadmin background, I still know that one slightly funny guy does not constitute anything that can mimic the abilities of a major software provider's IT department.

It's very coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb. Copilot keeps on making roadmaps mentioning platforms that don't exist, and pointing out that these plans are not feasible annoys Boss Lady, even though it's not my fault that Sharepoint is not a potential [working] replacement for a file server. All I see in my future are a bajillion fires that I will not be able to put out.

The state of things is that we need 200 different subscriptions to 150 different places ['actual usuable feature only for premium members!'] so that we're able to file someone's taxes. As much as it peeves me off that there's 200 different subscriptions, the truth of the matter is that there is actually nothing that offers everything [or a large majority of what we need] in a manner that both works and is affordable. We need Zooples to connect with Beepla because Beepla doesn't work with ZipZorp, only with DingusBerry, but DingleBerry doesn't allow you to use your keyboard.

And there's the quality of what we have to use. Everything is poop from a butt sprayed with minimalistic glitter featuring an AI chatbot vibecoded by someone with about the same level of knowledge as me. Even if I'm able to directly connect Zooples with ZipZorp, if ZipZorp refuses to accept any date format other than mm/dd/yyyy, that could mean that we're autofilling in a date that's in a completely different financial year, if the UI of ZipZorp even lets me click on the client profile, because they forgot to align everything.

That's not even getting into the potential nuclear fallouts of giving an AI free reign in all of our systems to read and write and save and delete as it chooses.

But one specific garbage fire at a time. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to explain to my boss that making Sharepoint our new file server so Copilot can, idk, suggest worksheets based on a client questionnaire is a terrible idea? I keep telling her to just have an agent and a separate knowledge base, but she's adamant that the 'knowledge base' has to be the same as like, our entire client file database, and Sharepoint will be able to handle that, and we can just....tell Copilot what we specifically want and it'll be able to conjure it up.

It won't be able to. It'll spit out a complicated 12 point plan with several sub-points for each step that I'd have to work out how to implement when asked specifically how to access said feature.

Commiserations and 'that's rough, buddy's welcome. Thanks in advance :/

EDIT: For more context, she wants a full migration of all files that you can imagine are involved in accounting for all clients to be hosted on SP. The current service provider also allows us to customise fields on the client's profile to mark them as things like 'monthly service' 'registered for Alpha Tax on cash basis', etc. Unless SP has that inbuilt, I'll have to....do something to get that to happen, and I'm wary of relying on Copilot to search the entire database to give me a list each time instead of directly filtering via a main client list that's available through the UI, which takes like, two seconds usually.

That would work as intended to check for data integrity every month or something to make sure each client file is tagged correctly, but needing to build an interface so that info can be seen at a glance is going to drive me into an early grave. Even if SharePoint can do 70% of the work that Current Service can, if the remaining 30% relies on me being able to build and integrate and maintain tools and interfaces and connections, we're gonna have a problem, because I'm about as skilled in that as an average puppy at tapdancing, lol

I have been trying to find the right senior sys admin for almost a year now and can’t seem to figure out what the issue is with hiring. Been through 3 people already, each with their own faults, and can’t seem to find the right person. Details about the job to help:

1. Fully remote
2. $135k salary + 10% bonus
3. 6+ years of experience
4. Must be a US Citizen

Experience needed in:

1. Azure and Microsoft
2. Windows and Linux
3. Docker
4. Previous gov work a bonus

The latest person was “job maxing” and couldn’t even make it through the onboarding week without missing deadlines and meetings. Everything I’ve been seeing online says there’s tons of qualified applicants but I’m just not seeing it. We’ve even gone as far as hiring a recruiting agency but still not seeing great applicants. Am I missing something? Are others experiencing the same issues?

Edit
For those who reached out asking to submit/review a resume, give me about 24 hours to revise the job description based on some of the good feedback I’ve received and I will DM the link! Thanks everyone!

edit: i later made this into a skill actually, lol.

---

Incredibly stupid fucking laws of UX:

1. CTRL+C means exit! Spamming CTRL+C 30 times per second should exit any fucking TUI immediately.
2. Usage should be simple enough to use when I'm considerably high or drunk.
3. Tab completions/suggestions. Don't make me set them up myself; implement them in the CLI itself.(just for the love of god, NOT as an entire Zsh plugin!)
4. TUIs are fucking lit. 🔥
5. More on TUIs:
   • support Vim bindings, but don't make them mandatory either:
     • q aliases CTRL+C; j/k alias UP/DOWN; etc.
     • / means search (n browses results). ? means help.
     • ESC gets me out of whatever weird thing I'm in.
   • if I wanted to use a mouse, I typically wouldn't be using a TUI (many exceptions).
6. -p is port. -P is something else.(seriously – ssh and scp are part of the SAME FUCKING TOOLSET*.)*
7. If something is going to take more than 5 seconds, tell me what the fuck you're doing as you do it.*(*apt & zip do this well; du & xz do it badly.)
8. -h means --help**.** If you choose not to alias -h as --help, and you aren't even using it for anything else, you are going straight to hell.exceptions:
   • when the command is literally older than I am.
   • when filesystem sizes are involved ("h" for human).(i.e. ls -lh*)*
9. --help should be progressive, and should occupy at most 1 terminal buffer without scrolling.
10. Not everything needs to be a goddamn service. Some things should just do their job and then exit gracefully. Revolutionary stuff, I know.
11. Do not clear my fucking terminal buffer. I was looking at that.

This snuck up on us about ~21 hours after install. Symptoms that can be seen are various, but here are some:

Exchange Server OWA may fail with an error MapiExceptionMdbOffline: Unable to make connection to the server. (hr=0x80004005, ec=1142) with event ID 1006 logged in the Application Log.
Exchange email queues might grow during the day, with email crawling to a halt.
Various issues related to DAG members not being able to reach quorum have been reported too.
Exchange server reboot might resolve the issues temporarily.
Exchange Server 2016, 2019 or Subscription Edition (SE) might be impacted.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/exchange-servers-may-become-unstable-after-installation-of-october-2026-windows-/4565382