I really felt like everyone knew I was faking my knowledge in my new role, but the last admin had "Admin1!" as the password for everything

He worked with the company for 10 years, doing IT for like 20 or more years.

No MFA enabled on anything unless youre a global admin (so just me),
the mobile phones arent enrolled in an MDM
no documentation on anything
let the front desk go instantly to voicemail for a year or more, instead of taking 10 minutes to fix the call forwarding.
hard drives not encrypted
barely had any spam filters enabled
gambling not blocked on the wifi
devices people are actively using are considered inactive in the RMM/MDM so i cant fix them
no forced updates/patching for antivirus software or windows itself
hard drives not encrypted on devices or sim cards with protection on

how are you going to have the keycard code admin password be "Admin1!" and then scold employees about clicking phishing link simulations

there are literally nonprofits in my area that will look at your org and determine how to make it more secure in a technical sense. There is no excuse for this

If this is something I can notice after doing IT for one year and working here for 2 weeks, I have no idea how this man let this slide for this long.

If the staff knew how badly he was compromising their info, he would've been fired so long ago. especially for a small social services org

https://redd.it/1v4ngvi
@r_systemadmin

Anyone else having issues with images not loading in Teams Chat today?

I tried clearing cache to no avail, and M365 hasn't posted any advisories or service degradation notifications about it.. images just show up as white boxes in chats.

https://redd.it/1v4ijc5
@r_systemadmin

HR requesting a policy from 15 years ago. Where does retention/archiving end??

Seems like this company expects us to retain all data created ever. We're up to 19 TB in our M365 backups because we keep all versions of backups indefinitely. We are a company of less than 200 people. Someone help me.

https://redd.it/1v4qxyx
@r_systemadmin

MSP to supplement lack of staff

Anyone else ever offloaded work to an MSP only to end up spending more time fixing their mistakes?

We handed the firewall side over to a third party so we could focus on internal issues and new projects. At this point I’ve easily spent 3× the time troubleshooting and cleaning up after them than I would have spent just doing it myself.

The original logic was “at least someone will be there if things go to shit.” I’m not even confident in that part anymore.

Curious if this is just my experience or if this is the new normal with MSPs (or an old normal).

https://redd.it/1v4muk8
@r_systemadmin

Satellite Hotspot on remote trip for Exec

Hello everyone I got a new request I haven't encountered before today. I have a c-suite member that is taking a vacation to a remote area of Africa and will not have access to internet or cell service during part of the trip. They've insisted the need access to email incase something urgent comes up, and have presented me with an option for a Iridium Satellite Hotspot. Has anyone encountered a request or solution like this before?

https://redd.it/1v4qhtr
@r_systemadmin

Cautionary tale - someone I know got fired for pulling RAM from laptops

Cover your rear and make sure all equipment you take home or work on is documented. Person I know got fired for yanking ram from laptops to keep in the office but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work. Now hes looking for a job in one of the hardest markets Ive seen in a long while.

https://redd.it/1v4ueoc
@r_systemadmin

Teams outage Aus/Syd?

Anyone else experiencing microsoft teams unable to connect huddles/meetings?


Seems to be affecting KL and SG also


edit: seems 1:1 arent working or at least intermittently



11:30 AEST seems to be working again

https://redd.it/1v4wfe0
@r_systemadmin

what are things that your IT department used to do for users?

A lot of this would be laughable to younger IT people, but a huge portion of running an IT department involved performing tasks for the users that simply would never happen today.

We used to set out of office messages for the users. We had a mail server running on solaris and the users did not know how to use the shell so they'd create a ticket and we'd set a vacation message for them, and they'd create another ticket when asking us to remove it.

We also used to burn CDs for people. They'd give us the files they wanted burned and then we'd burn the CDs on a dedicated machine with a CD burner at the help desk. And at that point the help desk was an actual desk you'd walk up to which is why it was called the help desk.

(The help desk had some equipment people could borrow and check out and bring to their desks like zip drives. There were also copies of manuals at the help desk that you could check out and use at your desk and then bring back.)

We also had someone go around our buildings and stock the laser printers with paper every day and check toner levels.

A different group in IT would print out reports on a dot matrix printer over night, then separate them out and sort them, and deliver them to people's offices or cubes first thing in the morning. The people doing this work were available to answer the phone as a sort of backup help desk over night. They also would change backup tapes over night.

https://redd.it/1v4ylyp
@r_systemadmin

Weekly 'I made a useful thing' Thread - July 24, 2026

There is a great deal of user-generated content out there, from scripts and software to tutorials and videos, but we've generally tried to keep that off of the front page due to the volume and as a result of community feedback. There's also a great deal of content out there that violates our advertising/promotion rule, from scripts and software to tutorials and videos.

We have received a number of requests for exemptions to the rule, and rather than allowing the front page to get consumed, we thought we'd try a weekly thread that allows for that kind of content. We don't have a catchy name for it yet, so please let us know if you have any ideas!

In this thread, feel free to show us your pet project, YouTube videos, blog posts, or whatever else you may have and share it with the community. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, or links that appear to be monetization-grabs will still be removed.

https://redd.it/1v54wvy
@r_systemadmin

Both work.

Every now and then I see a post like “Is it okay to use Fireball on a PC?”, and I have to check to see if I’m in a sysadmin or a DnD forum.

https://redd.it/1v50qjg
@r_systemadmin

Anyone else feel more exhausted by their manager than their actual - Part 2 workload

Hi Everyone,

Around a month ago, I made a Reddit post about my toxic manager and workplace, and I received mixed opinions. I'm seeking advice again because I'm honestly struggling to continue in this job.

I'm only staying because I need to support my aging parents, pay my room rent, and continue paying my education EMI. The stress has become so bad that I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking about work.

Here are a few things I'm dealing with:

My manager refuses to give me access to infrastructure resources like Active Directory and Microsoft 365 Admin Portal, even though I've worked on them before.
Even something as simple as changing the USB port of a mouse requires his approval.
For months, I've only been assigned Windows installations, printer issues, and basic hardware tasks, despite having more technical knowledge.
I feel that if he realizes I can handle infrastructure work independently, he might see me as a threat.
A few previous IT guys were fired after becoming too confident. I've survived by keeping my head down and making him feel important.
I'm also worried that if I resign for a better opportunity, he might create problems with my relieving process.

At this point, the workload isn't the issue—it's the environment that's mentally exhausting.

Has anyone here worked under a manager like this? Did things ever improve, or did you eventually leave? I'd genuinely appreciate your advice.

My Previous Post - https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/yHwgtXrtMX

https://redd.it/1v57v7a
@r_systemadmin

And here we go again...

Noticed Ericsson Cradlepoint NetCloud is down, can't login. Check down detector and a ton of crap is down. Guessing AWS or Azure.

https://redd.it/1v58bd3
@r_systemadmin

Would you move to an MSP role?

Hey everyone

Been in IT now for nearly 10 years, worked on numerous things and companies.

Stagnated at the company I'm at now, no more ceiling to hit and most of the time I spend my times bored out my head.

Been approached by an MSP for a Lead role but having never worked for an MSP, I don't know what I could be getting myself into.

Can anyone share some insight on life at an MSP, type of stuff you do, day to day etc?

https://redd.it/1v592x4
@r_systemadmin

Meraki to Ubiquiti sanity check

I wanted to see if my team and I are crazy. The past few years we started to take the direction to go from Cisco switching and Ubiquiti APs to all Meraki. We rationalized the cost and it wasn't the end of the world. Still felt a little bad but what we have installed feels good.

We have new leadership and an opportunity for a real change of direction. Ubiquiti has been stepping their game up on the switching side the past few years and we could do a full UI refresh for the cost of replacing a handful of switches and the other half of our APs.

We have about 48 switches and 60 APs with lots of fiber. I know a lot of schools have been making the switch as well as multi site businesses so it seems possible.

Are we crazy?

https://redd.it/1v5d4h5
@r_systemadmin

Well.. that's it boys. 16 year career up in smoke. IT Manager for company that's closing shop in December

I can't believe this is the way it ends. Supposedly they tried everything but I just didn't expect that just closing the business would be the final outcome (construction). They want to offer me a "retention bonus" to stay until the end. Great, thanks...

I could see the writing on the wall and have been applying for six months. Haven't even received a bite other than AI requests. No one wants a 56 year old IT guy I guess.

The industry has changed and these billionaire owners just decide they don't want to pay after the work is completed and we've financed the completion of the job. Take them to court... sure, then bleed more money until you take pennies on the dollar. This administration has just made it all worse.

Two kids in college, probably going to have to move in with the mother in law... fuck, it's bad guys.

Sorry for the downer post but had to rant a little. Honestly, part of me is relieved. No investment in IT for years and I've basically kept the environment stable with gum and tape. I can sleep knowing it doesn't matter anymore. Definitely not patching those hosts this weekend...

https://redd.it/1v5g8nx
@r_systemadmin

Known state actor knocking the door with an expired token, causing user to get marked High Risk repeatedly

Looking for any input on this one. Honestly, I feel like our team is missing something obvious here. Pardon if this feels like amateur hour... I am indeed an amateur.

An employee's M365 account was compromised back in April, we got the alert right away - revoked sessions, cycled passwords, MFA, etc. Things are all good for a few months. Come this week, we start seeing failing login attempts on that account using expired tokens, happening every 30 minutes to a few hours. I wouldn't think this to be that unusual at all for threat actors, but because the IP of the sign-in is associated with a known State Actor, Microsoft instantly marks the user as High Risk.

Obviously, this is by design and a good thing. The user is safe, and nobody is getting past the front door. And our CA policies beyond that would stop them even if the sign-in attempt was successful. But since MS sees this IP and says "hey this is from particularly nasty bad guys" and marks them as High Risk even for failed attempt, this means that marking him safe frees him up for about 30 minutes until another alert happens.

Being High Risk, he can't login to anything until he is marked safe or the risk is dismissed, which doesn't help since MS will just trigger it again next time they try that same token. Presumably, its some VM farm or something where the sign in attempts are all automatic.

Do you just wait it out until they stop trying? Nuke the account and start them fresh?

https://redd.it/1v5nny4
@r_systemadmin

So I have heard vendors lie from multiple support people

Is this accurate? Honestly my feeling is is that when you go to a vendor with the problem they try to give you the runaround with diagnostics until you get too tired to run them anymore and give up on the problem in disgust

https://redd.it/1v5ocae
@r_systemadmin

What should I focus on/learn now?

Hello to everyone. First of all sorry if this is not the right place for asking this.

I'm 20 and I've worked as help desk/IT support for nearly 2 years now. I don't dislike the job that much and the pay is decent but I can't bring myself to think I should be doing this for much longer, as I feel I've wasted most of this time, I will be 21 in a couple of months and I feel like I'm risking remaining stuck in help desk for too long. I'm one of the only two or so guys providing L1/2 support tickets full time to around 900 users and this is sucking nearly all my time, and I'm finding it more and more "oppressing" to do. I had more time to see new things when I first joined: honestly, I feel like I regressed in some ways compared to my first year of work, I'm finding less and less interest and motivation in solving more complex and trying to learn things other teams do while performing the same 4-5 tasks dozens of times every week and having as my greatest """""responsibility""""" """""managing""""" mouses and keyboards.

I've been trying to think of some projects that I think would be interesting to do, but everything would be managed by other people as I'm not the one that has the role to do these things. I proposed some things that were actually applied but yet again it was done by other teams as they're the ones that are in charge of said things. And while I understand why, I've got told I should focus on tickets and hardware inventory because they're my responsibilities rn.

I'm having some issues understanding what I should focus on, now. I really like Cloud and Cloud security. Also cybersecurity in general. Should I maybe focus on learning the various Azure tools related to this? If this is the case would a "homelab" tenant make sense?

Also I'm studying for getting both the SC-900 and the Network+, I know they will be mostly useless, but I suppose they're needed for further and more worthy certifications related to these topics. Should I focus on something specific?

Just taking some specific certs and applying to other jobs unfortunately isn't possible as where I live all junior sysadmins job postings require at least 2 or 3 years of actual experience. All trainee positions in things like Cloud and Cybersecurity are reserved to bachelor's / master's degrees

Thanks a lot to everyone that will want to give some tips

https://redd.it/1v5jyma
@r_systemadmin

Our new remote dev was a laptop farm

We brought on a remote backend engineer through one of the contractor marketplaces a while back, and the interviews were all on video and he came across sharp.

He cleared the technical screens and the references checked out, so we shipped him a company laptop like everyone else and moved on.

Once he was onboarded, the SentinelOne console started showing the machine checking in from residential IPs nowhere near the city he'd given us, and when I pulled the device down to look, there was an AnyDesk instance running that we never pushed through Intune.

So the laptop was sitting somewhere while somebody drove it remotely from a completely different country.

His camera was conveniently broken on every standup and the voice never quite matched the guy from the first interview (though the real tell was the laptop's shipping address coming back as a mail-forwarding place), which is when it clicked that this was the laptop-farm thing that people have been posting about on here.

One person passing the interview and a different crew behind the keyboard on a borrowed or flat-out stolen identity.

We killed his access and wiped the laptop over MDM that afternoon, then handed it to legal, but the real fix was upstream on how we hire.

We stopped taking offshore engineers on as raw contractors and moved them onto a real EOR that legally employs them in-country and has to do right-to-work and identity checks before they start.

And since we're on Workmotion for that now (though Deel, Remote or any of the established ones work the same way), that verification step is the friction a borrowed identity can't get past.

It still bugs me how far it got on the human side, every interview and reference passed clean and it was the endpoint tooling that caught it in the end, not the interviews.

If you've had one of these slip through, or know someone who has, I want to hear it, because I've heard some seriously unhinged ones since, and ours might be the tame version.

https://redd.it/1v5slhg
@r_systemadmin

Do IT Managers Care About Homelabs?

Hi, I’m an IT community college student in a very difficult entry level market (Toronto) looking to get help desk or some junior support role. I’m looking to do anything I can to boost my shot at a job.

Do IT managers care about home labs?

I’m thinking of making one with an old desktop + 1 I build, and a dedicated switch, a dedicated router/switch/firewall/AP, a windows AD/M365 joined network running on proxmox, DNS/DHCP on the windows server, and a backup for the M365 SharePoint written with Python to talk to graph API hosted in AWS S3. This is a lot of stuff I’ve worked with individually but never in this big of an integrated project.

Problem is none of this teaches me much troubleshooting, it just teaches me automation and how the systems I’ll be troubleshooting work. And it dosent simulate hundreds of users.

Is this a good use of time? Or should I focus on certs? I only have one year before I graduate.

Any advice would help.

https://redd.it/1v5s3du
@r_systemadmin

MSP to internal transition

I recently accepted a new role that will take me out of the MSP world and into a proper, \~1300 person company as part of a \~20 person IT team. I'll be coming in as a senior Azure and M365 engineer as that is my specialty.

Everything I've read/heard through the grapevine is that this is the dream come true for most of us.

What pitfalls should I be on the lookout for? It's coming with a healthy pay bump and the work seems to be directly in line with my current responsibilities but for a single environment rather than hundreds. People around me warn me I might "get bored" but that honestly sounds like a positive not a negative.

Appreciate any input on this.

https://redd.it/1v5qiax
@r_systemadmin