I think proxmox is a good example too. I am pretty sure there are no extra features you get when you pay, other than support and early bug fix. Goes for the VM server and Backup server.
Their mail gateway, is more traditional 'freemium' model. There was either branding, mailbox limits, or something. Or at least it was, i didnt need it so i didnt look real close.
I was thinking of Proxmox. Their "You're on your own," model works pretty well.
Basically, they've got it set up ideally so you can learn it in a home lab, run it in a home lab, run it as a DIY project... but if you're going to run it as an ESX alternative in a corporate environment - it will behoove you to pay the licensing fee and get support.
Paid licensing also opens up the "paid repo" library - which - I'm not sure what the advantage is there - as it runs pretty damn well for me with just the "non-licensed" repo.
Wed Jul 07 2021 15:58:32 EDT from Nurb432I think proxmox is a good example too. I am pretty sure there are no extra features you get when you pay, other than support and early bug fix. Goes for the VM server and Backup server.
Their mail gateway, is more traditional 'freemium' model. There was either branding, mailbox limits, or something. Or at least it was, i didnt need it so i didnt look real close.
Really getting tired of this software vendor at the office.
Ever since they were cut loose from vmware ( long story. short version they were bought, kept for a bit, then turned back loose and lost a lot of their people in the process but had more customers ) and did their reorg a year later ( basically firing 1/2 who were left ) its been a s-hole company to work with. Non responsive, aimless etc.
Last update we got, one task was to fix a bug they introduced in a commonly used feature over a year ago. Now it does not work at all with a big fat error.. really... cant notice that during testing? Oh ya, no testing! The update before that, were more show stopper regression bugs than fixes and we had to wait, with my users not being happy.
My account has been broken for 3 days now. While i did get in with an admin account and created a 2nd account to use, i didnt tell them this. So far one email asking questions i already answered when i opens the ticket. Grrr I could fix it, but not the right way and i want it the right way for when it happens to a end-user.
~5 months ago we upgraded to a dot release. Lost the reporting module ( expected ). This weekend we finally get its replacement. a pile of dog poo, with hardly anything in it. AND the system went down hard Saturday morning, "well, we think it was due to us installing that, we are not sure. " We waited almost a year to upgrade to this dot release in the first place. Too many bugs, took them that long to get it to where we could even use it. "oh, we are going to hire some QA people soon... "
I do understand that they switched platforms on this release for the client and went from OCX to HTML5, ( years later than it should have been but they had an excuse ) but you still test the hell to of it and dont release it with *major* bugs that effect all customers. Due to the disaster it was, several long term customers ( upwards of 20 years for a couple of them i know personally ) bailed.
As much as i hate to, its time for us to ditch these jokers. 10+ years with them, and every bit of our operations are tied to it somehow. Both for us and 20 other business units..
Hmm ok so perhaps its not the QA department after all.
Doing more digging about what was going on.. A month ago they had to make some temporary schema changes to fix another issue and do cleanup. They tested that in our dev system. Moved it to prod, ran the cleanup ( took 3 weeks ) then put it back to stock.
this test upgrade was supposed to be done on a recent copy of prod ( like from Monday ), restored onto dev. Looks like that never actually happened, and a bunch of stored procedures are hosed. ( which i could fix i guess, but that is not my responsibility and wont make it a fair test anyway )
Still sloppy and unacceptable, but i want to blame the correct team of theirs :)
I'm gonna rant a bit, and it isn't even about my workplace, or the government, or technology, just ordinary drama involving someone who is way more ordinary than he thinks he is.
As some of you know, I am a musician, and for the last 16 years I have been playing in the worship band at my church. I sing, I play guitar, I play keys, I run the sound system, whatever is needed, I love to be a part of this ministry. It's very rewarding. Those who have known me for a while also know that in 2010 we had a pastor whose head got too big and he dissolved our team and hired a rockstar type of worship leader, and I was the one who really raised hell about it. My exile concluded about a year and a half later when both of them were gone.
For the next nine years I worked with three different leaders, and for the most part they were all pretty great. I've been singing since I was very young, and over that time I've learned a lot of music theory, a lot of technique, and the ability to work well in an ensemble. In this environment it's not supposed to be about me, but I will humbly say that I have fans. :)
So the most recent guy who was brought in ... is kind of ... different. He sings like a bad version of Bob Dylan, which is not exactly what one wants in a worship setting. Remember, our job is to lead others, not to "perform". Lately on the weeks when I am participating, I'm playing keyboard. Now this is fun, and I'm spending more time developing a talent that I hadn't really focused much on before. But I really want to sing. And I can totally sing and play at the same time, that's not a problem. I've bugged him a couple of times about it, and last week he finally offered to spend some time talking about "working on a vocal plan".
Bottom line, he thinks my style is all wrong, my harmonization is all wrong, I don't blend well and supposedly the sound guy has to turn me down, and he thinks I need to take voice lessons. Naturally, he whitewashed it in nicer words, but that's the message. Right. A decade and a half of getting compliments over how great the band sounds when I'm singing. People telling me that when I work with other male vocalists I sound like Art Fucking Garfunkel. And now this guy has the nerve to tell me that I suck and I need to take voice lessons so I can blend with him.
Yeah buddy, I'm hearing ya loud and clear. I'm certain that he just doesn't want to be upstaged. And that's a shame because that's not what I do. I'm part of a team. I suggested that if he thinks my harmonization is wrong, we should be working with music that has the parts written out instead of just working off chord charts. He says that we can't get those anymore, which is bullshit. I think the deep dark secret is that he can't read music.
I can tell you one thing he and I agree on: ONE OF US has a vocal style that isn't right for this space.
Originally I said to myself, ok, I'll play his little game, I'll find a place to take a few voice lessons and see what happens. After a few days of thinking about it, praying about it, working through some ideas, I'm now thinking, fuck that noise. I think I'm going to just use this season to focus on the keyboard and develop that talent a bit more. Because one thing I know is, I'm going to be there long after he's gone. And I'm not going to let him know that I think he's a douchebag because I've tried that before and although I never lose a pissing contest, sometimes the short term fallout is unpleasant for me.
Drama!
"I'm going to be there long after he's gone. "
I think that is the best bit of advice for many in this situation. Its true, its often not worth the energy as the problem will solve its self.. And in this case, sounds like it will be sooner than later, as while i dont do the church thing, i would not think that what he is doing would work out well for a traditional church.
So my SSL certs expire on the 18th. I get new ones on the 1st. Send to the vendor: "hi, certs expire soon, here are new ones, can we schedule to do this after hours or on the weekend so i can test " Saturday comes, no still word from vendor. Cert still old. Still have a week so i dont panic ( but annoyed ) so i e-mail our account rep around 4:30 am ( ok ok i dont sleep. sue me :) . Honestly didnt expect her to see it until monday.
This evening: "so and so had it on his schedule for friday, can you check to see if it was done" ( ticket had not been touched, no comments, no ownership ). I did check this morning before the email, but went ahead and checked again. low and behold it was done. Emailed back, thanking her for looking into it ( and letting her know that there was nothing added to the call.. ). Went back to do a screen dump of the cert info for my own records, and its back to the 18th.
My assumption is we have more than one web server ( i really dont know, its all hidden to us ) and he only did one. AND he didnt take ownership of the call AND he didnt update the ticket. AND he didnt schedule with me for testing.
soooooo over this vendor.
2021-09-11 18:36 from Nurb432
So my SSL certs expire on the 18th. I get new ones on the 1st.
You might want to consider LetsEncrypt or other services from vendors like AWS that automate everything for you.
Where I work now, we only have to worry about cert renewals for internally-facing services that can't take advantage of such things.
We have to go thru our SSL team for all our certs.
Sun Sep 12 2021 05:28:31 PM EDT from LoanShark2021-09-11 18:36 from Nurb432
So my SSL certs expire on the 18th. I get new ones on the 1st.
You might want to consider LetsEncrypt or other services from vendors like AWS that automate everything for you.
Where I work now, we only have to worry about cert renewals for internally-facing services that can't take advantage of such things.
2021-09-12 18:14 from Nurb432
We have to go thru our SSL team for all our certs.
It's possible that they have a dinosaur mentality...
The basic premise of LetsEncrypt (and similar services) is that you can use DNS (DNSsec, I suppose) plus a bit of extra plumbing to prove that you are the owner of the domain in question and manage cert renewals automatically.
If this approach doesn't sound secure to you, it doesn't matter what you think in a sense, because it has already been deployed and if it's already insecure, the bad guys can use it to "prove" that they are YOU.
So the way I see it, might as well take advantage of the ease.
And that's been the problem with SSL from the beginning. There are so many cert authorities in the world, some of them run by China, and we trust every single one of them for indentity verification.
You can sort of just go shopping to find that one CA in the world who is most exploitable. It's happened before.
That may work for some people, but we cant go out and do our own thing. We must follow procedure in these matters. Be them right or wrong they are the rules to follow so everyone is doing the same thing. One advantage of it being managed by that team however, is if things to south, its their problem to fix, re-issue, revoke, whatever. Don't want 100s of people with their fingers in that pie doing random things.
Now, most people do get to apply their own certs here. I just happen not to have access to the servers now since they got moved to the vendors cloud. Up until a couple of years ago, it would have been me doing it. ( still with officially blessed/managed certs tho )
Mon Sep 13 2021 08:28:04 AM EDT from LoanShark
So the way I see it, might as well take advantage of the ease.