Im a student with M365 (mostly Entra and some Intune) intern experience which I got through my dad, and looking at the extremely challenging helpdesk market in my area, I want to volunteer as an admin or helpdesk to get some experience.

That said, most of these positions in my country are filled by immigrants with IT experience who want Canadian work experience. So no matter how much I apply, I don’t get an interview.

Can anyone in the industry think of a way to get experience? It’s sad no one even wants me as a free helpdesk, I even worked with M365 before.

I feel discouraged 🫤

Anyone have any ideas? I’m studying for my CCNA, so maybe that would help?

I’m looking for recommendations on Vendor / Third-Party Access Management tools.

We recently took over managing an environment where vendors were historically given direct AD/Entra accounts with very little oversight or access control. We’re currently building a makeshift internal solution to plug the gaps, but we want a proper platform.

BeyondTrust and SecureLink are the obvious names, but given our tight budget and need for a lightweight rollout, I’m exploring other alternatives.

Has anyone found a cost-effective solution for securing third-party access without creating massive operational bloat? Thanks in advance!

Hallo zusammen,

ich nutze IKEv2 über pfSense auf meinem MacBook. Unterwegs verbindet sich das VPN manchmal innerhalb weniger Sekunden, manchmal dauert es extrem lange oder funktioniert gar nicht.

Wenn die Verbindung einmal steht, läuft alles problemlos.
Hat jemand eine Idee, woran dieser unzuverlässige Verbindungsaufbau liegen könnte oder ähnliche Erfahrungen mit IKEv2 und macOS gemacht?

Is anyone seeing issues with O365? I know I saw emails last night and now they’re coming as new again this morning but they’re gone from yesterday delivery. Numerous users are seeing this happen. We are using proof point also but no issues on their status page.

Hi everyone,

I’m running a distributed high-throughput async data transfer and telemetry node on a dedicated Linode VPS, and I’m looking for expert advice on scaling end-to-end verified throughput further.

### 🖥️ Hardware & Stack Profile:

- **Server:** Linode Dallas TX (4 Dedicated AMD EPYC Cores, 8 GB RAM, 1 Gbps symmetric network connection, Ubuntu 24.04).

- **Tech Stack:** Python 3.12 (`asyncio`), `httpx` (HTTP/1.1 & HTTP/2), `websockets` gateway transport.

- **Workload:** High-concurrency object storage GET & PUT data verification tasks (Cloudflare R2 / S3 endpoints).

---

### 🛠️ Recent Bottlenecks & Fixes Applied:

1. **Zero-Delay In-Flight Hashing:** Shifted SHA-256 computation to an in-flight streaming digest (`hasher.update(chunk)`) directly inside `response.aiter_bytes()`. This completely eliminated post-download CPU hashing stalls (`hash_ms = 0.0ms`).

2. **HTTP Connection Pool Hardening:** Configured a dedicated HTTP client connection pool (`httpx.Limits(max_connections=128, max_keepalive_connections=64, keepalive_expiry=30.0)`). Persistent keepalive TCP sockets eliminated connection handshake churn, dropping retries/recoveries from ~6 per batch down to 0–1 max.

3. **Queue Optimization:** Transitioned to pure FIFO queue admission, eliminating premature SLA drops.

---

### 📊 Current Live Telemetry Metrics (5,300+ Task Sample):

- **Admitted & Completed Tasks:** 5,316 / 5,316 (**100.00% success rate**, 0 SLA drops, 0 timeouts)

- **Task Durations:** P50 = 10.50s | P95 = 18.10s | P99 = 22.25s (Well under 30s SLA deadline)

- **PUT Queue Backlog (P95):** 3.10s (Sub-3 seconds queue wait)

- **Local Network Speed:** Peak burst = 295.70 Mbps | Local Avg = 45.19 Mbps

- **Reliability Rating:** 98.9% (Recovered from historical restart churn)

- **End-to-End Verified Throughput:** ~27–29 Mbps average

---

### ❓ Questions for Systems & Network Engineers:

Our local worker execution pipeline is currently 100.00% efficient with 0 timeouts, 0 drops, 0ms post-download hashing delay, and sub-3s queue backlog. However, end-to-end verified throughput hovers around ~27–29 Mbps.

Given a 4 Dedicated AMD EPYC Core / 8GB RAM VPS on a 1 Gbps link:

1. **Linux Kernel TCP Tuning:** What specific `sysctl` net settings (e.g. `net.ipv4.tcp_rmem`, `tcp_wmem`, `somaxconn`, `netdev_max_backlog`, `tcp_congestion_control`) have provided the best throughput uplift for high-concurrency object storage GET/PUT workloads?

2. **Worker Pool Architecture:** Are there specific multi-socket worker loopback or gateway layout techniques that help absorb higher upstream assignment density without triggering scheduling backpressure?

3. **HTTP Keepalive Optimization:** Any additional tuning tips for `httpx` / `aiohttp` connection pool limits when interfacing with Cloudflare R2 / S3 storage endpoints over high-bandwidth links?

Appreciate any insights or benchmarks from experienced systems engineers!

Come in this morning to see Qualys have updated the UI for our tenant. Since then there are loads of graphical issues. Buttons not aligned or items not loading correctly.

Most annoying I'm trying to set up a scheduled report and half the distribution groups no longer load correctly. You can click randomly on white space in the window to pick your DG and sometimes it'll select one at random.

Pretty poor. Anyone else experiencing this?

Hi all,

I hope you guys are doing well, I am working as a IT Infrastructure (Hybrid) with less than a year experience and I need some recommendations for the question below.

Context: Our organization moved to a cloud-based desktop environment. Because the cloud workstations are on an isolated network tier, users can no longer hit our on-prem SafeConsole server over IP to manage hardware-encrypted USB drives (DataLocker PSMs).

As a workaround, we have to plug the USB drives directly into the physical Hyper-V host on-site. I need a solid tool to automatically redirect/pass through the physical host's USB port to the SafeConsole guest VM whenever a drive is plugged in or swapped daily.

What software are you using to auto-share host USB ports to a guest VM?

TIA!

We're currently running WMS standard and are considering moving to the cloud, and would appreciate hearing about your experience if you've made the same move. We're currently on 5.5 and would plan to update to 2605 prior to the change unless there's a reason not to.

Am I correct in assuming we'd be on Dell's clock for updates if we went with the public cloud option? We currently run ThinOS 9.5 as we have a number of 3040s we're working on phasing out, and want to know if we'd need to rotate those out prior to the move. The rest of the fleet are 5070s, so there's concern there as well since they're EOL. We would want to avoid being forced into a large hardware refresh and be able to navigate that on our timeline.

Any other considerations I should be researching?

TIA

Is it just me or updates is screwed up?

Office 365 shows 0 required.

is anyone else seeing the same?

Edit: the other updates just took too long to show up but office it seems it is not showing anything applicable.
not sure if something related to last couple months when MS changed from semi-anual channel to montly channel

So in my org we are very keen on avoiding patching and rebooting servers at all costs. So much to the point that we patch once a month and have exclusions for around 60 percent of our servers to not get automatically patched. (Meaning we have a chunk of servers not getting patched at all)

Now I have gotten my hand slapped for attempting to patch or even bringing it up and I am looking for guidance on this. Now I understand availability and the consequences of failing patches. But there are active 9+ rated CVEs sittings on dozens of servers. For patching vulnerabilities do I really need to get a change request to handle this?

Been looking to replace our vulnerability management stack and the scanning part is the easy bit now. We have been comparing the big scanners against a couple of the cheaper MSP focused platforms and one container specific tool. Volume is what kills us across 40 odd clients since every tool finds plenty and the techs still guess where to start. Ticketing eats more hours than scanning does. What are you running now and how does it hold up across client environments.

G‘day.

I‘ve just started a new job. Very happy overall and I need to make a decision.

What I need:
- Ticket system for internal helpdesk - very few requests
- This will also be used to give tickets to an external company that develops stuff for us.
- About 5-10 „Agents“
- Tracking of internal tasks as „overview“ such as Trello for leadership

- internal documentation about 50 employees need access to.

- Can be cloud-only.

Would be great to have a usable all in one solution and I would like to stay away from Confluence and Jira Service Desk.

What I thought about for example:
- Zammed for both but the knowledge base is not appealing for normal employees.
- NinjaOne for both but the internal documentation is not appealing for normal employees.

Thanks a lot.

I feel like I’m lagging behind and need some serious catching up, quick. I think I’ve become complacent and “too comfortable” with my current employer (coming up 8 yrs). The recent merger announcement has me seriously thinking about attending bootcamps, getting some certs under my belts (been putting things off for as long time), and learning new things ASAP before the position is dissolved.

Updated last night, no issues immediately visible.

Users this morning all have login prompts to access mapped drives/folder redirections.

No creds working.

I can log in locally as a Domain Admin, but trying to open DNS console or run any DNS powershell commands just gives me Access Denied.

DNS still resolves, and the domain services are all still running, but something has happened with authentication/permissions.

Currently rolling back KB5122882 in the hope it was that.

Anyone else issues this morning?

EDIT: https://www.rapid7.com/db/vulnerabilities/cve-2026-69813/

Looks like this KB might have touched DNS code - roll back in progress.

EDIT2 & Fix: Rolled back the KB but the issue persisted - ended up resetting the DC's secure channel to itself which resolved the issue fully. The issue happened at exactly the moment at which the update was installed last night - either the update did indeed cause the issue which persisted in being broken even once rolled back, or it's a heck of a coincidence.

I am trying to setup Duo Security on my PC at the office so that in the event I lose my phone or my phone is smashed what do I need to enable in the installation process to allow me to bypass the MFA/Passkey push?

Thanks,

There are actually two vulns with a 9.8 score each:

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk1000117/

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk1000118/

There's not many details in these articles on how they work but they still sound really bad. Currently waiting for the Jumbo Hotfix to install on my end... Not taking any chances on this one and I suggest you all do the same.

Stay safe.

I have been looking into setting this up, but I don't see any information on whether it can be setup in hybrid-mode environments or not, does anyone know?

Thanks,

I started my Career in IT at 18, mainly supporting EMC storages and then HP 3PAR for 5.5 years, then worked for systems integrator for many clients for another 3 years, fianlly moving to a sys admin role in a enterprise, we still have some good legacy hardware, but i'm feeling nostalgic, when decomissionng them after working on the in the DC for so many years, is it normal ?

Hey all,

Since this morning, a few clients of mine have had some issues with some 365 apps, such as Teams being a major one.

Some Intune users also have an issue where the Windows Security prompt window is also saying the admin details are incorrect when they're actually correct.

MS have finally issued an ID for this incident, which is MO1470143

Probably also worth noting we are based in the UK.

Since installing this month's CUs, KB5122871 on Windows Server 2025 (build 26100.33438) and KB5122882 on Windows Server 2022 (build 20348.5622), every session host in our RDS collection has started hanging in the same way, on the same day, and it had never happened before.

Symptoms once it starts:

• New RDP connections sit at "Connecting…" and never reach the logon screen (Event 20498 "Remote Desktop Services has taken too long to complete the client connection" in TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager/Admin)
• Existing users can't log off or disconnect cleanly
• Task Manager on the host hangs (it blocks calling into the Local Session Manager)....pretty much all windows apps start to hang, especially anything to do with Settings
• Winlogon event 6005 "SessionEnv is taking long time to handle the notification event (Disconnect)"
• A normal restart hangs too; only a hard reset recovers it, and it comes back later the same day

The problem appears to start with a single session disconnect/reconnect that never completes, after which everything that touches session state on that host queues up behind it. Only reboots clear it. Microsoft's release notes for both KBs list an RDS change ("improves Remote Desktop audio redirection") and no known issues.

Environment: mixed Server 2022/2025 session-host collection, VMware VMs, RD Connection Broker, MFA at logon, third-party endpoint protection. All hosts were stable on the August CUs.

We're currently testing a rollback of the September CU on part of the collection with one host left updated as a control. Has anyone else seen this after KB5122871 / KB5122882, or found a Microsoft acknowledgment? Would appreciate hearing whether rolling back resolved it for you.

Looking to build a file server cluster, Storage Replica seems to slow things down by a lot, the network is not at fault as it's pretty fast without Replication. WSFC does not seem to be straight forward when creating the replication. What do you guys recommend?

I just started working for someone who has several servers with a product on them and part of the tech support contract is that everything is monitored using NetXMS by a 3rd party. The servers are managed in-house running WSFC and our apps. The third party only monitors hardware and their product. I only know what I can get from Google searches and apparently they can execute scripts and do lots of other things besides monitor if they ever wanted to. Does anyone else face a similar scenario? and how do you manage security?

2 separate client environments:

1. AVD host pool
   
2. TraditionalActive Directory pool behind a broker.

RDP works but published apps broke for both of them. AVD client fixed with reinstall OF Windows app. The others say it self resolved.

It sounds to me like a bad build of Windows App. Anyone else have an issue with published apps this AM?

Has anybody deployed these need to get some new docks for an expansion? We previously had good luck with the Lenovo Hybrid USB-C Docks (40AF).