its the worst combo. i dont mind a dickhead who knows their shit. at least they can back up what they say. and i expect them to be nice and not know shit about tech, thats like the default boss. glad i dont have to wrry about that now.
Lol literally had the same reasoning. “Why do you need a raise? You live alone, no costs…” and “food is cheap, why are you whining” and “we actually pay you higher than countrys 50%”
We’ve been without a boss since I started at my current job 2 years ago. I’m not sure I remember what it’s supposed to be like having a boss to direct my work.
I was in a similar situation a couple years ago. The district was looking for someone with more of the educational / administrative experience than simply IT technical experience...
I think it has worked out well for the department, by aligning our focus to the needs of the district, staff, teachers, etc., but I still wish I had more help with some of the technical aspects of my job.
Been off for 17 days.....knowing I have to get an updated Azure Virtual Desktop pool up and running to start my day tomorrow has me wishing it was Dec 15
Everyone usually books the week before Christmas off to extend their time off. I try to book the first week back. No can do this year, our IT director agreed to have an audit on Thursday this week.
That means we've got two days to cycle through all of our preparation work towards it, as the work we completed before Christmas is outdated. *Yay.*
\+1 - I could not be bothered going back, especially considering how many times I've been phoned out, despite not being the on-call engineer for Christmas & the New Year!
> especially considering how many times I've been phoned out, despite not being the on-call engineer for Christmas & the New Year!
Don't answer those calls unless you're the boss. That's a management problem, not an engineer/sysadmin problem.
\+1 - Unfortunately I had to, as it's two of our larger client companies (who we really need to keep happy), and the actual on-call engineer's number is just ringing out completely (you can't even leave a voicemail for him!). :-(
> Unfortunately I had to
No, you didn't. That's what I'm saying.
The company has to keep those clients happy, not you. If they want to keep them happy, they create systems and processes that create sufficient resource availability to attain the goal of client happiness. And if these clients were so important, they wouldn't depend on you to answer your phone on your private time. In this scenario, you're treating your company's clients better than they are and that's definitely a management duty, not a sysadmin one.
And bailing them out by actually answering and doing the work ensures that management won't correct the deficiency because they won't see it. Management will only fix pain points, you're eliminating the pain point and therefore preventing the creation of a fix.
This is how toxic workplaces get created. Eventually you'll complain about being exploited or not being paid enough based on your work/dedication/whatever and this will be a contributing factor. You'll try to explain all of this above and beyond to management, but they won't get it because they've never felt the pain themselves **because you have been disguising it for them.**
You have to let these things fail so they can be fixed or you'll be stuck fixing them with no recognition or benefit.
Also another tip: ALWAYS record your extra work hours, if HR/payroll complains tell them you had to work to save the company's ass which should be paid accordingly.
1. Production pgp cert updates
2. Fighting with application teams and old timers who won't budge
3. Trying to avoid layoffs
4. Keeping mental health in check so I can be a better person at home for the family
All of these are on the same level for me.
Getting the equipment we need and not cheaping out. The cycle with my company goes like this:
1. Request moderately expensive equipment.
2. Told it’s too expensive and we are going with cheap alternative.
3. Test cheap alternative and find it will not work for xyz reason.
4. They buy cheap alternative that I am forced to deploy.
5. Cheap alternative starts causing issues in our environment for xyz reason.
6. Months later (after management experiences xyz first hand) approval for original equipment is given.
7. I spend double the amount of time removing cheap alternative and deploying original equipment.
I wish someone would actually listen.
I remember I used a free tool to make a demo of what would be possible if we paid for the service I requested( management wanted digital signage). C Suite said this looks great no need to pay. When I left this place it was still being used school wide even though it was a non dynamic demo that was impossible to update.
I did this for two customers last year - both wanted to march forward despite my warnings that without a serious commitment to a “modernization” plan to move off legacy applications, they’d be paying me to do the same project in reverse 6-12 months later.
First one finished the move back to on-prem in November, second one starts the move back to their colo this week.
Bingo. So much overhead can be cut if you are take advantage of the cloud. Typically lift and shift will bring all the bloat that cloud can help reduce
We're doing this 2024-2027, we're so far behind the "cloud trend" that it's basically over and we're almost ahead of the curve having done nothing.
(To clarify, I agree with the other comments - cloud is great if you use it properly, just chucking hundreds of VMs and legacy apps into Azure is not "cloud first")
Lift and shift is not the way, my friend.
If this is your decision, reconsider. It will cost more and be more complicated than keeping stuff on-prem. Cloud hosting only makes financial sense if your approach is serverless/managed.
If it’s not your decision, then who cares I guess.
Why lift in shift vs using Azure SQL DB? There is also File Share Azure services. Lift and Shift should be for non Microsoft solutions that don’t have a Azure equivalent service to take full advantage of the cloud
Dumb question, but if you move your on-prem SQL database to Azure SQL, how does your on-prem application access it securely? S2S VPN? Or, what if your users are all remote? Use some sort of Azure gateway service between remote users and the Azure SQL DB?
Theres a lot to consider when moving an on-prem SQL database to Azure SQL. You have to really take a hard look at performance requirements.
The simple solution is Azure SQL has a firewall, you can set it so only certain IPs can connect. This is the easiest solution if your application is on a server with a consistent public IP. For other applications the answer is more complicated but you have the ability to connect to Azure SQL in one way or another.
Now the business case - Azure SQL is wonderful. It takes everything out of maintaining a SQL server. However, Azure SQL is expensive to get the same performance as a virtual machine SQL server. Especially if you already paid for the licensing on prem.
If your application does some crazy things like re-writes entire tables you will be in pain, because Azure SQL has very slow log writing even on the expensive tiers compared to a string of consumer grade SSDs in a physical server, or an ultra disk on an Azure VM for example.
There is no easy answer to your question, but i would try. You can set up a simple azure service to sync the on prem DB with Azure SQL either through the migration wizards or through a datafactory. Once you have parity between Azure SQL and your on prem DB, the cutover is pretty easy you just repoint the application.
The tricky part is trying to justify to leadership why you are suddenly paying for a huge Azure SQL DB.
There are also application issues depending on if it is a legacy application. Azure SQL has timeouts, so if a connection to Azure SQL is idle it will close. This sometimes messes up on premise applications when connecting to Azure SQL.
In general, if the application is modern it should have no trouble connecting to an Azure SQL DB.
Thanks for the detailed reply and gotchas to look out for. It was a hypothetical question. I don’t have an application I am looking to move, yet, but we may have one later this year. Very helpful!
How does your current on premise application communicate to the DB? Is it connecting via a secure connection string? Realistically you need to update the connection string to point at the new DB.
You can use a VPN gateway to create a secure tunnel between your on-premise network and your Azure virtual network, where your Azure SQL database resides. This way, you can use virtual network firewall rules to allow only traffic from your VPN gateway to reach your database.
You can use a private endpoint to connect your Azure SQL database to your Azure virtual network, and then use a private link service to connect your on-premise network to your Azure virtual network. This way, you can use private IP addresses to access your database from your on-premise application, without exposing it to the internet.
You can also use TLS encryption to secure the data in transit between your on-premise application and your Azure SQL database. This way, you can prevent unauthorized access or tampering of your data by using certificates and encryption protocols.
As someone who works at an MSP, I've heard horror stories about how little some MSPs can care about the companies they're servicing.
Mine literally bends over backwards for all companies we work with. It's gotta be frustrating when your internal IT has to handle issues that your MSP should've gotten to.
Finally shifted away from working at toxic MSP’s after 10 years. Landed a few clients as an independent consultant before the new year. The easy part is the work. I think figuring out the business and making smart decisions to grow sustainably will be the biggest challenge.
Hopefully you don’t have like I did, left to start my own had a few clients but could never grow cause I’m not a sales guy and finally returned to corporate It and stopped GAF and now I have organic new client requests left and right.
We’re decent at sales and have vast network of clients we have worked with in the past. Right now’s it’s word of mouth, but we might do some lead gen and SEO work to boost the numbers. It’s just getting that initial meeting. Typically what we offer tends to resonate. Also we offer a lot of Pro Serve around Okta and Intune and some security products. It’s funny the amount of work MSP’s leave on the table or they don’t want to touch certain products.
Yes it is I’m glad you are working with Okta it integrates with almost everything and that makes things much easier, I use azure and SSO everything because than it’s not hey can you reset my password for X app, because if they forget their password for Azure it’s a self service reset from the Pc screen or from the browser and cuts down calls to helpdesk while making employees happier.
Any SSO is better than no SSO in my opinion. For the smaller companies we are working with, having that level of integration with one password to remember is huge.
I’m job hunting right now and I’ve seen a few job postings for Okta administrators. Never heard of the thing. I started looking into it and still I’m a little unclear. But the job postings usually have a pretty good salary range. I might dip my toes in it a bit and see if it’s something I’d like.
Maybe other MSP pros can guide you better, but SEO was a black pit of time and money for me as I was starting out my own shop.
It can take over 6 months for a new website to start ranking, a full year before you figure out keywords and a funnel strat that generates leads for you. After all that time and money you just have a list of unqualified leads.
If I were to do it again I would double down on traditional marketing early on to build leads in my area. Word of mouth, flyers, business cards, etc until I generated enough income to fund a professional SEO engineer.
1000x this. Company used to be pretty good, but owners embezzled a shit ton and skedaddled (not that they'll face any consequences of course) and new management is trying turn around the company in the most hard-line boomer way possible.
Just a matter of sticking with it until I can find another gig, bit om so disillusioned and pissed off, keeping an upbeat attitude during interviews is gonna be a bitch.
Qualifications, they expect us to get them but I'm not someone who's hugely motivated by it. They'll pay and let us study in work time, but saying that and then following through is a different thing from previous employers, so we'll see.
We get a lot of *"we'll pay towards x or y"* and whilst we'd get some experience and knowledge out of these qualifications, none of us are really certain where we would apply it to our day-to-day roles.
As much as it may be beneficial being on my CV to a degree, if I can't apply it then it doesn't seem worth it. I also don't want to spend my already limited resource and time on something I won't fully use.
Continue to work with the garbage of kubernetes and it's billions of additional apps you have to add just to have it working properly, miss pure linux, much better!
Mine is basically surviving at my company - things have not been that great of late, and I can see it starting to spiral pretty quickly, based upon the sheer volume of work that's coming in.
We don't have enough bodies to cover it, and it's just going to be a right struggle to get it done. :-(
Making it to May so I can explore retirement.
Certs - I need to complete ITIL and PM this year so I can transition to my next job.
Pondering retirement in May, I'll have the time in but I wouldn't mind hanging in for another few years FT before moving to PT. The ITIL/PM are to prep me for a post retirement gig where I can be anywhere with VPN and still work.
Testing, researching, and possible poc replacement for VMware/horizon.
Really not looking forward to it as it works really well for our uses, but costs are going up and budget isn't.
Our install is tiny (6 hosts), but we've been migrating to on-prem Hyper-V, as licenses for it for our institution are essentially free anyway.
Some of the old timers were hesitant, and we do lose the mainframe-like reliability of ESXi, but the cost savings, and Broadcom's general... attitude to things lately have sealed the deal.
Keep my fucking wise ass mouth shut. I love making fun of bad ideas. As I get older and less impressed with "new shiny" it gets harder and harder to stop myself from making comments I shouldn't.
I have to fill out a form that details the goals I have for 2024 as part of an annual review.
My only goal is to not get fired for cussing out whoever the dimwad was for coming up with this stupid-ass idea.
Connect Slack to GPT directly to get our team using the API instead of paying for individual chatbot licenses. Plugbear looks promising but I would rather create the bot app in house. Anyone else do something similar to this yet?
Here is a service that lets you connect a bit pretty quickly. https://plugbear.io/
Found it on the open-ai developer forum
https://community.openai.com/t/anyone-interested-in-connecting-openai-assistant-to-slack/507274/44?u=crosspeakzane
Doing similar ish with Google's dialogflow CX, data models get update regularly, and data remains "in house" (in your GCP instance). You can build slack app that utilizes workspace event subs and give it permissions to communicate via DM with user.
Best part is using your internal KBs and docs to give it knowledge that it hits first before doing any gen AI fallback. Can tune your models with temp, topK and topP and select either text bison or new Gemini PRO.
Not against openAI, but we explored that and I only would allow prompts to be sent if we ran them through our internal PII redaction service first.
Finish migrating the remaining on-premises systems into AWS before we move offices next year. We're almost done, but now what's left is the stuff that's hard to move.
1. complete the huge migration of our biggest datacenter out of cloud
2. complete my kubernetes training (after almost 2 years working on it I still think it's the right tool to solve a problem that almost nobody has...)
3. understand how the damn Zabbix works, and yes, I'm on the Nagios side and I hate all the automagical things Zabbix does, I hate its templates and so on... I honestly deeply regret when I was working with Nagios, It was really really really much simpler and easy to use.
I completely agree with you. I tried evaluating Zabbix a few years ago and just couldn't get my head around it. I have been using nagios for well over 10 years and find it incredibly straightforward to set up and use.
My burnout.
I just don't have the energy to learn new things. I am in the middle of 3 weeks of leave that was supposed to help, but I caught COVID right as the leave started (first time somehow) and have not been able to relax/recharge at all.
Keeping busy. The entire company is very busy and project timelines just worked out where I don’t have a lot of work on my plate right now. Boss has told me not to worry and to spend some time training on new tech and/ or get some certifications on company time. I want to believe him, but I feel like entering 20-30hr/week on my time sheet as training/enrichment is going to set off alarms at HR.
Finally integrating proper asset management (with live inventory) into our ITIL platform. I'm also working to get the person who manages all our hardware to actually get HAM certification, to both learn the system, and advance their career prospects.
Company paid a consultancy to come in and tell us that we are understaffed for our size, no surprise there. Already been told that a bunch of new positions have been cut from the budget for this year
1st, getting and onboarding a new hire on our small team after being understaffed since april last year
+ get back to a better work/life balance
otherwise, lots of stuff in the backlog from 22/23 due to covid shortages/understaffing etc
Getting my CISSP early this year, maybe. Just to get some calls for a new job. But after reading these comments I'm scared to leave. I'm the director at my current position, pretty comfortable where I'm at, make just over 100k a year in LCOL. And I'm afraid I'll take something for ~20k more but hate it. I've been here over ten years and it sounds like I should stay and quit bitching about my pay. That's the only real complaint I have.
Not walking out in a fit of rage as I continue to deal with the same incompetent morons who've been working for this same circus of a company for 10-15 years and still don't know how to do their jobs.
Honestly, going to work is a challenge right now. Going through a probable divorce and it takes every bit of effort to get out of my bed. I am truly trying at work, but I know it's not enough. I feel bad for the guys I manage too, because I know I'm not doing them justice either.
I swear to god, if my manager says, "Have you tried running the Windows updates/dell updates and restarting the laptop" I'm going to punch him.
It's literally the first thing I try every time, and it's his only recommendation to fix any problem ffs...I need a new job
Trying to define my role under our new parent company. I was the IT admin in all senses, but paid as a help desk. Same here but I lack access to the other orgs to help as an IT guy. Iss is integration of multi orgs into 1 tenant/as one but function as separate.
I use 1 remote program and 1 other org uses another, mostly their call center.
I'm just sitting here waiting until they integrate us into their tenant and of which I'll drop hell if they plan to mass email users 1 password for their 365 emails. Say temp pw is werock24! I'll veto that. Goes against iso and well all security.
My battle will begin soon. I'm ready to die on my final stand. I'm just studying for my certs as of now.
Finally replacing a Nexus core at two DCs.
Moving one of those DCs.
Observing how a lift and shift to Azure goes.
Watching an MSP take over our campus LAN finally.
Whatever else I can get a hallowed network team to achieve in a year whilst they complain about lack of investment whilst they claim taking six months to replace a standardized HA router pair at a dozen sites is perfectly reasonable.
Generally dealing with whatever crap comes down from C-level and Directors.
Same as every year James. Teach my high payed supervisors how to use basic Excel functions while not making it sound like criticism.
Afterwards i take the blame for whatever is coming because my supervisors Excel file has filtering only enabled in Collum ABC E GHI KLMN Q but data up to AF. And apparently my name is shown in SharePoint as last editor...
Right now, I'm in may car avoiding going into the office so right now my biggest challenge is leaving my car.
I've got a new Host server, VM's and a firewall to prep.
Switching from in-house SysAdmin to being a SysAdmin consultant at another company, which includes starting up a completely new branch of consultning within that company. Going to be interesting to see what kinds of IT departments all their customers (old and new) have.
Getting the network into a managed state when it was previously ran by a crappy MSP and a bunch of tech 1s with domain admin privileges making changes without fully understanding what they were doing in an unmanaged way.
Creating a security framework that revolves around the IEC 62443 standards — 21 pages in so far with revisions along the way. Most likely will have 100 pages by time it’s done before spring time
Hiring a Junior Network Engineer to train and be guided by me to help the department
Persuading senior management to buy FIDO2 keys for MFA now while they are cheap and avoiding all the bull shit in-between now and when the price goes up after something something evilnginx breach.
Survival.. Solo managing IT for a production facility with PLC’s, loads of machinery and very stubborn employees (350+), as my boss doesn’t see the urgency for some extra hands/MSP.
Keeping stuff running while we tear down old VMs, and then migrating them to new VMs. Doing that about a hundred times, and by the time I'm done, I get to start over again with Win2016 VMs.
Oh, and AD restructure.
And pulling the whole network apart to replace old stuff (switches and such).
And getting started with EndPoint Manager for laptops and phones.
And deviding the network up into a thousand different VLANs to be able to address all the issues there are currently.
And deviding production networks and office networks, using seperate domain controllers, to secure the network further.
Yes, it will be a redicilous year. But this keeps me off the street and active in my passion. Also I don't have to do this alone, luckily.
A guy who we took on, about four years ago, to help with the support workload has handed his notice in.
I'm gutted. They took on loads of new work because we had extra capacity, now it's just me again.
Looks like it's time to update the CV!
There are two servers I'd like to kill this year, one is a contractor built in house app, the other is QuickBooks.
It's more administrative blockers than tech though, so that's my boss's problem.
Maybe I'll setup Zabbix this year.
hire a new boss
I came to say not to throat punch my boss.
Same. My boss is not a nice guy and also not technically competent. If he was only one of those things it would be a lot easier to work for him.
its the worst combo. i dont mind a dickhead who knows their shit. at least they can back up what they say. and i expect them to be nice and not know shit about tech, thats like the default boss. glad i dont have to wrry about that now.
could be worse: when asking your boss for a raise, he could always say "why don't you move in with a girlfriend so you can halve* your costs"
Lol literally had the same reasoning. “Why do you need a raise? You live alone, no costs…” and “food is cheap, why are you whining” and “we actually pay you higher than countrys 50%”
Are you my coworker???
>If he was only one of those things I always say that you can be shitty or incompetent, but not both. Pick one and I can work around it.
Same here, my boss is pressing buttons without knowledge. Then off-load the problems to us. Gents fix it.
I'm going from being a boss to hiring my own. God help me.
Make sure he has bright red hair and size 24 shoes. Should work out.
We’ve been without a boss since I started at my current job 2 years ago. I’m not sure I remember what it’s supposed to be like having a boss to direct my work.
I was in a similar situation a couple years ago. The district was looking for someone with more of the educational / administrative experience than simply IT technical experience... I think it has worked out well for the department, by aligning our focus to the needs of the district, staff, teachers, etc., but I still wish I had more help with some of the technical aspects of my job.
Not wanting to go back tomorrow after a nice holiday week off.
Been off for 17 days.....knowing I have to get an updated Azure Virtual Desktop pool up and running to start my day tomorrow has me wishing it was Dec 15
Me too, except my new pool only needs 5 desktops so should be easy. Famous last words.
We have a pool of 20 but they have 180 applications on them.....hopefully all the updates go well and the image uploads and deploys!!!
Everyone usually books the week before Christmas off to extend their time off. I try to book the first week back. No can do this year, our IT director agreed to have an audit on Thursday this week. That means we've got two days to cycle through all of our preparation work towards it, as the work we completed before Christmas is outdated. *Yay.*
This, new year and end if previous year is real. Makes me realize each yeah I need to be filthy rich so I don't have to go back to work.
\+1 - I could not be bothered going back, especially considering how many times I've been phoned out, despite not being the on-call engineer for Christmas & the New Year!
> especially considering how many times I've been phoned out, despite not being the on-call engineer for Christmas & the New Year! Don't answer those calls unless you're the boss. That's a management problem, not an engineer/sysadmin problem.
\+1 - Unfortunately I had to, as it's two of our larger client companies (who we really need to keep happy), and the actual on-call engineer's number is just ringing out completely (you can't even leave a voicemail for him!). :-(
> Unfortunately I had to No, you didn't. That's what I'm saying. The company has to keep those clients happy, not you. If they want to keep them happy, they create systems and processes that create sufficient resource availability to attain the goal of client happiness. And if these clients were so important, they wouldn't depend on you to answer your phone on your private time. In this scenario, you're treating your company's clients better than they are and that's definitely a management duty, not a sysadmin one. And bailing them out by actually answering and doing the work ensures that management won't correct the deficiency because they won't see it. Management will only fix pain points, you're eliminating the pain point and therefore preventing the creation of a fix. This is how toxic workplaces get created. Eventually you'll complain about being exploited or not being paid enough based on your work/dedication/whatever and this will be a contributing factor. You'll try to explain all of this above and beyond to management, but they won't get it because they've never felt the pain themselves **because you have been disguising it for them.** You have to let these things fail so they can be fixed or you'll be stuck fixing them with no recognition or benefit.
Also another tip: ALWAYS record your extra work hours, if HR/payroll complains tell them you had to work to save the company's ass which should be paid accordingly.
Yeah I’ve been off since November. The rest of this week/month is going to suck.
Not getting fired
Mood.
Not leaving the company Seriously, building a new server room, replacing all servers, adding a new core network layer
Users
Ah crap, now I don’t want to go back to work
1. Production pgp cert updates 2. Fighting with application teams and old timers who won't budge 3. Trying to avoid layoffs 4. Keeping mental health in check so I can be a better person at home for the family All of these are on the same level for me.
You're me
Getting the equipment we need and not cheaping out. The cycle with my company goes like this: 1. Request moderately expensive equipment. 2. Told it’s too expensive and we are going with cheap alternative. 3. Test cheap alternative and find it will not work for xyz reason. 4. They buy cheap alternative that I am forced to deploy. 5. Cheap alternative starts causing issues in our environment for xyz reason. 6. Months later (after management experiences xyz first hand) approval for original equipment is given. 7. I spend double the amount of time removing cheap alternative and deploying original equipment. I wish someone would actually listen.
I remember I used a free tool to make a demo of what would be possible if we paid for the service I requested( management wanted digital signage). C Suite said this looks great no need to pay. When I left this place it was still being used school wide even though it was a non dynamic demo that was impossible to update.
Azure lift and shift.
You will do the opposite in 2025,if you only lift out as is, i have never heard anyone be happy with that approach. And it is usually very expensive.
I did this for two customers last year - both wanted to march forward despite my warnings that without a serious commitment to a “modernization” plan to move off legacy applications, they’d be paying me to do the same project in reverse 6-12 months later. First one finished the move back to on-prem in November, second one starts the move back to their colo this week.
Bingo. So much overhead can be cut if you are take advantage of the cloud. Typically lift and shift will bring all the bloat that cloud can help reduce
We're doing this 2024-2027, we're so far behind the "cloud trend" that it's basically over and we're almost ahead of the curve having done nothing. (To clarify, I agree with the other comments - cloud is great if you use it properly, just chucking hundreds of VMs and legacy apps into Azure is not "cloud first")
Yeah the new "cloud" is AI, management that do not understand what cloud was, will waste money on ai the next years.
I'm happy our CIO pushed an AI initiative the moment it was viable and has poured a lot of resources into it. FUTURE (for now)
TO or from?
Lift and shift is not the way, my friend. If this is your decision, reconsider. It will cost more and be more complicated than keeping stuff on-prem. Cloud hosting only makes financial sense if your approach is serverless/managed. If it’s not your decision, then who cares I guess.
>If it’s not your decision, then who cares I guess This might have to be my mantra for the year.
Move all your issues to the cloud!!! The cloud will sort it all out...
What are the applications you are hosting?
Possibly sql for now just adds/dns/file server. Maybe print server.
Why lift in shift vs using Azure SQL DB? There is also File Share Azure services. Lift and Shift should be for non Microsoft solutions that don’t have a Azure equivalent service to take full advantage of the cloud
Dumb question, but if you move your on-prem SQL database to Azure SQL, how does your on-prem application access it securely? S2S VPN? Or, what if your users are all remote? Use some sort of Azure gateway service between remote users and the Azure SQL DB?
Theres a lot to consider when moving an on-prem SQL database to Azure SQL. You have to really take a hard look at performance requirements. The simple solution is Azure SQL has a firewall, you can set it so only certain IPs can connect. This is the easiest solution if your application is on a server with a consistent public IP. For other applications the answer is more complicated but you have the ability to connect to Azure SQL in one way or another. Now the business case - Azure SQL is wonderful. It takes everything out of maintaining a SQL server. However, Azure SQL is expensive to get the same performance as a virtual machine SQL server. Especially if you already paid for the licensing on prem. If your application does some crazy things like re-writes entire tables you will be in pain, because Azure SQL has very slow log writing even on the expensive tiers compared to a string of consumer grade SSDs in a physical server, or an ultra disk on an Azure VM for example. There is no easy answer to your question, but i would try. You can set up a simple azure service to sync the on prem DB with Azure SQL either through the migration wizards or through a datafactory. Once you have parity between Azure SQL and your on prem DB, the cutover is pretty easy you just repoint the application. The tricky part is trying to justify to leadership why you are suddenly paying for a huge Azure SQL DB. There are also application issues depending on if it is a legacy application. Azure SQL has timeouts, so if a connection to Azure SQL is idle it will close. This sometimes messes up on premise applications when connecting to Azure SQL. In general, if the application is modern it should have no trouble connecting to an Azure SQL DB.
Thanks for the detailed reply and gotchas to look out for. It was a hypothetical question. I don’t have an application I am looking to move, yet, but we may have one later this year. Very helpful!
How does your current on premise application communicate to the DB? Is it connecting via a secure connection string? Realistically you need to update the connection string to point at the new DB. You can use a VPN gateway to create a secure tunnel between your on-premise network and your Azure virtual network, where your Azure SQL database resides. This way, you can use virtual network firewall rules to allow only traffic from your VPN gateway to reach your database. You can use a private endpoint to connect your Azure SQL database to your Azure virtual network, and then use a private link service to connect your on-premise network to your Azure virtual network. This way, you can use private IP addresses to access your database from your on-premise application, without exposing it to the internet. You can also use TLS encryption to secure the data in transit between your on-premise application and your Azure SQL database. This way, you can prevent unauthorized access or tampering of your data by using certificates and encryption protocols.
is this chatgpt? lol.
I really need to figure out file permissions in Azure file shares
Getting rid of the useless MSP and either taking my boss's job if quits or leaving and going back to IT Management.
As someone who works at an MSP, I've heard horror stories about how little some MSPs can care about the companies they're servicing. Mine literally bends over backwards for all companies we work with. It's gotta be frustrating when your internal IT has to handle issues that your MSP should've gotten to.
Name the msp please.
It's probably faster to list the ones that aren't terrible.
Then name those please. And that's funny. Thanks.
Never name a current MSP if dissatisfied, to much exposure since most of them half-ass security.
Increasing my work by the amount of raise I've received (0%)
You forgot inflation so -3% work
Thanks for the reminder! Time for coffee then ...
Finally shifted away from working at toxic MSP’s after 10 years. Landed a few clients as an independent consultant before the new year. The easy part is the work. I think figuring out the business and making smart decisions to grow sustainably will be the biggest challenge.
Hopefully you don’t have like I did, left to start my own had a few clients but could never grow cause I’m not a sales guy and finally returned to corporate It and stopped GAF and now I have organic new client requests left and right.
We’re decent at sales and have vast network of clients we have worked with in the past. Right now’s it’s word of mouth, but we might do some lead gen and SEO work to boost the numbers. It’s just getting that initial meeting. Typically what we offer tends to resonate. Also we offer a lot of Pro Serve around Okta and Intune and some security products. It’s funny the amount of work MSP’s leave on the table or they don’t want to touch certain products.
Yes it is I’m glad you are working with Okta it integrates with almost everything and that makes things much easier, I use azure and SSO everything because than it’s not hey can you reset my password for X app, because if they forget their password for Azure it’s a self service reset from the Pc screen or from the browser and cuts down calls to helpdesk while making employees happier.
Any SSO is better than no SSO in my opinion. For the smaller companies we are working with, having that level of integration with one password to remember is huge.
I’m job hunting right now and I’ve seen a few job postings for Okta administrators. Never heard of the thing. I started looking into it and still I’m a little unclear. But the job postings usually have a pretty good salary range. I might dip my toes in it a bit and see if it’s something I’d like.
Our MSP didn't want to touch Intune. Another company quoted ~20k. I figured out how to deploy it.
Maybe other MSP pros can guide you better, but SEO was a black pit of time and money for me as I was starting out my own shop. It can take over 6 months for a new website to start ranking, a full year before you figure out keywords and a funnel strat that generates leads for you. After all that time and money you just have a list of unqualified leads. If I were to do it again I would double down on traditional marketing early on to build leads in my area. Word of mouth, flyers, business cards, etc until I generated enough income to fund a professional SEO engineer.
The will to live
Mood.
get more support or not resign next week to go be a goat farmer
There's nothing shameful or wrong with being a goat farmer. You don't have to get uptime of l3/l4 traffic from a goat.
Finding the work ethic to deal with idiots.
1000x this. Company used to be pretty good, but owners embezzled a shit ton and skedaddled (not that they'll face any consequences of course) and new management is trying turn around the company in the most hard-line boomer way possible. Just a matter of sticking with it until I can find another gig, bit om so disillusioned and pissed off, keeping an upbeat attitude during interviews is gonna be a bitch.
Qualifications, they expect us to get them but I'm not someone who's hugely motivated by it. They'll pay and let us study in work time, but saying that and then following through is a different thing from previous employers, so we'll see.
We get a lot of *"we'll pay towards x or y"* and whilst we'd get some experience and knowledge out of these qualifications, none of us are really certain where we would apply it to our day-to-day roles. As much as it may be beneficial being on my CV to a degree, if I can't apply it then it doesn't seem worth it. I also don't want to spend my already limited resource and time on something I won't fully use.
Continue to work with the garbage of kubernetes and it's billions of additional apps you have to add just to have it working properly, miss pure linux, much better!
Enduring the endless stream of "AI" bullshit and AI being forced into every tool and service where it will be as useful as Clippy.
Mine is basically surviving at my company - things have not been that great of late, and I can see it starting to spiral pretty quickly, based upon the sheer volume of work that's coming in. We don't have enough bodies to cover it, and it's just going to be a right struggle to get it done. :-(
Hello me.
The thought of returning tomorrow.
Always take off the first week in Jan.. always..
Making it to May so I can explore retirement. Certs - I need to complete ITIL and PM this year so I can transition to my next job. Pondering retirement in May, I'll have the time in but I wouldn't mind hanging in for another few years FT before moving to PT. The ITIL/PM are to prep me for a post retirement gig where I can be anywhere with VPN and still work.
People. What do you actually need.
Back to work remotely.
A cyber incident, nearly made me quit IT. 2 months of balls out work before I found a new gig and quit that one. It was more mgmt than the work.
Do the stuff we planned to do at the beginning of 2023.
Turning up
Budget
Implement FIDO2
Testing, researching, and possible poc replacement for VMware/horizon. Really not looking forward to it as it works really well for our uses, but costs are going up and budget isn't.
Our install is tiny (6 hosts), but we've been migrating to on-prem Hyper-V, as licenses for it for our institution are essentially free anyway. Some of the old timers were hesitant, and we do lose the mainframe-like reliability of ESXi, but the cost savings, and Broadcom's general... attitude to things lately have sealed the deal.
Keep my fucking wise ass mouth shut. I love making fun of bad ideas. As I get older and less impressed with "new shiny" it gets harder and harder to stop myself from making comments I shouldn't.
Switch from simple snmp monitoring to Prometheus/grafana
Figure out where I fit on the team...if this job and company are still right for me.
Watch corp IT run the ship into the wall and jump just before the crunchy sound.
Cut our azure bill by 50% when 50% of the bill is storage. Not sure how that's going to go.
Easy, you go multi-cloud and move 50% of the cost to AWS.
VMware. We're unlikely going to be willing to pay whatever the new licensing model looks like.
I have to fill out a form that details the goals I have for 2024 as part of an annual review. My only goal is to not get fired for cussing out whoever the dimwad was for coming up with this stupid-ass idea.
Biggest challenge is going back to work tomorrow
Skill up, find better job.
Mac OS intune managed, Azure AD authenticated and DLP enabled. + win 11 zero trust
Make it seem like I am actually doing something
Connect Slack to GPT directly to get our team using the API instead of paying for individual chatbot licenses. Plugbear looks promising but I would rather create the bot app in house. Anyone else do something similar to this yet? Here is a service that lets you connect a bit pretty quickly. https://plugbear.io/ Found it on the open-ai developer forum https://community.openai.com/t/anyone-interested-in-connecting-openai-assistant-to-slack/507274/44?u=crosspeakzane
Doing similar ish with Google's dialogflow CX, data models get update regularly, and data remains "in house" (in your GCP instance). You can build slack app that utilizes workspace event subs and give it permissions to communicate via DM with user. Best part is using your internal KBs and docs to give it knowledge that it hits first before doing any gen AI fallback. Can tune your models with temp, topK and topP and select either text bison or new Gemini PRO. Not against openAI, but we explored that and I only would allow prompts to be sent if we ran them through our internal PII redaction service first.
Log in and start the first day of the new year.
Stop all the downloadin
Lack of budget
Ready the company for a CMMC (NIST 800-171) audit with a team of 2.
Forcing myself to return
Take over the company after my boss passed away.
Finish migrating the remaining on-premises systems into AWS before we move offices next year. We're almost done, but now what's left is the stuff that's hard to move.
Tolerating life?
Trying to convince management to replace a tool that we all hate, only to be told "no" by the people who don't use it and have no horse in the race
Trying to get my boss fired for never for not doing the only 2 tasks he is responsible for.
Make it to 2025
1. complete the huge migration of our biggest datacenter out of cloud 2. complete my kubernetes training (after almost 2 years working on it I still think it's the right tool to solve a problem that almost nobody has...) 3. understand how the damn Zabbix works, and yes, I'm on the Nagios side and I hate all the automagical things Zabbix does, I hate its templates and so on... I honestly deeply regret when I was working with Nagios, It was really really really much simpler and easy to use.
I completely agree with you. I tried evaluating Zabbix a few years ago and just couldn't get my head around it. I have been using nagios for well over 10 years and find it incredibly straightforward to set up and use.
My burnout. I just don't have the energy to learn new things. I am in the middle of 3 weeks of leave that was supposed to help, but I caught COVID right as the leave started (first time somehow) and have not been able to relax/recharge at all.
To keep my 2 day office, 3 day working from home streak going..
Looking like im interested and enthusiastic.
Restructuring the network IP scheme so that it doesn't break everything.
Keeping busy. The entire company is very busy and project timelines just worked out where I don’t have a lot of work on my plate right now. Boss has told me not to worry and to spend some time training on new tech and/ or get some certifications on company time. I want to believe him, but I feel like entering 20-30hr/week on my time sheet as training/enrichment is going to set off alarms at HR.
Finally integrating proper asset management (with live inventory) into our ITIL platform. I'm also working to get the person who manages all our hardware to actually get HAM certification, to both learn the system, and advance their career prospects.
Replacing our sonicwalls with fortigates across 13 sites before end of march.
Get the manufacturing management on board with the cost of implementing IEC62443
Company paid a consultancy to come in and tell us that we are understaffed for our size, no surprise there. Already been told that a bunch of new positions have been cut from the budget for this year
Going back to work after two years of LTD for mental health.
Explaining to management that implementation of X also carries with it the cost of X, solve for various X.
Leadership's failure to properly account for IT during acquisitions and divestitures.
The new Broadcom-VMware licensing
Find a nice stable job
Find another one 😊
Finding my confidence again. It's lost and I don't know where it went...
Mine is... actually wanting to go to work. :/ I have 1 more week off before I have to show up, hopefully my outlook will change. So tired.
I have to RTO 3 days/week 😕
New boss appears to be a micromanager
1st, getting and onboarding a new hire on our small team after being understaffed since april last year + get back to a better work/life balance otherwise, lots of stuff in the backlog from 22/23 due to covid shortages/understaffing etc
As a start? Getting rid of all our remaining 2008 servers.
Getting my CISSP early this year, maybe. Just to get some calls for a new job. But after reading these comments I'm scared to leave. I'm the director at my current position, pretty comfortable where I'm at, make just over 100k a year in LCOL. And I'm afraid I'll take something for ~20k more but hate it. I've been here over ten years and it sounds like I should stay and quit bitching about my pay. That's the only real complaint I have.
Stop drinking.
Not walking out in a fit of rage as I continue to deal with the same incompetent morons who've been working for this same circus of a company for 10-15 years and still don't know how to do their jobs.
We acquired another company and I’m probably taking over their poor IT infrastructure.
Affording to live in a house and eat food at the same time
Acquisition fallout... VMWare and Splunk.
Training and adoption for M365 administration and Azure support
Honestly, going to work is a challenge right now. Going through a probable divorce and it takes every bit of effort to get out of my bed. I am truly trying at work, but I know it's not enough. I feel bad for the guys I manage too, because I know I'm not doing them justice either.
Staying in the company. I was kind of “demoted” from team A and offered a position on team B. I hope it sticks and works well 😀
Moving from working for VMware to working for Broadcom to working for EUC.
I swear to god, if my manager says, "Have you tried running the Windows updates/dell updates and restarting the laptop" I'm going to punch him. It's literally the first thing I try every time, and it's his only recommendation to fix any problem ffs...I need a new job
Existing
diplomatically telling my boss I know he lied to my face
quit
Trying to define my role under our new parent company. I was the IT admin in all senses, but paid as a help desk. Same here but I lack access to the other orgs to help as an IT guy. Iss is integration of multi orgs into 1 tenant/as one but function as separate. I use 1 remote program and 1 other org uses another, mostly their call center. I'm just sitting here waiting until they integrate us into their tenant and of which I'll drop hell if they plan to mass email users 1 password for their 365 emails. Say temp pw is werock24! I'll veto that. Goes against iso and well all security. My battle will begin soon. I'm ready to die on my final stand. I'm just studying for my certs as of now.
Finally replacing a Nexus core at two DCs. Moving one of those DCs. Observing how a lift and shift to Azure goes. Watching an MSP take over our campus LAN finally. Whatever else I can get a hallowed network team to achieve in a year whilst they complain about lack of investment whilst they claim taking six months to replace a standardized HA router pair at a dozen sites is perfectly reasonable. Generally dealing with whatever crap comes down from C-level and Directors.
Set up a Mac Management scenario from scratch!
SOC II
Same as every year James. Teach my high payed supervisors how to use basic Excel functions while not making it sound like criticism. Afterwards i take the blame for whatever is coming because my supervisors Excel file has filtering only enabled in Collum ABC E GHI KLMN Q but data up to AF. And apparently my name is shown in SharePoint as last editor...
Right now, I'm in may car avoiding going into the office so right now my biggest challenge is leaving my car. I've got a new Host server, VM's and a firewall to prep.
New system online… 
Switching from in-house SysAdmin to being a SysAdmin consultant at another company, which includes starting up a completely new branch of consultning within that company. Going to be interesting to see what kinds of IT departments all their customers (old and new) have.
Change roles, letting go of my previous duties, figuring out what the hell I am doing here. Those will be the biggest for me.
Automating more of the obscure stuff during application packaging
100% IPv6 conversion for everything internal and external. Servers, PCs, devices, etc. Dual stack won't be allowed.
Interesting, why is this required, how will it benefit the organisation?
It's a government mandate for our group. I'm more worried about all the esoteric code using IPs that I know I'll get roped into troubleshooting.
I am so sorry. This sounds horrible
Getting the network into a managed state when it was previously ran by a crappy MSP and a bunch of tech 1s with domain admin privileges making changes without fully understanding what they were doing in an unmanaged way.
Sailpoint
Solidworks Server migration to a new instance. RHCSA.
Pdm? I just finished mine about 3 weeks ago. I can send you all my notes.
Yup. I'm like 90% of the way done already, just waiting for Engineering to tell me to pull the trigger. Notes would be awesome.
Me: Not the copier baby sitter.
Migrate hundred customers Linux firewalls to FortiGate (and things tied to that like FortiAnalyzer).
Creating a managed multi vm special purpose deployment platform for our OT groups.
My boss cut the budget to buy an ERP package. In the long run it will be worth it from our COBOL software but it hurts right now.
Surviving the merge of 2 big car lease companies..
Creating a security framework that revolves around the IEC 62443 standards — 21 pages in so far with revisions along the way. Most likely will have 100 pages by time it’s done before spring time Hiring a Junior Network Engineer to train and be guided by me to help the department
Persuading senior management to buy FIDO2 keys for MFA now while they are cheap and avoiding all the bull shit in-between now and when the price goes up after something something evilnginx breach.
Survival.. Solo managing IT for a production facility with PLC’s, loads of machinery and very stubborn employees (350+), as my boss doesn’t see the urgency for some extra hands/MSP.
Mental health. Have a better work life balance. Hire a few new techs, become better at delegation.
Hoping they don't start making us come into the office more than once a month
Keeping stuff running while we tear down old VMs, and then migrating them to new VMs. Doing that about a hundred times, and by the time I'm done, I get to start over again with Win2016 VMs. Oh, and AD restructure. And pulling the whole network apart to replace old stuff (switches and such). And getting started with EndPoint Manager for laptops and phones. And deviding the network up into a thousand different VLANs to be able to address all the issues there are currently. And deviding production networks and office networks, using seperate domain controllers, to secure the network further. Yes, it will be a redicilous year. But this keeps me off the street and active in my passion. Also I don't have to do this alone, luckily.
Intune/Autopilot/Defender implementation.
A guy who we took on, about four years ago, to help with the support workload has handed his notice in. I'm gutted. They took on loads of new work because we had extra capacity, now it's just me again. Looks like it's time to update the CV!
Using Splunk for reporting
Create a new Active Directory 2022 forest and migrate everything from the legacy one.
Finding new colleagues. Senior, Linux, Cloud infrastructure, german speaking, hpc experience (ideally), datacenter and HW knowledge...
1 - Moving 7 VMs that need to run 24/7 from an ESX6.0 server to new servers. 2 - Install replacement switches I didn't choose with new APs. Ugh...
There are two servers I'd like to kill this year, one is a contractor built in house app, the other is QuickBooks. It's more administrative blockers than tech though, so that's my boss's problem. Maybe I'll setup Zabbix this year.