I set up DirectAccess over the weekend, and it only took me about 40 minutes. Server 2012's implementation is absurdly quick and easy for a basic single-server deployment. It even creates the necessary GPOs for you. All you need to do is select the group of computers it applies to and tweak any related DNS resolution table entries. If you want to go into a more advanced deployment, it could potentially get a bit more involved.

It's location-aware and doesn't enable itself when it can see the corporate network. The moment I switched over to an external network, DA engaged. If you have software assurance on your computers, you really should be considering this. While I haven't tested any quirky legacy applications with it, typical file services and use cases seem to work fine. If you test it and don't like it, you can use the same wizard to pull out the entire configuration, GPOs and all.

Having used both, they're really for different environments. Pertino's good for accessing other computers directly. DirectAccess is good for accessing infrastructure. If you're in a workgroup setup, Pertino would be great. You get the unstructured cross-communication that you'd expect. If you're on a domain, DirectAccess shines. You get timely connectivity to your environment when you need it, and don't need to modify any of your other servers or devices. I'm sure that as both technologies evolve and mature, things may change, but for now, that's how I've experienced it.

You may want to consider looking for "Infrastructure Specialist" roles. Typically those are the server/networking/desktop admin type of jobs, with less management and less helpdesk. It's not a specialized role per se, but does prune certain aspects away. You'll typically find them in companies with IT teams of 3-5 people or so.

I forgot to mention... One trick is to use NFS and plop a replica of the Veeam server on the device as well. That way, should your hosts fail, you're ready-to-recover with basically any ESXi host with no messing around. Mount the datastore, spin up the VM, and Veeam's ready to rumble. Add 2 drives when needed to create another volume, and you can even do the restore and temporarily run your workload (albeit IOPS-bound) on the Synology.

For pure proxy (using local cache to offload WAN bandwidth constraints), HTTPS isn't usually proxied. In theory, it's session-specific, so caching it would be a waste of resources, and only serve to slow the user's experience down.

For filtering, I typically use a device or service that provides transparent HTTPS inspection. Personally, I've had good luck with Sopohos UTM and the late Forefront TMG. Squid by design isn't a filter, and they say as such. They then go on to mention that if you want to use it as a filter anyway, use SquidGuard. I guess the question is: What are you looking to achieve by using the proxy?

@technobabble said:

Looking for tool to do an internal audit of Microsoft licensing for a client. What do you guys recommend.

Take a look at the Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit (MAP). It's what's recommended by Microsoft. It uses WMI for scanning, so you'll want to make sure you have the firewall exceptions for it enabled.

@ejmillen said:

Dude youre getting a Dell Stuck around for a long time!! Still get that every once in a while

It would have lasted even longer if Steven didn't get busted for pot!

@FiyaFly said:

If you don't want to deal with a lot of customers/users, you will probably want to try to hit the engineer level in my opinion. I spend a lot of time on the front lines, as it were. I still don't entirely know which direction I am pursuing in the IT field, but I am keeping wide open to suggestions.

Even for non-customer facing, IT is a wide field. You can be a programmer, an engineer, system admin. When I was focusing on certs, I was intending to get a cert for A+, Network+, and Security+. That is where I intended to start, and that will almost certainly help you to get a foot up.

Hope this helps.

Engineering's still very customer-facing, whether it's internal customers or external customers. It just isn't about answering the phones and dealing with end users. I daresay that spending time on a helpdesk helps with some career skills, such as learning about different types of people and how to interact with them. It also gives you a solid foundation so that as you're designing systems, you have the insight to see how it would impact the end-users. Jumping right into Engineering/Systems makes you more of a 30,000 foot tech pilot with no idea how to land the plane.

If you're smooth enough, you could get them to pick up an Office ProPlus subscription through Office 365, which would get them to current by means of "upgrade" to the modern, yet legal version.

Multitasking is a great way to nibble at things without making solid progress in any of them. Humans are designed to work on one thing at a time. The key is breaking down things into manageable chunks that you can get through one at a time. That way, you can work on chunks of different projects, yet still be able to give each chunk your full attention. Some of what I say may sound familiar. It's part of the Getting Things Done method. For more information, check out http://gettingthingsdone.com. I've been a practitioner for 4 years, and it's turned my ability to handle workload right around.

Sorry for being a bit late to the party. I'm quite a fan of Webroot. The low system utilization is quite impressive. It's quite unobtrusive. The IE plugin's a little slow, but if you have a gateway filtering device, it's less needed. What really impressed me was how quick they are to react to new threats. On average, they protect against new threats within 3 hours of my submissions.

When I setup Veeam, I use a Synology as the NFS datastore. The performance is good, the device is well-built for the price, and the DS412+ is on the VMware HCL. As a multipurpose device, you can also use it for misc. storage, or even give it some of your VM workload. Where are your replicas going currently, to the opposite host?

If you mount the CD in a VM, does it boot ok then?

Awesome! I hope you get more partners to help spread the Webroot goodness!

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Exchange won't change those issues though. PSTs will act the same.

Yeah, but OSTs will fix the issue and work really well. I assume Macs use OSTs the same as Windows? I still prefer the Outlook client to OWA - though the difference are getting pretty small now in Exchange.

OSTs will fix what issue? An OST is just the main mail store for Outlook.

OSTs synchronize with the server. They won't need to have local PSTs anymore, as all the mail will reside on the server.

With Windows 7 or newer, toss a blank disc in the drive, right-click the ISO, then click on Burn.

For those considering XenApp, try RDS first. You'll get most of the same functionality, but without the extra cost and overhead. If you're going to set up an RDS gateway, also toss in Remote Desktop Web Access so that your users have a web portal to go to and connect via. It'll launch their session for them and configure the RDS gateway if needed. It's also where you can publish RemoteApp, for those that have company computers already, but only need RDS for a certain application.

Ah, files waiting to burn. Pop a blank disk into your drive, then click on it. Does it show files?

Check out http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/how-do-i-delete-temporary-files-waiting-to-be/2628dc21-b6f4-4aa4-a495-fb518913e721

Do you have access to a Windows machine? You could use diskpart and clean the drive to wipe it out.

Have you looked at Spiceworks yet?

Also, if you have switches that support CDP, your ESXi hosts will tell you what they're plugged into.

If you bring up performance monitor, what files are being written/read? Even if the disk activity is relatively low, it gives you an idea of what the process is doing by the files it's interacting with.