How can I load-balance a load balancer?
You can’t, which is why load-balancing has nothing to do with availability.
best-practices
What Are The Best Practices For Business Folder Structure?
Does anybody have any best practices for how to organise a folder structure? Don’t. Believe me, you don’t want to own the folder hierarchy for any department (except maybe your own). You don’t know what their needs are, don’t have the knowledge or experience of other departments to make good choices, and don’t want to … Read more
In Puppet, how would I secure a password variable (in this case a MySQL password)?
When working with Puppet and MySQL, I tend to put the root password in /root/.my.cnf, lock this file down, and then restrict SSH access onto the database server. Yes, storing the root password on the db server in clear text isn’t the most secure solution. However if you write the mysql root password in this … Read more
Best practices for file layout in a Hyper-V server?
You really, really want to be able to easily identify which files belong to which virtual machine. Even if you lose access to the Hyper-V console. This comes up when trying to restore a VM from backups. Or when Hyper-V forgets about all of your VMs and you need to import them. Or the VM … Read more
IT lead does not have a backup, DR plan in writing [closed]
First, it’s YOUR business and the first step is for YOU to determine what your business continuity and disaster recovery needs and objectives are. Have you defined and documented those? If not, do so. A BC/DR is NOT just about the technology and the data. Once you’ve done that you can present them to this … Read more
A secure, standard iptables rule-set for a basic HTTP(s) webserver
The most secure way to work with iptables is close everything and only open what you need. I’m kind of distracted, so I always try to be as lazy as possible, so I do not make mistakes which can lead the server to be unsecure. I use this one, only a little bit of varible … Read more
How bad is it to run Exchange 2016 on a Windows 2012 R2 domain controller for a small organization with assuredly fewer than 25 users?
For a small organization it MIGHT be ok. One of the main reasons to run Exchange on its own server is that Exchange is deliberately designed to try to as much RAM as possible to improve performance. Obviously that will impact other services running on the same machine. Also, Exchange is highly dependent on Active … Read more
What is the system administration equivalent to dogfooding?
I don’t think there’ll be as clear an answer as for programming, but a couple partial answers come to mind: Using a PC that’s set up from a standard image the same as anyone else. Running with user privs. most of the time, elevating only when necessary. Another thought: Ask a close friend or relative … Read more
How to correctly move a server inside a rack up and down
While time-consuming, removing everything altogether and putting it back in the new location is the best way to move a server. Trying to take shortcuts will only risk bending your rails, making them unusable. (Bent rails are hard – if not impossible – to bend back.) Never mind the possibility of dropping your server outright, … Read more
Bad to be logged in as admin all the time?
Absolute best-practice is to Live User, Work Root. The user you’re logged in as when you hit refresh on Server Fault every 5 minutes should be a normal user. The one you use to diagnose Exchange routing problems should be Admin. Getting this separation can be hard, since in Windows at least it requires dual … Read more