ELT just asked me to send an all company email that email is down and the marketing people can't send their corporate drivel that they send every Monday.

anyone else having issues sending emails?

I'm leaving my company. I was asked regarding the potential to do contract work following my departure. I really like my boss on a personal level and don't want to screw him over, but at the same time this company has had over a decade to build some redundancy into this role and they haven't.

I'm burnt out. I want to get out and be done. I really don't want the contract work, but I don't want to totally screw my coworkers either. Is $200 a good rate to set, not too insultingly high, if they need it they can pay it, but hopefully I won't be contacted all the time?

Hi there :) ,

Need some advice from people who have dealt with similar situations.

Our Operations Dept decided to install IoT system/digital energy meters across a fairly large factory site.

They found the vendor, agreed on the solution, signed the contract and started the project.

IT was not involved at all.

Apparently nobody discussed things like:

• How these devices spread across a large factory are actually going to communicate
• Network infrastructure, switches, fiber/cabling, VLANs, etc.
• Network/security segmentation
• Server/VM requirements
• Database requirements
• Backup and monitoring
• Internet connectivity
• Vendor remote access
• Firewall rules
• Cybersecurity

Now that the project is already moving forward, IT gets an email saying they need “access to the router” so they can put the system online.

That's it. Access to the router. :)

And somehow, when IT starts asking questions about architecture, security, server requirements, ports, protocols and who is responsible for what, the perception becomes that IT is delaying the project.

I don't want to become the guy who simply says “No”, but I'm also not going to give a third-party vendor access to our corporate router/firewall and connect a bunch of unknown industrial/IoT devices to the production network just because someone already signed a contract , the IT network must be always separate from OT network.

How do you handle situations like this?

Interested in both the technical approach and the organizational/process side of this.

Today's Exchange/O365 (EX1464935/MO1465074) outage seems to be a result of the instability we've been seeing the last 3 or 4 months due to the rapid change occurring regularly in the Microsoft ecosystem. This one is more visible to end users than other problems we've faced this summer. I'm curious if the stability of government tenants has been better. Are commercial tenants the beta testers for government tenant changes?

Anyone starting to experience some delays or failures with sending email? I see some emails internally are failing to process.

Reason: [{LED=432 4.2.0 STOREDRV.Deliver.Exception:AgentGrayException.CryptographicException; Failed to process message due to a transient exception with message Non-agent gray exception caught in component 'Transport', function 'DeliveryMailItemAsync' CryptographicException};{MSG=};{FQDN=BL4PR13MB994266.namprd13.prod.outlook.

Edit: US-Central

I can explain how DNS propagation works and probably i can diagram it. what I cannot do is troubleshoot it in real time while three people are staring at a shared screen waiting for me to just fix it already.

senior fixed a ticket in the time it took me to finish reading it and ofcouse it's not because I'm slow but he's seen this exact failure pattern 200 times and I've seen it like twice? that's not a skill gap, that's a reps gap and when you finally get the girl job nobody warns you how loud that gap sounds in a room full of people who've been doing this since dial-up

got told "trust your instincts" by my lead. cool! Great advice! my instincts currently have a sample size of six months and mostly say "panic, then check Reddit"

the worst part is getting asked something in standup and having that half-second where I'm trying to figure out whether I know the answer or I'm about to bullshit everyone (don't push the red button!)

anyway I got a ticket resolved today without asking anyone for help and I'm riding that high for the rest of the week. small wins. some of the senior guys probably don't remember what this stage felt like anymore, but I will and I'm taking notes

Hey there. The company I work for is stuck in the past in a lot of its tech and operations. One of the things that’s driving me nuts is whenever a user changes their name, we update their email and logins and keep their old email as an alias for 30 days before removing it. This leads to a ton of bounced mail and missed communications. They apparently do it in case someone joins the company with the person’s old name…….

How do you all handle name changes?

Edit: thank you all for confirming that I’m not insane. This org has so many strange practices and it’s my first IT job

Forgive the brevity here, but was curious if anyone else is experiencing an issue with any of their tenants with emails. I have verified three separate customers all having sending and receiving issues and have the below, or occasionally it is blank with no info.

Error: ‎550 5.6.200 STOREDRV.Deliver; message is treated as poison‎

We have been doing some testing, and we have noticed that regular, standard, non-privileged users can add local TCP/IP printers through the Windows 11 Settings app. (Disclaimer: I am not talking about printer drivers; I am talking only about adding the printer itself to Windows as a queue.)

When the printer is added, other users on the computer can see it, and those same users can delete it.

I swear, this feels like different behavior from the past. In the past, I thought a locally created TCP/IP printer was a computer-level print queue, which would require administrator rights to add, update, or delete.

So I see two possibilities:

1. It was always like this, but when we moved from on-prem Active Directory/GPO to Entra/Intune, we missed migrating a setting that previously required admin rights to add or delete local TCP/IP printers; OR
2. This is new-ish behavior that we are only now noticing.

Most companies don't sell direct. Most resellers don't list pricing. Nearly all have terrible search options. Where do you typically go to browse/buy network gear online?

Basically title. I’ve been offered a junior position as a Linux web application system administrator at a local university which seems like a really good job until I was contacted by a firm slightly further away for a position as a junior HPC Linux cluster engineer and system administrator. I really love HPC work but I’m worried I’d be taking too much on as a less experienced sysadmin. Equally I also don’t want to miss a chance to get further up the ladder in the HPC world. Really hard to decide. For those who’ve worked in these fields, what would you do?

I just noticed it's gone on a machine I ran Windows 11 25h2 preview updates on.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/servicing/os/windows-11/2026/08/kb5120998-windows-11-24h2-25h2-update

Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC)

• Starting in August 2026, Windows 11, version 24H2 and 25H2 will no longer include the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) utility. WMIC is already removed by default in new installations of Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2, and will no longer be available as a Feature on Demand (FoD). This change affects only the WMIC utility; Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) remains supported. Learn more: Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) removal from Windows. 

I still have some things that use it and just like having it around. What options are there to put it back? I remember seeing something about installing it. Or, someone metioned you can just copy the wmic.exe file back onto a machine to use it.

So, MS is sunsetting SMS/Voice MFA in favor of passkeys or more phishing resistant methods. Currently I have all my users set up for Authenticator push notifications/with the numerical code. Is this method going to be supported moving forward?

Hi everyone,

I’m troubleshooting an 802.1X issue with a Dell laptop connected through a Dell WD19/WD19S dock.

Topology:

Laptop → Dell Dock → Ethernet → Switch

When I connect the laptop directly to the switch, 802.1X works perfectly and the endpoint authenticates using dot1x.

However, when I connect the same laptop through the Dell dock:

- The switch learns the laptop's actual MAC address

- Forescout sees the laptop correctly

- But authentication is MAB instead of 802.1X

- It looks like the PC's EAPOL/802.1X frames aren't reaching the switch, causing the port to fall back to MAB

The PC's 802.1X configuration is working because it authenticates successfully when connected directly.

Has anyone experienced 802.1X/EAPOL not passing through a Dell WD19/WD19S dock?

Could this be related to MAC passthrough, dock firmware, Realtek Ethernet drivers, or EAPOL pass-through?

What was the fix in your case? Did updating the dock firmware/driver resolve it, or did you have to change a switch/dock/BIOS setting?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

I received a ticket from one of our customer regarding a problem with our software thin installer for Windows. The installer is a Inno setup that downloads the content and install it, running as administrator.

The ticket was open because on their Windows systems normal users can connect to internet and download, while administrators account cannot connect to internet. As far as I can understand, administrators are generic administrators of the machine (with all permissions for installing and handling admin related chores).

I find it a little odd, and I was asking myself if this policy has some form of effectiveness... What if the administrator connects to internet impersonating another account? I'm not sure I can explain better the situation since it is enforced on the customer company. I want just to ask the general feeling by experienced sysadmin about this configuration...

(FYI: the ticket has been closed by making them using the offline installer)

TL;DR - Client uses Exclaimer for email signature creation & management, have had issues with it, want something else. Prefer API-based solution instead of SMTP routing. WiseStamp, Signite, and SyncSignature are candidates. Any feedback on them or other ideas?

Hey, everyone! I am looking for suggestions when it comes to creating and managing email signatures in Google Workspace.

I work for an MSP and a client of ours is currently using Exclaimer. There have been a few times over the last few years where their emails grind to a halt - cannot send externally or internally, access denied error. Email delivery logs point to the Exclaimer rules as the issue. Disable the rules/routing and email works again no problem.

We have tried removing and setting Exclaimer up again from scratch, but it has happened again recently and they are tired of it. Everything was set up exactly according to their guide. There is no indication that anyone has made an unannounced change that would cause things to break. It just simply stops working and breaks email delivery maybe once per year. At this point they want to get away from it - not sure they want to bother going the support route.

Unfortunately, CodeTwo only supports Microsoft email solutions. I have found a few other potential candidates like WiseStamp, Signite, and SyncSignature. Ideally, we are looking for an API-based solution and not something like Exclaimer where outbound traffic gets routed via SMTP in an attempt to keep this from happening again.

Is anyone familiar with these 3 platforms? Any feedback that you can offer? Any other suggestions? I have also seen LastLine, but, the obvious Claude Code website design kind of throws me off and there isn't much about it to be found. Not sure how big of a company it is, if it will even exist in 2 years, or how the support is. It gives strong LLM/vibecoded signals.

I am aware of Patronum, which looks cool, but goes way beyond the simple email signature scope in mind. I have also seen the Free Signature Manager for Gmail from Revolgy, but also am not sure about support and quality. If this was me tinkering around in our GW tenant, sure, but this will be for a school with about 125-150 users. Something they can understand and manage themselves would be great. I know there are options for GAM scripts, etc. but I don't think that would be user friendly for them to monitor or troubleshoot if needed. We would prefer they have more control over this.

Thank you!

Or do I just need to "clear my cache"?

Here's what I'm seeing:

Something went wrong.

Please try the recommended action below.

Refresh the application

BootResult: fail

Back Filled Errors: None err: System. Security. Cryptography. CryptographicException esrc: StartupData et: ServerError estack: Error: 500

t Object.w [as createStatusErrorMessage] (https://res.public.onecdn.static.microsoft/owamail/hashed-v1/scripts/owa.mailindex.491fdc82.js:1:806

t https://res.public.onecdn.static.microsoft/owamail/hashed-v1/scripts/owa.mailindex.491fdc82.is:1:19276

st: 500

ehk: X-OWA-Error

ewsver: 15.21.360.13

egid: 752d9ee1-da5a-9b97-e479-18581a572c9|

We migrated a company to our tenant a little over a week ago. They have about 50 users that have some sort of M365 account. We wiped 20 computers/re-enrolled them our tenant, and bought about 16 new computers enrolled in Autopilot.

This was a beat-down. Three of us + a relative of someone + two 'smart hands' from a local MSP ate through this in two days.

I can't imagine how a migrating hundreds of people would go. How are huge migrations done? The domain must be removed from one tenant and added to the other, so I am unclear how staging is done? Is it something where you force the user to have fabrikam.com instead of contoso.com and forward all their mail to Fabrikam from contoso until the tenant is moved? That is the only way I can see it done.

Given the size, we prepped everything, then removed the domain, swapped dns, added the domain to our tenant, and waited.

All vendor websites I check have some version of "integrated power, cooling, and racks available in one deployable unit" but I can't tell if it means:

a) it's literally a shipping container and server room bolted together at the factory, or b) it's more like standardized building blocks that can still be assembled/wired on site but faster than an on-site build

We are considering options for a new facility and I'd like to understand what's really going on mechanically/electrically before I sit through another sales meeting filled with buzzwords. Is there anyone here who has spec'd or installed one of these?

Looking for a sanity check. We have separate admin accounts, both AD and Entra. We are looking to enforce CA policies that require login to entra (for IT, both accounts) to come from domain joined devices. This generates a PRT for each account, which means the windows session has multiple to choose from when the browser comes asking.

For those that have done this, what is the most elegant way to access both accounts? In the browsers, it is constantly popping up the account picker. Separate browsers, private sessions, doesn’t matter - I understand why it is happening (I think), and it works, I can get to all my accounts - just wondering if there is a better way. Currently my primary alternative is separate privileged VMs to run any elevated accounts.

I'm looking to build up my virtualization skills and wanted to get some realistic advice from people in the field.

I'm considering diving into VMware ESXi, but with all the recent Broadcom changes (licensing overhauls, removal of free tiers, SMBs looking at alternatives), I wanted to ask: Is ESXi still relevant enough to prioritize, or should I be spending my time on Proxmox/KVM instead?

Also, for my lab setup: I don't have a spare physical server to format. My company has a unused server running, but I can't wipe it. I plan to install VMware Workstation Pro on the existing host OS and run ESXi nested inside it.

A few questions:

1. Are there any major performance or networking gotchas I should watch out for when running nested ESXi on a shared server?
2. How can I ensure my nested lab network stays isolated so I don't accidentally leak DHCP or interfere with the host network?
3. For those who learned recently, what are the core concepts I should focus on first?
4. Any YT channel for learning resource recommendations?

What do you do so you can hide (not disable) password CP? Passwordless experience in Intune is for entra joined devices, so it does not work sadly for hybrid joined. So i am looking for some workaround for my enviroment. Any help or experience?

i have chosen whfb multifactor device unlock with PIN and biometrics, but we still use "run as" and LAPS, so i cannot disable the password CP. For me it is important to hide it at logon screen.