existence | renewal

/EXISTENCE
I'd like to preface this posting stating that although I did SharePoint posts in the past, I haven't touched it in 3 years. In some ways I miss it. In more ways I don't. But regardless of my feelings toward SharePoint, it has been too long since I posted anything here. And so like a phoenix from the ashes, I'm revitalizing this blog with new content.

In the coming posts I'm going to dive both into things I've been doing in and outside of work, though mostly inside work since that's where I've learned the most. Nearly 3 years ago I moved to Southern California and I've been doing IT Support and System Administration. We're the local area outsourced IT department for many clients, none of whom I'll mention both due to respect and an NDA. To give you an idea, our work ranges from helping a small local shop keep their Windows XP machines running their business to getting a new production printer setup for a 70+ person office part of an international group of companies. I've worked with Exchange servers, Windows Server 2000 - 2012 R2, Google Apps, Office 2007 - 2016, Adobe CC, Office 365, Okta, VMWare vSphere, Yosemite backup, Dell Compellent Storage systems, Dell Equalogic, SonicWALL firewalls, Apple Mac OS X 10.6 - 10.11, SMB sharing, QNAP, Lenovo, Barracuda, Cisco Aironet wireless, Dell network switches, and more things than I can remember.

My co-worker and I discuss things a lot. Many of the things we've learned are because we were poking about in settings trying to fix some esoteric issue. Sure we get hints from other postings online that talk about other settings or tweaks, but there doesn't seem to ever be nearly enough information. And in the end it's often some check box buried in the advanced settings. So I decided to start a new set of posts regarding these strange issues that are solved by changing one solitary setting. These posts will have "that damn check box..." in the title to indicate what kind of post it is.

The last thing I want to mention is that although I've learned a ton in the last 3 years, I'm rather worn out from this job. It's full of pressure to make things better for users and full of users that are mean. There are plenty of people I've met that are actually quite nice about it, but those mean ones tend to leave a mark. I hope writing about the issues I fix and my current life helps put me in a better head-space as well as enlighten others crazy enough to be in IT support. Additionally I'm quite tired of the busy-ness that is Los Angeles and Orange County. For my own health I believe I need some place a bit slower paced. This not only leads to that I'm looking for new employment, but I'm also looking to relocate. I haven't truly decided on where I want to go, but I've been thinking a lot of the life I left behind when I moved to SoCal in the first place.

It's hard to close my existential posts sometimes. I feel like I need to say something poignant, but I can never find the words. Sadly those words rarely coalesce. So...

Until next time:
Work smart. Play hard. Sleep well.

subject to change

/TECH
Tech changes a lot. A generation in technology is often only a few months to a couple years long depending on which technology you're talking about. In the case of servers, it's more often a couple years. This is because servers are supposed to be a more consistent resource, constantly providing data or services. But for me, servers on Doppelganger are more often going to be talked about at the month level of iterations. Here's a quick rundown of the various appliances and VM's I have running on Doppelganger, my Proxmox Virtual Environment:

• Amarok
  Service: Plex Media Server
  Allocation: 2 cores, 2GB memory, 20GB storage
  Status: running, rarely used
  
• Balrog
  Service: Minecraft server
  Allocation: 2 cores, 6GB memory, 8GB storage
  Status: offline, merged to Gryphon
  
• Faoladh
  Service: LAMP for developing a Dungeons & Dragons character tracking web app
  Allocation: 1 core, 1GB memory, 10GB storage
  Status: running, not used
  
• Gryphon
  Service: Minecraft server and Tekkit server
  Allocation: 3 cores, 8GB memory, 8GB storage
  Status: running, frequently used
  
• Kitsune
  Service: WordPress
  Allocation: 1 core, 512MB memory, 4GB storage
  Status: running, untested
  
• Naga
  Service: Ubuntu 12.04 server
  Allocation: 2 core, 6GB memory, 6GB storage
  Status: offline, waiting re-purposing
  
• Raven
  Service: TeamSpeak
  Allocation: 1 core, 2GB memory, 8GB storage
  Status: running, frequently used
  
• Siren
  Service: Icecast
  Allocation: 1 core, 512MB RAM, and 10GB storage
  Status: offline, not working
  
• Warg
  Service: Windows 2008 R2 Server running Terraria server
  Allocation: 2 cores, 8GB memory, 32GB storage
  Status: offline
  

At the beginning of summer I had an idea and an overly simple plan that allowed for exploration. I never imagined I would have all the things above set up and I'm still exploring different possibilities of things to do. Looking back I now see a trail of projects--some working, some failed, some in between--and a series of decisions that were made on a thought. Naga had a very short lived purpose to serving as a remote platform for a friend to finish a school assignment. I set it up in about 30 minutes. It still sits in the list of servers hoping to someday become something else. Balrog had a long-term plan, but has since been incorporated into Gryphon, a more stable appliance. I maintain a spreadsheet online with a list of all the computer names I'm using or might want to use, what purpose that machine might serve, and various details about ones that are in use such as IP address and machine number. There are a lot more names on that list than I gave here, some of them being the names of my personal computer (Phoenix) and other active devices, some being undetermined, and some being machines that will be setup in the future.

Perhaps the most interesting machine on my list is the one that sits at the top and has never been implemented in any way but has gone through the most iterations: Cerberus, my eventual router and firewall. Although its name and eventual IP have never changed, my ideas of how it's to be implemented have been in constant flux. And unlike most of my machines that are virtual, Cerberus has to be a physical box to be its best. The hardware I want to use for it has gone from using an old Pentium 3 or 4 with 3 network adapters, a 24-port switch, and a wireless access point to buying a specialized integrated device that minimizes power consumption and physical space requirements. My thoughts on Cerberus could be an entire post for that matter and probably will be one when the time comes that I finally build it.

In the end, I discovered that my initial plans weren't that good and that there was a better way. I now have an asterisk next to the whole plan that refers to a footnote stating: subject to change. And in the end this was and is the best way to approach Doppelganger.

Until next time:
Work hard. Play harder.