I get it - everyone is using AI now, it has its use cases, but please for the love of God stop sending me the slop. At least read it first before firing it over to your colleagues.

Has anyone else's team turned into an absolute back-and-forth slop fest? Manager generates something he thinks is helpful, gigantic multi-page HTML report I need to read. Clearly written by Claude, because who the hell writes reports in HTML.

Coworker A: sends messages on slack trying to help solve problems:

This is the smoking gun: the message being sent is gated on the lack of network access to the k8s pod. Let me sit with this for a minute to make sure.

No, it's not the solution at all. We don't have direct IP access to k8s from our laptops. And nobody writes like that. If I wanted to ask Claude I would, I don't need a coworker that just copies and pastes everything into Claude.

Anyone else dealing with this crap?

I have a few IT guys assigning tickets to themselves and then completing the rating with excellent feedback on the follow up survey . One guy created a ticket for 'updating inventory' then fills out the survey with "excellent job, quick and proficient with great communication". LMAO

Follow-up of my first post: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/xMfcrcHx5f

Just told HR about how i feel about beign the sole IT guy who manages everything (for short: 365 in all his aspects, backups, networking guy, ecc...) for 24 people (if we count the external the number doubles) as an apprentice with a job title "IT support".

i told her that as an apprentice i should (by the law btw) some kind of tutor that can teach me the job and some one who can help me in my things; first thing she pointed was that i'm always out exactly when my work hours ends. WTF
ofc i go away when my work day is done, things can wait (most of the times).

Then proceded to tell me that i might not know how late some of the staff stay in the office (idk why tho) and everyone is aware of how many things they ask me.

Basically everyone somehow expect me to be the expert about anything is slightly it related, how i'm even able to give confidence to people when i don't have the slightest idea of what i'm even talking / doing some time.

I really miss having someone older can guide me.

https://downdetector.com/status/openai/

Getting 404 errors.
Downdetector lighting up as well.

Company I work for is hiring a sr security engineer. We are all Microsoft shop, cloud-only, no on-premises. I have been helping with some of the interviews and I fail to understand why we are getting candidates that don’t seem to know what product/technology to use for blocking executables on workstations. Device control for blocking usb devices, nope, this does not ever get mentioned. Briefly explaining difference between DLP and encrypting outbound emails with PII/PHI/PFI, nope, can’t get a simple answer or even a guess. The conversations steer away and never the answer. One candidate had to be reading AI responses somehow because first answer to blocking was general and bad, but when mentioning app locker it felt as I was prompting gpt4.2

I wonder how much of this is driven by the massive increase in storage costs.

According to the consortium, total shipped tape capacity in Q1 2026 increased 57 percent year over year compared to Q1 2025. This rebound follows an all-time record set in 2024, when total shipments reached 176.5 exabytes (a 15.4 percent annual increase). While total annual shipments settled back to 160.3 exabytes in 2025 (a 9 percent decline), the volume remained higher than any previous year on record prior to 2024. The arrival of the 40TB native capacity cartridge in early 2026 has provided an immediate density upgrade path for enterprise environments managing large-scale archival and secondary storage tiers.

LTO Tape Shipments Up 57% in Q1 2026 as AI and Archive Demand Accelerate - StorageReview.com

I'm genuinely curios what do you guys do with these "great apps" the finance guy built on his lunch break and want to have his whole team to get access to ? I have a finance director who built something and he wants to share it with others and I don't know what to do!

so we all have seen insane pricing related to storage, ram and what not. How long before cloud providers start passing these back to us, giving us no options either to stay on prem or cloud?

how are you preparing for this?

We left a VOIP provider whose name i wont mention on here. Were switching over to a major carrier and getting cellphones for 100+ users along with a receptionist call center. My manager hasnt told me which MDM were using yet and im already dreading this change. He told me the carrier would setup all the phones but i highly doubt that.

Whats the most common issue you guys run into with this kind of system? I can already hear users complaints "my phone is slow, my calls are dropping, the phone is too big, i dropped it in the toilet bc im a dumbass".

What should i be prepared for? What surprises did you guys run into?

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your responses, im extremely busy and cant respond to you all but ive taken notes on everything and will talk to management.

We seem to be getting more and more of these mail delivery errors. Is anybody else seeing this? Neither Downdetector or the 365 status page is reporting any issues.

We're a two-person IT team managing roughly 225 users on Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Our Windows workstations are Entra joined and Intune managed.

We're moving admin roles off our daily accounts and onto dedicated cloud-only admin accounts. I'm testing phishing-resistant MFA and a compliant-device requirement for those accounts.

My main concern is making the workflow practical. We jump between Intune, Exchange, Entra, SharePoint, Teams, etc. throughout the day. Some days it is frequent admin stuff depending on what's going on.

I tried a separate Edge profile signed into my admin account, but the portals initially kept signing me in with my daily Windows identity. Using a login_hint in the URL or explicitly selecting another account gets me into the intended account. I'm still validating the Conditional Access side.

I'd prefer not to add the admin identity as another Windows-connected account just to make browser SSO work. InPrivate also appears problematic with the compliant-device requirement.

How are you handling this in practice?

- Separate browser profiles, a separate browser, a private browser window or account switching within one profile?

- Do you connect your cloud admin identities to Windows? I would assume no.

- Do you require compliant devices for admin access?

- Are you using dedicated admin workstations or PIM?

I understand the value of separate identities. I'm looking for a workable daily setup that doesn't require constantly correcting which account a portal is using, or constantly launching private windows, if at all possible.

Maybe this is a sign we just need to review overall configuration of things to better dial them in, so we don't have to go into an admin portal so often?

Especially interested in what other small IT teams are doing.

I'm looking for a way to script the removal of the Windows.old directory to free up space on systems that have recently had 25H2 installed.

I can use cleanmgr but I can't automate it to remove old Windows installations. Not that I can find anyway.

I've already tried some scripting combining DISM, takedown, icalcs, and remove-item but that ends up just erroring out and can't complete the removal because of Windows junction loops.

There must be a way to automate this so I don't need to log in to hundreds of systems. Any ideas out there or am I stuck doing this manually?

Just curious. How often are admins changing providers? And when you do what is the trigger?

I’m shitting it to say the least. I’ve worked in IT for 15 years now, from fixing a printer to installing and configuring networks etc you guys know the shebang no need to go on.

I have been out of work a while now like most people and maybe stupidly moved somewhere more rural and a bit stuck in the past. Seen this role advertised for Senior Network and Infrastructure engineer. They want someone who is going to come in lead and optimise their existing setup.

I don’t know if it’s the job spec they have but I’m having serious doubts on my abilities, when I think about the majority it well and truly is everything I have been doing for my entire career but for some reason terminology they are using is making me feel like I have imposter syndrome.

Interview is on Friday and I have questions already lined up I think that I would like to know so I can try and gauge what I’d be getting myself into. I’m thinking of asking about:

Current patching schedules
DR simulation and testing
Current team members
Potentially goals for the next 5 years ?

What do you guys think? Would be nice to have a discussion and try and alleviate some of these woes because god only knows it’s the next logical step in my career and could be me for the next 10-30 years

I'm the sole IT guy for a small CPA firm (10 people) that wants to move everything from on premises to the cloud. They've been on prem for almost 3 decades and most of them aren't tech savvy at all. I've been asked to come up with a proposal with a flat rate, but I have no clue what to quote for something like this so I'm just looking for ball park figures from someone who's done it before.

I know there's AIO solutions like Verito, but this proposal is for building the infrastructure from a bare cloud server. MS business accounts & exchange inboxes are already done. I'd be setting up Purview DLP policies (from scratch), Intune, Quickbooks & Drake, moving 4TB of client files from their NAS, backup & disposal of 10 workstations, VPN & RDP, and all the other role provisioning and training that goes with a cloud server.

My best guess is quoting for ~100 hours. Am I way off?

Hello folks,

We’ve been tasked to switch some of our users from SMS to the MS Authenticator app. Rather than doing this manually, I’d like to make this seamless as possible. I think creating a policy in entra ID where it’ll prompt our end users to enroll into MS Authenticator ? Curious to know how others have tackled this.

So while Microsoft continues troubleshooting their issues with Exchange, I noticed that my phishing simulations are not working as intended. I have discovered:

• In Edge, when a user opens a simulated malware attachment (.Docx), the document shows the default empty MS Word image, despite enabling the editing within Word and Outlook
  • If I set the simulated malware to .HTML, it will redirect users to a default landing page and not the intended one that I created
• I have found that utilizing the Drive-By tactic will work with no issues...thus far

Current Status of MS365 as of 0910 hrs EST

Exchange Online:

- Users can't download email message attachments through any Exchange Online connection method.

- Users may be unable to sign in to Outlook on the web.

Been considering a role at one and it's not too far off from where I am currently in terms of the type of work I would be doing. I never did work at an MSP and always was on project teams my entire career, I specialize in enterprise deployments. But I don't explicitly work at a VAR (Value Added Reseller). So those that do, what has your experience been? Seems a bit more sane of a job if you can land it

I'm not sure if I'm articulating this properly because a number of searches for this are yielding no useful results.

I'm looking for an application I can deploy to end users that has customized admin level fixes for specific situations that we come across once in a while. For example, sometimes the VPN client decides to stop working and you need to run a few commands as admin to get it working again.

I'm envisioning something where they could just click "fix whatever" that matches their scenario and it would run the proper commands in the background (elevated if that's required).

Does this exist as a product, or would it have to be a fully custom written app?

Edit

Looks like sticking with Intune / PSADT / Repair is the best bet for right now. Thanks!

We have emails stuck in procesed with them for over 12 hours now. I've whitelisted their IP's, no help, they rotated my IP, that helped for 1 scan, already opened a ticket. Any other ideas or anyone else seeing this? It's been great for over a year, never an issue. We just have it for users home scanners.

Just received word from our spam filters that (some of) the exchange servers are busy.

I'm an Infra engineer at my french company, and we've decommissioned a lot of 6+year old hardware.

We're talking about ~60 R620-30s mainly and a dozen R730s. They are fitted with lots of DDR4 RAM (378GB each) and I have a bunch of SSDs / HDDs in good health to go with.

I'm pretty much free to prospect for selling them, and I've never done that. I think the DDR4 R630 might be still worth something (esp. ram & disks), but I don't know where to start.

The R620s are older, and I'm in the mood of donating them to french/european associations in need of compute hardware, seeing as DDR3 isn't worth much.

Do you guys have contacts/ideas of where I could reach to settle this ?

Thanks !

EDIT: for those in France not too far, we are a bit south of Clermont Ferrand. Give me a PM if you're interested

I have a client that still routinely sends Faxes. I upgraded his dying HP AIO unit with a new, shiny Brother AIO unit.

Nothing else has changed. If I put the old HP unit in, it can send a fax but it still has the issues that caused it to be replaced, my buttset can dial out no issue on the line, and Xfinity has verified twice that signal level and VOIP on their gateway are all "to spec" for fax.

Brother tech support says it's an Xfinity issue, and obviously Xfinity says it's a Brother Printer issue.

I'm headed to the site today - does anyone have any other suggestions to try? I'm planning on physically tracing the line today just to see if there's any damage in the crawlspace to it, but I'm not sure what else I could do at this point.

Okay, firstly please forgive me if I'm asking for something stupid. I am brand new to this, and inherited an IT department that is an absolute shambles.

Context: I am the sole helpdesk/ITperson/Sysadmin person in a company of about 80 people, hybrid workers (about half on prem, half WFH across the UK).

I do all the 365 admin, RMM, security stuff, as well as all the day to day helpdesk stuff. Someone else looks after servers, so I don't care about that.

At the moment, my "ticketing system" is post-it notes, Teams chats, and emails. It's starting to get a little overwhelming.

I am looking for a super cheap/free solution. Best if it's cloud based, as I can't self host.

One thing that is crucial is the ability to make some sort of template. A good chunk of stuff that's getting confusing is onboarding new staff, setting up their 365 accounts with the right permissions, groups, shared mailboxes, &c. So if I can make some sort of template that dept managers can just fill out, that would be awesome. Most of the rest of my day is "My sharepoint has stopped syncing", "I can't get into Salesforce", and "My mouse has run out of batteries", so that seems like "normal" ticketing.

Again, I am new to this, so I'd be looking for something super simple, and I will be the ONLY one replying to tickets.

Any suggestions?

Hi everyone,

we are currently looking for a better solution for IT asset management + remote management and I'd love to hear what other sysadmins are using.

Our current situation:
We are already using an endpoint management platform, but we're not completely happy with it for our use case. The standard package includes a lot of functionality such as patch management, MDM, etc. that we don't really need. We're mainly looking for a strong asset management/inventory solution combined with RMM capabilities.

Our requirements:

Asset Management

• Automatic hardware inventory of Windows PCs/laptops
• CPU, RAM, storage, serial number, model, etc.
• Software inventory including installed applications and versions
• Last logged-in user / login information
• Ability to assign devices to specific end users
• Lifecycle/status information for assets
• Support for non-computer assets such as:
  • Monitors
  • Docking stations
  • Keyboards/mice
  • Other IT equipment
• Ideally, a proper stock/inventory system so we can track devices that are currently in storage and assign them when they're deployed

Intune integration
This is particularly important for us. We already have a large number of devices enrolled in Microsoft Intune, but not all of our devices are managed through Intune. We want the solution to:

• Integrate with Microsoft Intune
• Automatically import/synchronize Intune devices
• Keep device/user information synchronized
• Ideally avoid having to manually maintain the same devices in two systems

We also use Microsoft Entra ID / Microsoft 365, so good integration with the Microsoft ecosystem would be a big plus.

Remote Management / RMM
We also need proper remote administration capabilities:

• Remote desktop / remote access
• Remote CMD / PowerShell
• Ability to execute commands/scripts remotely
• Basic troubleshooting and administration capabilities
• Ideally an RMM-style agent

We don't necessarily need a full endpoint management suite with extensive patch management, MDM, software deployment, etc. Those features are nice to have, but they are not the main reason we're looking for a solution.

So we're basically looking for something that sits somewhere between: IT Asset Management + Hardware/Stock Inventory + RMM/Remote Support + Intune integration

Has anyone implemented something similar? What solution are you using, and how well does it handle Intune synchronization, asset/user assignment, stock management and remote administration?

We're particularly interested in real-world experiences rather than just feature lists.

Thanks!