I was excited, I was es-static, I couldn't wait for the Web Ex. I was going to see the new Cisco product line offerings which I think could really be helpful here with my job.
Then at noon I suddenly realized I missed it.
I was perplexed, I had accepted the meeting invite from Cisco, it was on my calendar. How could I have been so busy to notice something popping up and interrupting my work?
Then I found it. The invite sent out from Cisco had NO reminder set. So when it came time for the 11AM meeting, nothing popped up on my computer or my phone. Nothing yelling at me to "join now!", just silence.
You can easily kill your sales pitch by doing everything right and one thing wrong.
Measure twice and cut once. You don't want to miss out on a million dollars because you rushed your invite.
Lessons from an IT Network Administrator to help simplify your life.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Crucial Data for IT Tickets
When you start designing a from scratch Ticketing system for your IT Department things a be a bit overwhelming. There are many programs out there that do the same thing but seem too busy, complex or just too expensive to implement.
Over the past year I have been working with contractors to deploy an in house ticketing system for our IT requests. For us third party options were too complex for a extremely small help desk to utilize, and ones that were free (i.e. Spiceworks) were too busy with unnecessary information for us. We went about creating the ticketing system however had little idea of what data we needed to capture in the system once it went live to users.
We started with the basics:
Over the past year I have been working with contractors to deploy an in house ticketing system for our IT requests. For us third party options were too complex for a extremely small help desk to utilize, and ones that were free (i.e. Spiceworks) were too busy with unnecessary information for us. We went about creating the ticketing system however had little idea of what data we needed to capture in the system once it went live to users.
We started with the basics:
- Issue
- Due(Priority)
- User
- Category
- Response Method
We found that users don't chose category's like we do so we hid that field for them and left the others. Due responses always defaulted to the slowest time (for us it was "within a week"), and the user field auto populated with the user who was logged into the web page. This could be changed but most users just wanted their name in there.
From their your case my differ, but its a good start to gathering data from your users via a ticketing system instead of phone calls and stop by's.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Mac Profiling Services - Are They Worth It?
For the better part of my IT career I have been around Windows environments (for better or worse, your call). With Microsoft being so enterprise centered Active Directory has always been a staple in most environments large enough to need some control, and for the most part it works very well.
The comes the first Apple devices on your network, and control becomes a four letter word. Going through this experience over the past year has been challenging but I think I have finally figured out a few things that if you know before going in will help the transition that much easier. I'll keep these brief and to the point, hoping they help you out.
1. A Mac Server with Profile Management is no Group Policy for AD. It's clunky, messy, and a pain to setup
2. Control will be limited so be prepared have to limit your options.
3. Some preferences don't have all the controls that are on the client machine. So if you can only check a box and the users machine shows a check box and a timer option, you'll need to manually set the timer option before pushing out the profile. (Fail on Apple's part)
4. You will loose some hair in the process. I had to wipe our server twice and get a contract IT company to deal with Apple over the phone to setup the Trust Profile because I couldn't waste any more time on the darn thing.
Just be prepared, take your time, and test it out long before you deploy your first Apple machine and you might just make it through without going bald. It is worth it, if for nothing else than setting one option: screen timeout / password prompt. Security is worth every penny these days, and a basic feature like screen timeouts are an easy way to start.
The comes the first Apple devices on your network, and control becomes a four letter word. Going through this experience over the past year has been challenging but I think I have finally figured out a few things that if you know before going in will help the transition that much easier. I'll keep these brief and to the point, hoping they help you out.
1. A Mac Server with Profile Management is no Group Policy for AD. It's clunky, messy, and a pain to setup
2. Control will be limited so be prepared have to limit your options.
3. Some preferences don't have all the controls that are on the client machine. So if you can only check a box and the users machine shows a check box and a timer option, you'll need to manually set the timer option before pushing out the profile. (Fail on Apple's part)
4. You will loose some hair in the process. I had to wipe our server twice and get a contract IT company to deal with Apple over the phone to setup the Trust Profile because I couldn't waste any more time on the darn thing.
Just be prepared, take your time, and test it out long before you deploy your first Apple machine and you might just make it through without going bald. It is worth it, if for nothing else than setting one option: screen timeout / password prompt. Security is worth every penny these days, and a basic feature like screen timeouts are an easy way to start.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Nexus 4 and Android 4.4 Bluetooth Issues
Usually I am pretty quick when it comes to updates. I like having the latest (just short of beta testing) and don't get bothered by the small stuff when it doesn't work. With Android it happens more often than not and even with having a Nexus device you can feel the priority level from Google with so many devices that have those lingering problems.
After updating to Kit Kat (4.4) I came across one of the few times that I actually regretted updating a device, and I haven't been the only one. Many people have even created a Google group surrounding one glaring issue in 4.4 (Link HERE) pertaining to Bluetooth and its reliability. I for one use it in my car daily, from streaming Pandora or making calls to family on the way home it's an easy and safe(ish) way to accomplish my tasks. Once I had upgraded to Kit Kat though it was another ball game entirely. From my phone crashing weekly, to being unable to turn on or off my Wifi or Bluetooth, to finally having my Bluetooth cut out every 30 seconds or so during phone calls drove me mad.
Like most people I went to Google and instead of doing a technical support call for help I searched for my issues instead. It lead me to the group (linked above) and after reading 8 pages (then) of user responses I came to two conclusions.
1. Google doesn't see the issue as high priority enough to fix out of cycle from another main release.
2. The only sure fire way to remove the problem was to flash back to 4.3.
I read up one some pretty helpful posts on flashing an older rom onto my Nexus and took a night to work through it. Though the page linked for instructions was lacking in some ways I was able to trail and error through commands and files from my Windows machine and flash the phone back successfully. After setting up my phone from scratch (I have it back up but never use it) I tested it out in the car the next day. All the issues I had were solved and found myself back in the land of peace and tranquility. I do miss some features of Kit Kat but none of which are more important to me than a working Bluetooth connection. Big thanks for everyone who posted and the mounds of solutions tried. Google never chimed in once, but like normal the Internet is there to save the day.
After updating to Kit Kat (4.4) I came across one of the few times that I actually regretted updating a device, and I haven't been the only one. Many people have even created a Google group surrounding one glaring issue in 4.4 (Link HERE) pertaining to Bluetooth and its reliability. I for one use it in my car daily, from streaming Pandora or making calls to family on the way home it's an easy and safe(ish) way to accomplish my tasks. Once I had upgraded to Kit Kat though it was another ball game entirely. From my phone crashing weekly, to being unable to turn on or off my Wifi or Bluetooth, to finally having my Bluetooth cut out every 30 seconds or so during phone calls drove me mad.
Like most people I went to Google and instead of doing a technical support call for help I searched for my issues instead. It lead me to the group (linked above) and after reading 8 pages (then) of user responses I came to two conclusions.
1. Google doesn't see the issue as high priority enough to fix out of cycle from another main release.
2. The only sure fire way to remove the problem was to flash back to 4.3.
I read up one some pretty helpful posts on flashing an older rom onto my Nexus and took a night to work through it. Though the page linked for instructions was lacking in some ways I was able to trail and error through commands and files from my Windows machine and flash the phone back successfully. After setting up my phone from scratch (I have it back up but never use it) I tested it out in the car the next day. All the issues I had were solved and found myself back in the land of peace and tranquility. I do miss some features of Kit Kat but none of which are more important to me than a working Bluetooth connection. Big thanks for everyone who posted and the mounds of solutions tried. Google never chimed in once, but like normal the Internet is there to save the day.
Meeting Industry Security Standards for Information Technology
Just remember that meeting industry standards for security in your IT Department is much like how the Titanic met shipping standards for life boats back in 1912.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Test Your IT Monitoring Tools Regularly
Most IT Departments have active monitoring tools to make sure you are notified in the event that something goes wrong, right, or is starting to look sketchy (much like a bad NHL trade). These systems are put in place with the mindset of a set it and forget it mentality because hey, its supposed to alert us right? Well if you haven't heard it before I am saying it now. No. Is that a complete sentence? Probably not, but it gets my point across. Monitoring systems and devices are only as good as their trustworthiness and much like your gradual trusting of friendships must grow by testing the tools on a regular basis.
I will use our power monitoring/temperature monitoring device in our server closet as an example. In the event of a power failure, or A/C unit failure one of two things will happen. In the first scenario, the unit alerts us by calling my cell phone to notify me that power has been lost and the unit is running on backup power (this unit is a cellular one). In scenario two the device calls my cell and alerts me to a high temperature reading, possibly caused by a malfunction in the A/C unit. If I never test the unit by pulling the power plug then I have no faith the unit will successfully call me in the event of a power outage, and if its not regularly tested then I have no faith the battery is still holding a charge inside the unit and will stay alive long enough to make the call needed through our vendor.
Testing these units regularly should be on your IT calendar and should be as often as you or a colleague can test it. (For us, quarterly should be our testing cycle).
Having faith in these systems to work correctly when needed can help an Administrator sleep at night knowing a trustful partner is always watching and thankfully never needs sleep.
I will use our power monitoring/temperature monitoring device in our server closet as an example. In the event of a power failure, or A/C unit failure one of two things will happen. In the first scenario, the unit alerts us by calling my cell phone to notify me that power has been lost and the unit is running on backup power (this unit is a cellular one). In scenario two the device calls my cell and alerts me to a high temperature reading, possibly caused by a malfunction in the A/C unit. If I never test the unit by pulling the power plug then I have no faith the unit will successfully call me in the event of a power outage, and if its not regularly tested then I have no faith the battery is still holding a charge inside the unit and will stay alive long enough to make the call needed through our vendor.
Testing these units regularly should be on your IT calendar and should be as often as you or a colleague can test it. (For us, quarterly should be our testing cycle).
Having faith in these systems to work correctly when needed can help an Administrator sleep at night knowing a trustful partner is always watching and thankfully never needs sleep.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Intel WiDi Stops Lync 2013 from Recognizing Audio Devices
We have used Lync 2013 for a while the company I work for and overall with little issues (amazingly). However the other day I attempted to join a conference call and utilize my built in webcam/mic but found that Lync couldn't see any audio device at all. This was strange considering it was showing up in the computer management console, and in recording devices. I could even use the microphone and record with windows built in recorder so that was odd too.
I attempted first a repair of Lync 2013, but no dice. Then I re-installed my Dell audio drivers, but no luck there either. A bit of Google searching lead me to just a few articles stating that Intel's WiDi application caused some problems with audio devices. Sure enough one of the posts in particular was on Lync specifically so I decided to give it a shot and uninstall. After a quick reboot Lync was perfect again and I was without one more useless program (to me at least). Dell (from whom we buy our laptops) has components in most of their laptops which include this application, however I have never used it. Uninstalling it did not show any unknown devices in computer management or prompt for driver installation every time the machine booted up so I'll be making sure to uninstall this from all new deployments of laptops within the company.
I never could figure out the "why"behind the failure for the applications to not play nice, but what's fixed is fixed.
I attempted first a repair of Lync 2013, but no dice. Then I re-installed my Dell audio drivers, but no luck there either. A bit of Google searching lead me to just a few articles stating that Intel's WiDi application caused some problems with audio devices. Sure enough one of the posts in particular was on Lync specifically so I decided to give it a shot and uninstall. After a quick reboot Lync was perfect again and I was without one more useless program (to me at least). Dell (from whom we buy our laptops) has components in most of their laptops which include this application, however I have never used it. Uninstalling it did not show any unknown devices in computer management or prompt for driver installation every time the machine booted up so I'll be making sure to uninstall this from all new deployments of laptops within the company.
I never could figure out the "why"behind the failure for the applications to not play nice, but what's fixed is fixed.
Monday, February 10, 2014
An Outlook Signature Deployment and How it Changed My Way of Thinking
Over the course of the past few years our company has wanted to get everyone on a standardized signature to include company information, links and a professional picture of the employee to help give us a personal feel to clients. The idea was great, however deploying signatures to 40 or so employees seemed daunting at the time I had come on board, as well as making the signature its self which was based loosely on the original we had.
I have learned a lot in those past few years about the company, people, technology, and design hoping to make the process easier as some point.
It never happened however. Instead I struggled with the project, with issues surrounding the signature design and even worse compatibility among other programs.
The project changed, died off, came back and changed again. I was fed up, I was tired and most of all I was uninterested. I couldn't make parts of it work well. Images were blown up, Gmail just saw code and I was exhausted with the project altogether.
At the end of 2013 my supervisor had brought the project back up and decided on deploying it before our annual company meeting. I groaned but went along. He suggested we use a third party this time due to my busy schedule, hoping to make things smoother and finish quicker. I'll be the first to admit that utilizing an outside vendor to do "my" job seemed against my own nature, and I am 100% sure I resisted more than I should have. It took a bit for me to warm up to the idea but got them going on it anyway.
The vendor came in, and I showed him what we had and our issues with my ideas and let him get to work. He came back with a signature that looked similar but different and I was actually very pleased on how it turned out. I got my supervisor involved and he stated that he liked it more as well. After some refinements the vendor left to work on it more at a later time and to make it auto populate from excel based data so I could create them easily. Testing of the signature came and went and this time, no garbled code in Gmail, and nothing weird in different versions of Outlook. It became a big win to get even this far and my interested increased ever so slightly back into the project.
I ended up deploying the signatures myself (though it may have worked with a vendor) citing my users busy schedules and the cost of the vendor on site. We've achieved 100% deployment for the users who were with us and had professional photos taken, and all the while I was able to turn my attention to other projects while still having more than plenty to do. In the end my offload of this project to a vendor saved me a lot of time, and got the "leech" of a project out of my head while still being able to show progress week by week on it. Looking back it seemed silly to sit on my mess and not clean it up while all the while I could have utilized someone else to clean up the mess and come back with a steak dinner so to speak. Sitting on messes doesn't help anyone in the long run, the meal never gets made and you smell like rotten eggs. Sometimes, you just need to delegate.
I have learned a lot in those past few years about the company, people, technology, and design hoping to make the process easier as some point.
It never happened however. Instead I struggled with the project, with issues surrounding the signature design and even worse compatibility among other programs.
The project changed, died off, came back and changed again. I was fed up, I was tired and most of all I was uninterested. I couldn't make parts of it work well. Images were blown up, Gmail just saw code and I was exhausted with the project altogether.
At the end of 2013 my supervisor had brought the project back up and decided on deploying it before our annual company meeting. I groaned but went along. He suggested we use a third party this time due to my busy schedule, hoping to make things smoother and finish quicker. I'll be the first to admit that utilizing an outside vendor to do "my" job seemed against my own nature, and I am 100% sure I resisted more than I should have. It took a bit for me to warm up to the idea but got them going on it anyway.
The vendor came in, and I showed him what we had and our issues with my ideas and let him get to work. He came back with a signature that looked similar but different and I was actually very pleased on how it turned out. I got my supervisor involved and he stated that he liked it more as well. After some refinements the vendor left to work on it more at a later time and to make it auto populate from excel based data so I could create them easily. Testing of the signature came and went and this time, no garbled code in Gmail, and nothing weird in different versions of Outlook. It became a big win to get even this far and my interested increased ever so slightly back into the project.
I ended up deploying the signatures myself (though it may have worked with a vendor) citing my users busy schedules and the cost of the vendor on site. We've achieved 100% deployment for the users who were with us and had professional photos taken, and all the while I was able to turn my attention to other projects while still having more than plenty to do. In the end my offload of this project to a vendor saved me a lot of time, and got the "leech" of a project out of my head while still being able to show progress week by week on it. Looking back it seemed silly to sit on my mess and not clean it up while all the while I could have utilized someone else to clean up the mess and come back with a steak dinner so to speak. Sitting on messes doesn't help anyone in the long run, the meal never gets made and you smell like rotten eggs. Sometimes, you just need to delegate.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Unable to install Symantec 12.1.4xxx on Windows 8.1 VM
I had a bit of trouble today trying to install Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.4xxx on a Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit virtual machine. The installer would fail and give cryptic advice through the windows event viewer console which was almost worthless. I followed the random number given to me (1603) to a few articles on Symantec's website but all referenced an issue that was supposed to have been fixed in 12.1.3xxx.
Sad to say I must have found a loophole.
I did check into a few things but was not able to find a work around. (Disabled Windows Defender, looked for a bad KB update)
I opened a case with Symantec and will report back my findings.
EDIT 2/4/14:
We were able to resolve this after running the clean wipe utility from Symantec. After that the installation completed successfully!
Sad to say I must have found a loophole.
I did check into a few things but was not able to find a work around. (Disabled Windows Defender, looked for a bad KB update)
I opened a case with Symantec and will report back my findings.
EDIT 2/4/14:
We were able to resolve this after running the clean wipe utility from Symantec. After that the installation completed successfully!
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
New Bumper Sticker Idea
While laying in bed reading the doom and gloom of April's XP-mageddom I wanted to type out a warning to friends and family about running the ancient OS.
I came up with a saying that even impressed me after saying it
"For the love of IT, dump XP"
Didn't even realize is kinda rhymes. Now to just find some place to make the bumper sticker I'll never use. I've got a dislike of those things unless they are in your cubicle somewhere.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Monoprice Cables and Dell Switches - A Strange Affair
I spent most of my day today trying to replace cabling in our closet to tidy up the place. After purchasing 2 pass through patch panels to route cables from the back of the rack to the front in a neat manner I came across issues with some ports not working and coming online with my Dell switches.
All ports in the pass through jacks tested fine, cables tested fine and the switches worked after testing as well.
After 2 hours of fooling around and trying this and that I found my culprit.
The cables I ordered from Monoprice (in this case 3ft and 1ft yellow Cat6 cables) seem to have their pins clamped a bit higher than other cables I have ordered (especially in this case since I ordered blue 3ft cables in the same order and their pins are placed lower in the RJ-45 ends) and cause a loss of connectivity with my Dell switches.
I am assuming at this point that Dell switches have their "spring" pins set just a tad bit lower than normal as my Fluke tester worked just fine with said yellow cables. Looking under a microscope to compare the blue 3ft to yellow 3ft and 1ft cables I was able to confirm that in fact the pins were in fact higher on them.
What a mess, I will have to return the whole order and reorder new ones (and this time maybe from Cables 2 Go). Be on the lookout for the strangest issues, they can creep up anywhere.
All ports in the pass through jacks tested fine, cables tested fine and the switches worked after testing as well.
After 2 hours of fooling around and trying this and that I found my culprit.
The cables I ordered from Monoprice (in this case 3ft and 1ft yellow Cat6 cables) seem to have their pins clamped a bit higher than other cables I have ordered (especially in this case since I ordered blue 3ft cables in the same order and their pins are placed lower in the RJ-45 ends) and cause a loss of connectivity with my Dell switches.
I am assuming at this point that Dell switches have their "spring" pins set just a tad bit lower than normal as my Fluke tester worked just fine with said yellow cables. Looking under a microscope to compare the blue 3ft to yellow 3ft and 1ft cables I was able to confirm that in fact the pins were in fact higher on them.
What a mess, I will have to return the whole order and reorder new ones (and this time maybe from Cables 2 Go). Be on the lookout for the strangest issues, they can creep up anywhere.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Installing .NET Framework 3.5 (3.0, 2.0) on Windows Server 2012 R2
.NET 3.5 and previous verions do not come standard on Windows Server 2012 R2 and tripped me up the first time I needed to install it for a software installation. Its easy enough to get through but I thought this would be a great quick write up in case anyone ran into issues or were curious of the process. You will need your 2012 R2 installation disk for this process.
Step one is opening the server manager
Next click on Add roles and features
Click Next
Make sure Role Based or Feature Based installation is selected and click Next
Make sure Select a server from the server pool is checked and your server is highlighted and click next (may be different for more complex installations)
Click Next
Select .Net Framework 3.5 Features and click Next
On the Confirmation page select Specify an alternate source path
On the Source Path window that pops up note the part that talks about where these source files would be found. We will need to pull them from the 2012 R2 installation media. Place it into your computer (or mount it to the server if in a virtual environment). We will go to the noted path and copy the address into the field next to the word Path:.
Open Windows Explorer and navigate to "This PC", right click on the media drive and select Open
Open the Sources folder
Open the "sxs" folder
Move your cursor to the address bar and highlight the entire path, for me it is D:\sources\sxs
Copy this to your clipboard
Paste the path into the Path: box in the Source Path window and click OK
Click Install and you are finished! If you have any issues just post up and I will try to help.
Step one is opening the server manager
Next click on Add roles and features
Click Next
Make sure Role Based or Feature Based installation is selected and click Next
Make sure Select a server from the server pool is checked and your server is highlighted and click next (may be different for more complex installations)
Click Next
Select .Net Framework 3.5 Features and click Next
On the Confirmation page select Specify an alternate source path
On the Source Path window that pops up note the part that talks about where these source files would be found. We will need to pull them from the 2012 R2 installation media. Place it into your computer (or mount it to the server if in a virtual environment). We will go to the noted path and copy the address into the field next to the word Path:.
Open Windows Explorer and navigate to "This PC", right click on the media drive and select Open
Open the Sources folder
Open the "sxs" folder
Move your cursor to the address bar and highlight the entire path, for me it is D:\sources\sxs
Copy this to your clipboard
Paste the path into the Path: box in the Source Path window and click OK
Click Install and you are finished! If you have any issues just post up and I will try to help.
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