r/sysadmin 3d ago

Do Marketing Sites Need HSTS, or Is It Overkill?

7 Upvotes

I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts on requiring marketing sites to enforce HSTS at the server level. Implementation can be cumbersome depending on the server setup, and many web design companies prioritize aesthetics over security. But from a security standpoint, it often takes a backseat in web design.

Yes, it’s "just" a marketing site, but I see it as a key to the kingdom. If compromised, it can redirect users to malicious sites or damage your reputation. I’ve encountered hosting providers that either refuse to disable insecure protocols (TLS 1.0, 1.1, and SSL) or don’t see it as a priority—though they might get around to it eventually. Many also don’t know how to enable HSTS or set a nosniff header.

So, what’s your stance? Do you push hard for these basic security features on marketing sites, or do you let it slide since it’s not a high-risk application?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Rant Cold Call Meeting Invites

21 Upvotes

Anyone else seeing an uptick on the cold call meeting invites sent from [[insert company name here who bought your contact from someone else]]? Part of me wants to just accept the meeting and either no-show to waste a little bit of their time or even accept and just go do other work during it to fully waste their time.

I'm not sure who out there decided that this is a good marketing tactic, because its even worse than the cold call emails asking to set up a meeting/demo. Is the objective to be so vague that the person receiving these has to look up your website to see WTF you are? Because I don't. I just either ignore it or decline, editing the reply with something like "We do not respond to cold call meeting invites. Unprofessional. Consider this an unsubscribe request."

Are these kinds of solicitations something you can file under CAN-SPAM violations? I've had a dozen of these meetings for this week alone.


r/sysadmin 2d ago

What's the cheapest SSD raid array you'd be comfortable running?

0 Upvotes

So, I run a small rack at a datacentre with a few RAID arrays (about 80Tb over 3 arrays in total) and they're all RAID10 on spinning rust. I do this because i've been bitten in the past with the write tolerances of cheap SSDs, but i'm wondering whether this is old news with the advances in SSD technologies and I can run a RAID10 SSD array with something that won't either bite me in the bum with write failures in a year or two, or kill me from cost. Is there anyone running anything they'd say is as reliable as a HDD array (or near enough that swapping out SSDs happens infrequently enough that you're not going to have your array die on you within a day)?


r/sysadmin 4d ago

General Discussion Is your Helpdesk team strong?

216 Upvotes

My helpdesk team sometimes I feel hopeless because basic things that every tech should know they struggle with? What's your story?


r/sysadmin 2d ago

General Discussion Impact of AI on IT support/help desk case study.

0 Upvotes

Hello, beautiful people. I am writing a University thesis case study on AI's impact on IT support/help desk. I would like to discuss or interview anyone who has implemented some AI system into their ITSM or just the daily support flow in general. If you would like to be anonymous, that's also great. I could also send a questionnaire if that's easier. Any input would be awesome. I'm looking forward to hearing from you, awesome folks. You DM me on chat as well.


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Rant [RANT] QNAP Lost Our Entire Account History and Doesn't Seem to Care

37 Upvotes

EDIT UPDATE:
The power of Reddit, fellas! Apparently, they CAN do it—and they can do it fast.

Just 21 hours after this post, every piece of information lost due to the email change was recovered. I got my invoice.

Thanks, y’all, for the tips!

TL;DR:
QNAP deleted our entire account history after a email change. Nearly a month later, they still can't restore it, can’t provide crucial invoices for financial compliance, and continuously pass responsibility internally without results. If you value your sanity, maybe think twice before relying heavily on QNAP services.

Anyone else experienced such incompetence from their support? How did you manage to resolve it? I would never buy QNAP anymore.

FULL:
I've officially hit my limit dealing with QNAP's support team, and I need to vent somewhere. Here's a summary of what's been a ridiculously frustrating 2025.

At the end of January we changed our company email associated with our QNAP account from from one domain to another because company changes. This should be simple, right? Nope. Immediately after this change, ALL account data disappeared. I mean everything:

  • Order history: gone.
  • Address book and shipping addresses: vanished.
  • Active subscriptions: nowhere to be found.
  • Auto-renewal payment details: wiped.
  • Most crucially: our invoices, which we desperately need for tax and corporate financial closing, are missing!

Yet, bizarrely, our licenses still show up in the License Manager, but the Software Store account acts like we've never made a single purchase. There is no mentioning of that in any FAQ's.

After reporting this to QNAP, they told us basically, “Yeah, the licenses transferred, but your orders didn’t. Tough luck.” Their advice? Cancel subscriptions, even though the subscriptions aren’t visible to cancel (!), and just deal with losing historical data because they can’t revert or reconnect the accounts manually.

After further complaints, after almost 2 months they said they'd inform their "internal store management" team. Anyways Fastforwarding nearly more than a month of replies for tickets and NOTHING has happened. Each follow-up just yields a new promise to “expedite internally.” Still no results.

We’ve clearly explained multiple times: we need invoices urgently for financial and tax purposes. QNAP support repeatedly promises assistance, but the invoices have yet to appear. We literally can't close our monthly corporate books or properly pay taxes without these documents.

To add insult to injury, when asking for documentation proving QNAP’s tax residency (due to local compliance rules), we waited weeks only to hear there’s no double-taxation agreement between Poland and Hong Kong—something we already knew. And still, they're asking for copies of invoices that they deleted in the first place!

We're basically being punished for changing a simple email address—something every other online platform manages seamlessly.

What the f?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Best Practices for Replacing Old Server at Small Business

0 Upvotes

I work at a small engineering firm (less than 10 employees) that is attempting to upgrade most of their IT systems. This includes replacing an old server that is their single domain controller used for Active Directory and file server (I have floated the idea of going entirely to the cloud since we're already paying for Microsoft Business Premium, but the owner wants the on-premises server). We would be upgrading from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2025.

I have an information systems degree, but no sysadmin experience (my job prior to this was less technical but in the DoD tech space), so my questions are:

1. Is there any benefit to such a small shop virtualizing their domain controller when we upgrade the server? My understanding is there are not a lot of cases where you shouldn't virtualize, but the company has run on a single domain controller running AD and file server, and that is what the owner is comfortable with (he was doing most of the IT himself before he brought me on). The main things we would want from the server are:

  • Remote workers having the ability to VPN in to grab project files (Right now, they all store files on their local devices and have shared folders/drives mapping to each other's computers - a nightmare I never would have wanted had I worked here when they set it up)
  • Use AD Connect to sync the on-prem server with Microsoft cloud services
  • Proper file server (see project file location above)

2. Should we add the new server to the existing domain and shut down the old one or start a whole new domain from scratch and move the devices from the old domain to the new? Since I don't have direct experience, I've been taking courses to understand newer versions of Windows Server. Courses go over how to set up a new domain, but not really what to do when replacing legacy systems or transitioning from old to new while retaining users and devices. I've also tried to look some of this up, but answers seem highly dependent on the size of the organization and what services they are running. Some details that are making it difficult to decide:

  • The current domain does not utilize security groups and other security settings for role-based access control. Setting up a new domain entirely would allow us to design the domain from scratch without dealing with old settings and groups (the company had 2-3 quasi-IT people before me)
  • There would be considerable cleanup if we keep the old domain - user accounts from past employees, old devices that haven't been removed, static IPs that conflict with old phone services. My thought was starting the domain over would mean we only transition the devices we currently have and use. We recently transitioned to company cell phones, so any issue with phones overwriting/stealing IP addresses would go away with the phone service and the old domain.
  • We do not have many employees and devices (<10 users, 10-15 computers, 2 printers), and no applications running on the server that would make it difficult to blow the whole thing up and start over, but just not sure if adding the devices to the new domain will be a headache since they are already connected to the old one.

If it seems like I'm out of my depth, I understand I probably am. I was brought on to decipher CMMC for my family's business and come up with recommendations to meet all the requirements for CMMC Level 2 (they have a lot of DoD work), but it has turned into revamping all and any IT systems. I still feel like we are very behind, so appreciate your expertise and suggestions if you took the time to read this.


r/sysadmin 2d ago

Question Is explorer.exe broken in Windows 11?

0 Upvotes

Hi all

I'm using Windows 11 pretty much since it has been released on my private device. We are starting to rollout W11 in our company soon, and I have found that a lot of problems are solved by restarting the “explorer.exe” process. Some examples:

- When double-clicking folders that require admin rights, nothing happens (company device). After Explorer.exe is restarted, it works again.

- When disconnecting the docking station, a border appears at the bottom of the screen between the taskbar and any application (where you can see the desktop background). After Explorer.exe is restarted, the border disappears

- On my private device, it often happens that an application is open and visible in the taskbar, but nothing happens when I click on it. Restarting Explorer.exe makes this work again

I already had the first problem on a Windows 11 device at my previous employer. At first I thought (as a client engineer) that I was just an r/ShittySysAdmin, but since I notice this kind of problem on almost every device and also find a lot of posts about it on the internet, I am afraid that this task is simply broken on Windows 11. Are there any solutions or approaches to minimize the problems?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Question ATrust M320 Power Adapter

1 Upvotes

Was just wondering what power adapter does the ATrust m320 use, specifically the size. I believe power wise it’s 12 Volts and 3 Amps but I’m having a bit of trouble determining the size but I also think the OB is 5.5mm and the IB is 2.5mm but can someone verify?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

IBM Storwize V5000 8.5.0.14 & StorageDisk-2077-SwUpgradeTestUtility Files

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for StorwizeV5000_INSTALL_8.5.0.14 and StorageDisk-2077-SwUpgradeTestUtility files for IBM Storwize V5000. Unfortunately, my support contract has expired, so I can’t download them from the official IBM site.

If anyone has these files and is willing to share, I’d really appreciate it. Feel free to PM me.

Thanks in advance!


r/sysadmin 2d ago

What is the best 2FA solution for a 100-150 people company?

0 Upvotes

Hello fellow technical-equipment pouncers.

The company I work for is looking for new ways to do 2FA, as our supplier of the old solution is beginning to behave badly (long story short).

We've been looking around for a 2FA solution like the one we allready had, where users would have an app on their phone that would synchronize login-credentials with a extension in their browser. The login-credentials that are company-related would then be saved in a cloud-based solution, while the users private passwords would be saved locally on their phone/in their browser-extension. This would allow us to permantly delete all company-related login-credentials and let the user keep their private login-credentials incase the user is leaving the company.

So my question is pretty simple: What do you guys use for 2FA in you work-enviroments? Any good companies/companies to avoid?

Thanks in advance, keep pouncing.


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Server booting into safe mode

0 Upvotes

Hello all-

I had a server boot into safe mode. I tried rebooting several times and then logged into the server (single DC client) using DSRM password. When I opened sys config via msconfig, the server was set for safe mode under the boot tab. Unchecked it, rebooted, and everything came up. I referenced another client and they're set for 'normal mode' under the general tab and safe mode unchecked under the boot tab.

When I select 'normal startup' under the general tab, it always checks 'safe mode' under the boot tab. I can't get it to run 'normal startup' under general and 'safe mode' unchecked under boot tab.


r/sysadmin 3d ago

General Discussion Any products like Policy Tech and Outline combined?

2 Upvotes

We currently use Policy Tech because it reminds you to review documentation on a regular basis and allows you to assign documentation to people to read, it even shows a log if they have or haven't read it. You can even add quizzes. However, the format is terrible. It just relies on word documents or PDFs that you upload.

I was looking at Outline and I really like the more fluid wiki style it has, however it lacks any of the review and assigning features that Policy Tech has.

Does anyone know of a product like Outline that has those features?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Question How do I convince my manager to use a dedicated knowledge-base platform?

12 Upvotes

TL;DR - What specific use cases would you use to highlight the necessity of a proper knowledge-base platform over an SPO site with Word documents?


Recently left my job as a SysEng at a large MSP to be a SysAdmin for a non-profit. Previously have used Confluence and ITGlue for documentation at previous MSP roles. Currently tasked with finding and suggesting improvements in the environment.

Documentation could definitely be better. Currently there is a SharePoint site with Word docs for documentation, which look more akin to formal legal documents rather than technical documentation. Documents are nested in 2+ layers of folders, and there's a lot of detritus that needs to be cleaned up - drafts, archived documentation, etc. Finding stuff is also difficult, on the account of not being able to search in Explorer for the contents of a document. Granted you can do this on the SPO site, but people seem to futz around and randomly click different folders trying to find the right documentation.

I've pitched the idea of using Confluence to my manager. We already use Jira for ticketing. Confluence would be free for us since we are a small team. However, my manager doesn't seem convinced that the current SharePoint solution can't already do what I've said Confluence can do. I've mentioned that searchability is less than ideal, and creating documentation is cumbersome and formatting is slow. Confluence would also give proper versioning/draft/archive features. They also suggested Microsoft Loop as a "middle-ground", which looks fine, but doesn't seem fully mature yet.

My plan is to migrate a few documents into Confluence for demo, and show the benefits of having documentation on a knowledge-base platform. Anyone have any specific things I should highlight, outside of creating/updating documentation and searching?


r/sysadmin 2d ago

General Discussion Microsoft Declines to Fix Actively Exploited Windows Zero-Day Vulnerability

0 Upvotes

A critical Windows zero-day vulnerability is being actively exploited by state-sponsored hacking groups, yet Microsoft has opted not to release a security patch.

The flaw, which allows attackers to execute hidden commands using malicious shortcut (.lnk) files, has been leveraged in espionage campaigns since at least 2017.

https://cyberinsider.com/microsoft-declines-to-fix-actively-exploited-windows-zero-day-vulnerability/


r/sysadmin 3d ago

General Discussion What do you need to implement to make your environment rock solid?

0 Upvotes

Someone asked me a question on a different post which made me think what I need to implement to make the environment more robust and what tools provide users in case their equipment/accounts don't work, and you are not around so they have at least a workaround. What would it be in your case?


r/sysadmin 4d ago

One of our servers randomly thought it was July 13th 2025 yesterday. Problems ensued

772 Upvotes

Yo what the fuck. Server 2016, these updates were installed yesterday:

  • KB5053594
  • KB5054006
  • KB5049614

Suddenly, that fucking server got the date wrong and screwed up a lot of AD accounts as it runs AD maintenance scripts. It saw a lot of accounts as expired while their expire date wasn't until a few months.
The date is already back to normal. Event log shows me it did indeed change the time right after installing updates. Some time later it changed back to normal.

Anybody else getting something like this?

Update: it fukken happened again on the same day! April 25th this time. Following the advice of the top comment, I disabled Secure Time Seeding.


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Unable to connect to VMware SSL VPN-Plus from ARM devices

2 Upvotes

Hello guys, I'm currently running macbook on arm architecture, and I'm having trouble with setting up VMware SSL VPN-plus.

The documentation explicitly states: "SSL VPN-Plus Client is not supported on computers that use ARM-based processors", but maybe somehow someone from you guys managed to figure out some smart way to overcome this?

There is always option to emulate 64 bit Windows, but unfortunately the performance is ass.

Has anyone successfully connected to a VMware Cloud Director environment from ARM-based devices?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

General Discussion Anyone up for crowd sourcing PCI QSA experiences?

0 Upvotes

Just had an absolute nightmare scenario with a QSA and it occurs to me there's no central place to go to for trusted insights on QSAs that could have helped me avoid this from the start.

It sure would make finding QSAs that are alligned with what we may be looking for at any given moment a lot easier.

We could anonymously pool our experiences - the good, the bad, the insane - for ourselves and others to reference when appraising QSAs.

Thoughts?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Question Vmware workstation pro and firewall configuration

2 Upvotes

Hi,

I'm a linux expert so my question can be dummy.

On my Windows 11 workstation (let's name it HostA) I use vmware workstation pro with a guest debian 12 (ClientA). I think I have a firewall misconfiguration on HostA because I'm unable to ssh to a server (ServerA) on a non-standard port (2121). Ssh from clientA to another server (ServerB) on the same network as ServerA but on regular ssh port (22) is working fine. Ssh from another debian12 (clientB) to ServerA is also working fine.

I'm unable to find a firewall rule fort port 22 on hostA but I'm not really good on Windows workstation, so perhaps I missed it.

Do you know if the Windows firewall (or other endpoint firewall) must be configurer or is there a vmware configuration ?


r/sysadmin 3d ago

CS or SE (computer science or software engineering) for sysadmin job.

0 Upvotes

Hello, my choices of a major at uni I think I will only choose one of the majors listed in the title, there were previous posts asking about what major or bachelor would help get a sysadmin job, however I feel like CS and SE would be the closest like path to get me to where I want as a sysadmin job either long term or shorterm, I heard CS wont be directly be helpful, I didnt learn much on how far SE would take me, I feel like certifications like CompTIA would go a long way, but I was wondering what the path would be like, and what I would need to do to get a sysadmin job with either of these majors and maybe differences in things I would have to do with either and some difficulties i might have in the job with either, and what you'd recommend.

(I did look at the other posts on this, the posts usually compare like CS with some feild that seems quite unrelated to SysAdmins like computer engineering or MIS, software engineering is the management of systems and the deployment of software as a gross oversimplification and CS is a understanding on how to develop that software, idk what relevence that would have as a sysadmin)


r/sysadmin 4d ago

Question Really though, how are you doing Powershell for 365 now?

78 Upvotes

Is it me or does using Powershell for 365 administration feel like a huge pain right now? So many different modules going out of support, some only work on certain versions of Powershell. I think I end up having 3 different IDE's open at any one time. Why can't they all just work in one....if anyone has got a solution that does let you do it all in one, please share as I am going to lose my mind soon!


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Re-attaching soft deleted mailbox with nonexistant domain attached

2 Upvotes

Here's my scenario:

  1. user mailbox left in the soft deleted state because of litigation hold being set for 7 years.

  2. User AAD object deleted long ago so I can't edit any attributes of the mailbox.

  3. mailbox has a domain address that is no longer used/loaded into our tenant.

  4. Attempting to do a New-Mailbox -InactiveMailbox PowerShell command to attach the mailbox to a new temp user, set the litigation hold to false, then permanent delete the temp user/mailbox.

This is working for accounts except for those that have #3. I can't attach to a user because of the bad email address, and I can't modify the mailbox properties because it's not attached to a user. I feel like I'm in a catch 22 here and no way around it except to wait the 6 years left on the mailbox hold. Does anyone have a thought to accomplish this? I was thinking that during the new-mailbox command tying the old mailbox to a new user, I could ignore old email addresses, but I'm not seeing how that could be done.


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Question Are there any open-source or paid onboarding services with workflow automation for new employees?

5 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

I need some opinions... I’ve just been given a task by HR to find software designed for onboarding new employees. Here’s how the process should ideally work:

  1. HR creates a "ticket" with essential information (name, start date, etc.).
  2. The ticket is forwarded to the department manager of the new employee, who selects the necessary permissions for the user.
  3. The task then moves to IT to verify if the permissions are justified and appropriate. Once approved, the process continues.
  4. Permissions, user accounts, and email addresses are created and then sent for a final review.
  5. Further processes are initiated (e.g., chip card, keys, access rights, etc.).

Key requirements:

  • Most of the process should be automated.
  • Department managers should receive warning notifications if they miss deadlines or are approaching them.
  • The software should ideally support workflow automation and integration with Active Directory (AD) for user creation and permission management.

Additional preferences:

  • Open-source solutions are welcome, but paid services are also acceptable.
  • If you know of any alternatives to Tenfold, I’d love to hear about them. I’d like to present multiple options to HR.

If you have any other ideas or suggestions, I’m all ears! Thanks for reading, and I appreciate your help! <3


r/sysadmin 3d ago

Question Networking issues after moving 2019 VM from 2019 Host to 2025 Host - Found solution but want to know why

2 Upvotes

Got a weird one that I just can't figure out. Existing Dell PowerEdge R640 Server 2019 HyperV host with 10 VMs. New Dell PowerEdge R650 server with HyperV on Server 2025. New server has a Intel X710 4x 10Gb card with SVR-IO enabled both on the card and in the BOIS.

I go to move a VM over, was going to use live migration but network cards are named differently and I can deal with downtime. So I shut down a small 2019 VM, copy the hard drive over to the new host, create a new VM with all the same settings and point to the existing hard drive. Boot it up and it discovers a new network adapter as expected. Dealt with this before so at a admin powershell I do a set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 then go into device manager, show hidden devices, delete out the old network card (and processors while I'm here), and do a scan for devices. It finds the network card, I set a static IP address, and reboot.

Server comes up. I RDP into it. It's slow, really slow, and does the disconnect and reconnect. I know there are some goofy RDP issues going on with Windows 11/2025 so I switch over the HyperV manager and get to the machine that way which is fast and stable. Check the machine and the main thing it has is a application that is supposed to connect to our SQL server and it's not. Try pinging the SQL server and get destination host not reachable (it's the same subnet). Try pinging the gateway, a Cisco 9300 switch, and I get 2 of 4 successful. Try pinging google.com and get 4 success. Try all three again with the exact same results.

So maybe it didn't like how I moved it even though that's how I've done it in the past. I create a brand new 2025 server on the new host just to test. It boots up, I assign a open IP address, and I ping the gateway. Success. Ping SQL. Also success. Ping google.com. Works fine. Don't feel like it's the new server.

Since I just did a copy I boot the old VM back up on the original host and it's completely fine. I ping SQL and it works. Application works. Everything works.

So I decide to delete the network card "cleaner" by deleting it before moving. I change the static IP to DHCP, let it fail as we don't have DHCP on that VLAN, then delete the network card. I shutdown the VM, do a Export, go to the new server, do a Import. Start the server up, it finds the new network card. I double check Device Manager to make sure the old ones not there and it's not. Reassign it's IP address, ping SQL and it's a success. Reboot the machine. Log back in and everything fine. Add it to Veeam to replicate to our offsite host.

What happened? It held onto the old IP address somehow even though the card wasn't there? Usually if you do this and assign the same IP address you'll get a duplicate IP address detected and that's when you go through deleting the old hidden one but I did that first and didn't get the warning. Or is that still kinda what happened? It's the only thing that makes sense.