WServerNews: Reader feedback on doing IT in the Coronavirus situation

In this week’s newsletter

More stories from readers with lots we can learn from them. Any good RDP/DaaS providers in South America? Cheat sheets for networking nerds. Tech trip down memory lane. More remote monitoring in your workplace? Lotsa podcasts, and more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!

Enjoy this week’s newsletter and feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered — we love hearing from our readers! This motherboard is HOT!

 

Got questions? Ask our readers!

WServerNews goes out each week to more than 200,000 IT pro subscribers worldwide! That’s a lot of expertise to tap into. Do you need help with some technical problem or are looking for expert advice on something IT-related? Ask Our Readers by emailing your problems and/or questions to us at [email protected]

 

Editor’s Corner

In last week’s newsletter we shared some reports of how IT pros are coping with their work and business in this crisis the world is experiencing. We also asked if any other newsletter readers wanted to share their own stories, and we got a flood of emails in response. In this week’s newsletter we’ve selected a bunch of these emails to share so you can learn about what your colleagues are doing to deal with the pressures of doing corporate IT or running their IT business in the midst of a pandemic. So here we go, in no particular order:

From Howard, an Independent Contractor in Brazil:

For me, its work as usual. Formerly in IT, help desk, break/fix and maintenance, I’m presently an apps QA tester (Applause.com), work totally online due to limitations with my vision. Since the big mobility boom starting with the iPhone, I was tremendously busy. Innovation has slowed down to a crawl now, most apps are working the same as everyone else’s, nothing new on the horizon and all these devices are pretty much the same now, they even make phone calls!

As my work is online, nothing has really changed. I am disappointed we can’t go to our gym to work out three time a week any more, but we do intend to walk the sidewalks and order food and prescriptions on the phone till this situation passes. Garden work is still at least once a week and we are going to start painting the house by ourselves!

From Glen in Virginia:

This virus has turned our work on it’s ears, or at least kept us super busy this week. The community college is closed to the public and students. That may change next week, but our President hasn’t made the final decision yet. We’ve hurriedly been getting all faculty up-to-speed on using our LMS and Zoom. Some have been a real challenge. Fortunately we have offered employees the option of a desktop or laptop, not both, for the past 10+ years and as of today, only 4 of them were still using desktops. And we has spares to loan those 4. Staff and administrators were about the same, maybe 10 of them have desktops, but most of their work can be done on a personally owned computer. And “heck no”, we don’t allow personally owned computers to VPN in.

Our biggest hurdle has been remotely changing computers from the old/slow/outgoing MS Direct Access to our VPN access. But it is going pretty good. Zoom conferencing and screen sharing has been a lifesaver and having a admin account that we change the password on daily and can give the users to make changes helps greatly. One thing that would help would be a remote control/screen sharing program that show UAC prompts, but we are making do with what we have.

And praise to God, no cases of corono in our area.

From Dmitry Sotnikov, Chief Product Officer at 42Crunch:

42Crunch is a global company with offices not just in the US, but also in Dublin, Ireland and Montpellier, France. Thus, our European offices got affected before the US ones. Luckily, we were very well positioned for the change:

  • We are quite spread and have a lot of remote workers (including our CEO in London and a co-founder and field CTO in Madrid) and work from home has always been an option. Thus, video calls have been the prevalent form of meetings for a long time and all our IT systems are accessible remotely.
  • We are an API security company – so cybersecurity has always been our top priority. All the systems are using multi-factor authentication for login.
  • Our own 42Crunch platform has been architected based on Zero Trust architecture, with per-organization data isolation and encryption, and multilayered architecture.

With all these in place, office shut down didn’t affect our day to day work or security level in any way.

For those of us with kids and family the much bigger effect has been from the schools getting closed and children now having to stay at home the whole day and study remotely. 😉

From Jeffrey who works as a Senior IT Security Engineer from his home in New York state:

Neither my job nor that of my group has not changed much. I was hired as a telecommuting employee, so I have always worked from home and we were (and continue to be) a virtual team, with staff scattered between homes and offices across the country. What has changed are some of the aspects of the job:

  • Most travel has been suspended, including normal travel for conferences, team meetings, etc. (With the cancellation of conferences, that probably will not be a problem.)
  • Access to company offices has been restricted to employee and contractor staff who have a need to be in facilities
  • Normal open company meetings with senior leaders have been replaced by teleconferences
  • Those of my team who did work in a company office, as well as most of the company that has the capability to do so, have been directed to work remotely and bring their computer equipment home with them
  • We are receiving almost daily updates on Covid-19
  • The company has engaged additional resources to support its employees (employee assistance program, protocols for employees who are infected with the virus, various web pages with covid-19 information in general and specific to the company, various resources for employees telecommuting for the first time)
  • The company is provisioning resources to support the additional (and unplanned) use of remote networking and teleconferencing capabilities

Just a note to you that I think the last item will be a huge impact to the country’s Internet infrastructure, and might be worthy of an article itself, but I am not an expert on that! This also might be the impetus for large companies to finally move away from large central offices with huge gatherings of employees and contractor staff to remote telecommuting, a model already embraced by many of the dotnet companies since 2000.

From Susan:

Our biggest issues with people working from home is them understanding why SQL-based apps don’t work on their laptops while they’re not on the network. I stopped counting how many calls I received regarding that. When I tell them they have to use the Citrix system for those, I get asked, “Why?”

Second issue, their home internet connection being too slow and them expecting us to speed things up for them. Users…can’t live with them…wouldn’t have a job without them. 😉

From Mark Van Noy, Technical Lead/Architect working in the central IT department at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Greater Denver Area:

Well, in the trenches it is a scramble so it has taken a bit to find a few minutes to respond. We changed all our classes to online weeks ago, asked all the dorm residents to return to their permanent homes about two weeks ago, and switched all staff that could to a work from home strategy seven to ten days ago depending on department. It is a fairly bare bones staff on campus from what I understand. Boulder County has limited travel to essential businesses so I am theoretically not allowed to see what campus looks like for myself.

 My role has been in trying to assist students and faculty with continuing to have the computing resources for classes they had on premises. We already had the VDI resources available. We have since started aggressively leveraging our physical labs with VMware’s Horizon View making the physical computers behave like VDI pools of computers. I know that a good portion of the faculty and staff are using VPN connections to remote desktop in to their office computers. Some of us simply took laptops home and docked them to additional monitors.

From Jeff Doty, System Administrator at Flow International Corporation:

We have a Shanghi office so we did have a preview of what might come. We were very lucky that we were already set to have the majority of our workers work remote. We have been deploying laptops instead of workstation for several years. All the laptops are configured with Direct Access and VPN preconfigured. They all have Teamviewer host installed for remote support. They also have a softphone software installed. We have a lot of product techs that travel a ton, so we were already used to doing this. There was a scramble at first to give out some additional laptops or, and other equipment (I picked up a couple of monitors and a docking station for home). We also setup data sticks with the VPN connection build installed for easy install on users home systems for those with Desktops. The C level was very happy when they pulled the trigger to have most folks work remote and it worked almost seamlessly.

From Sam Garcia:

Yes it has impacted me! Some work has been postponed due to a limit of 10 persons at a site or no parts. Others have closed shop and won’t reopen till the end of April.

From Logan:

8 weeks ago, while feeding the birds and squirrels, I slipped on an ice patch and fell and broke my right fibula leg bone in 2 places.

I am officially retired but I still do IT consulting as I have been involved in computers since purchasing an original TRS-80 Model 1 many years ago.

Well, having a broken leg has its limits. I am not allowed to drive so I am more of less restricted to home so you can see, the COVID-19 Coronavirus has not yet been a problem for me as far as being restricted to home.

Me doing consulting has been and still is part of my confinement to home. So I have learned to adjust and live with it. Why not, I like computers. So Coronavirus, stay out of my way!

The story’s not over. If you have something more you’d like to share on how you’re handling the COVID-19 crisis that you feel might benefit other IT professionals, feel free to send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll publish it in the Mailbag section of one of our coming issues.

In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy — and stay sane!

Got more thoughts about anything in this newsletter?

Email us at [email protected]!

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Ask Our Readers – Any good RDP/DaaS providers in South America? (new question)

Leonardo asks:

Do you know of any RDP/DaaS provider? I’m looking forward to be partner of a reliable one, but I’m not finding one that is being worth in South America these days. I need something that could give me a remote desktop for no more than $10 per session, per month. Thanks Mitch!

Can any of our readers help with suggestions? Email us at [email protected]

 

Tip of the Week

>> Got any IT pro tips you’d like to share with other readers of our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

Cheat sheets for networking nerds

PacketLife.net has a bunch of PDF cheat sheets you can download as refreshers for how various protocols operate. Posters available include BGP, EIGRP, WLAN, 802.1X, IPsec, IPv6 and more. Terrific for aspiring network engineers.

https://packetlife.net/library/cheat-sheets/

 

Admin Toolbox

>> Got any admin tools or software you’d like to recommend to our readers? Email us at [email protected]

PAL reads a perfmon counter log and analyzes it using different thresholds:

https://github.com/clinthuffman/PAL

Sysinternals Sysmon now includes the ability to tag rules so that event log entries include the rule tag that generated them:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysmon

Wireshark is the world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer:

https://www.wireshark.org/

 

Mailbag

This week Charles Lewis from Tallahassee, Florida sent us the following late response to the factoid “Burritos and brain power” way back in our January 13th newsletter:

When I was younger, the expensive calculators were in the display case and the slide rules were on top. Now, the expensive antique slide rules are in the case and the calculators are on top. Go figure.

I used a Texas Instruments 5018 calculator for at least 20 years, probably more. But after seeing a blurb, possibly in WServerNews, I bought a license (USD 8.95) for CalcTape. I highly recommend it! Repeat, I highly recommend it!

Down Memory Lane …

Sometime just before Christmas 1955, I bought a Zenith transistor radio. I was 14, the radio cost about USD 50, this is what it looked like. It easily fit in my pants pocket.

Around 1983 I was in Washington, D.C. and went to the Smithsonian. And came across the exact same Zenith radio, color, gold trim and handle, everything, in a display case. In a museum!

Mitch, that was the day, hour, minute, second I began to feel old.

How the Transistor Radio with Music for Your Pocket Fueled a Teenage Social Revolution

Take care of yourself and yours during these trying times.

Thanks Charles for the tech trip down Memory Lane, I wish I’d kept a few of those museum pieces…

And two weeks ago in our March 23rd newsletter I shared a humorous comment about how The Weather Network was prognosticating a nighttime temperature of -82 C coming that weekend here where I live in Winnipeg, Canada. (Also known as Winterpeg). This didn’t happen of course — an amusing glitch in the forecaster’s weather prediction software, I suppose — but it did inspire the following amusing comment from reader David Canberra:

Hi Mitch,

It’s almost distressing to see how cold you are going to be. A possible solution would be get a NUC7i5 PC and run the latest version of Speedfan to check the temperatures — a motherboard at 429496480 centigrade should counter the cold weather — a bit:

I gather there is a problem identifying the latest intel chipset.

ROFL, this motherboard is HOT!

 

Factoid – More remote monitoring in your workplace?

Last week’s factoid and question was this:

Fact: Barclays has been criticized after the bank installed “Big Brother” employee monitoring software on computers in its London headquarters.

Question: How do you feel about such things, both on the giving and receiving end?

Angelika responded with the following comment:

I know your question with Factoid is more about moral feelings about employee monitoring. However, it also has legal facilities. Around the world, the different laws of different countries protect employees against surveillance. Privacy is also protected under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In the case of Lynette Copland v. Great Britain (reference number 62617/00). The European Court of Human Rights has stated that this rule also applies to telephone calls and electronic messages sent from the workplace. The Tribunal inferred from this provision that employee monitoring is only possible if the law explicitly allows it. We should all feel safe in the workplace. But neither of us should abuse the employer’s trust either.

Well said, thanks!

Several readers also sent us a link to this very timely article on what’s currently happening with employee remote monitoring in this time of panic about the Coronavirus:

Bosses Panic-Buy Spy Software to Keep Tabs on Remote Workers (Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-27/bosses-panic-buy-spy-software-to-keep-tabs-on-remote-workers

However, I don’t always trust what I read on Bloomberg, so let’s make this question our Factoid for this week:

Now let’s move on to this week’s factoid:

Fact: Digital surveillance of remote workers is escalating rapidly in many enterprises:

Source: See the previously referenced Bloomberg article.

Question: Is this your experience? Or does the article blow things out of proportion? Has management at the company where you do IT been pressuring you to implement more employee remote monitoring? What do your IT colleagues report concerning this?

Email your answers to [email protected]

 

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Conference calendar

NOTE: Because of the concerns surrounding the COVID-19 situation some of these conferences may be moved online or even cancelled. Please check the conference websites for the latest updates.

>> Got an IT conference or event happening that you’d like to promote in our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

Microsoft Business Applications Summit

April 20-21, 2020 in Anaheim, California

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/BusinessApplicationsSummit

Microsoft Build

May 19-21, 2020 in Seattle, Washington

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/build

Microsoft Inspire

July 20-24, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada

https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire

 

Microsoft Licensing Boot Camps

For dates and locations see https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/training

 

Cyber Security Summits

For dates and locations see https://cybersummitusa.com/summits/

 

Other conferences

SharePoint Fest – April 13-17 in Washington DC

https://www.sharepointfest.com/DC/

Future Tech Summit – May 15 in Santiago, Chile

https://www.collabsummit.eu/en/

PowerShell Conference Europe – June 2-5 in Hannover, Germany

https://psconf.eu/

European Collaboration Summit – June 8-10 in Wiesbaden, Germany

https://www.collabsummit.eu/en/

Evolve – June 8-10 in Las Vegas

https://evolvetechconference.com/

RSA Conference Asia Pacific & Japan – July 14-16 in Singapore

https://www.rsaconference.com/apj

VMworld – Aug 30 – Sept 3 in San Francisco

https://www.vmworld.com/en/us/index.html

Interop – Sept 21-24 in Austin, Texas

https://www.interop.com/

European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (ESPC20) – Nov 9-12, 2020 in Amsterdam

https://www.sharepointeurope.com/

DevOpsCon – Nov 30 – Dec 3 in Munich, Germany

https://devopscon.io/munich/

 

Podcast Corner

‘Keeps,’ ‘Stops,’ and ‘Starts’: It’s about time for time management (The T-Suite)

https://techgenix.com/podcast/the-t-suite/

Information Technology in the Time of Pandemic (RunAsRadio)

http://runasradio.com/

Should Network Engineers Learn Advanced Programming Languages? (Heavy Networking)

https://packetpushers.net/series/weekly-show/

What’s New in vSphere 7 (Virtually Speaking)

https://www.vspeakingpodcast.com/

How to Approach a Wi-Fi Validation Survey (Clear To Send)

https://www.cleartosend.net/

vSphere 7 and Kubernetes (The CTO Advisor)

https://www.thectoadvisor.com/podcast

Stir crazy lockdown edition (reposted) » (Risky Business)

https://risky.biz/netcasts/risky-business/

Azure Resource Manager All The Things! (Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast)

https://www.msclouditpropodcast.com/

Trying to Focus on the Less Viral News (Microsoft Cloud Show)

http://www.microsoftcloudshow.com/podcast

In Case of Hassles, Break Glass (Windows Insider)

https://insider.windows.com/en-us/podcasts/

 

New on Techgenix.com

Implementing a remote work solution under the pressure of coronavirus

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has forced IT pros to adapt on the fly. What is it like to quickly set up a remote work solution? Here’s one IT pro’s story.

https://techgenix.com/remote-work-solution-coronavirus/

How one IT pro ramped-up his clients for remote work due to coronavirus

What’s it like being an IT consultant when your clients quickly need to transition their workers to remote work in the age of coronavirus?

https://techgenix.com/remote-work-coronavirus/

Always On VPN configuration in Windows 10 using Microsoft Intune

If your organization is looking for advanced security features and modern management support, Windows 10 Always On VPN is something you should consider.

https://techgenix.com/always-on-vpn-configuration/

Email archiving for small and midsized businesses: A conversation with MailStore’s Kristina Waldhecker

In today’s rapidly evolving regulatory environment, email archiving should be more than just an afterthought for small and midsized businesses.

https://techgenix.com/email-archiving-for-smbs/

IT jobs and older workers: Fresh talent doesn’t have to mean young

The need to fill vacant IT jobs is growing steadily. The pool of available young IT professionals is insufficient. Is it time to turn to older IT workers?

https://techgenix.com/it-jobs-older-workers/

 

Fun videos from Flixxy

Skydiver Ejects From Glider Aircraft

Nicole Smith has the ‘most incredible jump of her life’ when she gets the opportunity to launch out of an aerobatic glider aircraft.

https://www.flixxy.com/skydiver-ejects-from-glider-aircraft.htm

Magician Hans Klok’s Amazing Illusions

Magician Hans Klok wows the audience of the Ellen Show with his amazing tricks that will leave you stunned!

https://www.flixxy.com/magician-hans-kloks-amazing-illusions.htm

Elvis Presley – Bossa Nova Baby

Footage of Elvis Presley singing ‘Bossa Nova Baby’ – from the movie ‘Fun in Acapulco.

https://www.flixxy.com/elvis-presley-bossa-nova-baby.htm

Cats Domino

Relax with these two Japanese cats interacting with a domino-powered Rube Goldberg contraption.

https://www.flixxy.com/cats-domino.htm

 

More articles of interest

Top 10 VM Backup Tools for VMware and Hyper-V

Admins who rely on VMware and Hyper-V workloads might have trouble choosing the right backup tool for their VMs. Admins can use this article to better inform their purchasing decisions.

https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Top-10-VM-backup-tools-for-VMware-and-Hyper-V?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020February28_TG_A1

Learn the Main Linux OS Components

Linux is one operating choice to run on your infrastructure. Get started with these terms to discover how the OS works and how it differs from Microsoft and Apple offerings.

https://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/feature/Learn-the-main-Linux-OS-components?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020February28_TG_A2

What are Windows Virtualization-Based Security Features?

Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows comes with advanced protection schemes, including several virtualization-based security features the company introduced in Windows Server 2019.

https://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/answer/What-are-Windows-virtualization-based-security-features?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020February28_TG_A3

Compare MSIX App Attach to Other App Layering Tools

With Microsoft’s MSIX App Attach in public preview, IT professionals should learn the layer tool’s capabilities and how it stacks up compared to tools from Liquidware and others.

https://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/tip/Compare-MSIX-App-Attach-to-other-app-layering-tools?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020February28_TG_A4

 

Send us your feedback!

Got feedback about anything in this issue of WServerNews? Email us at [email protected]

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