With increasing discussions around digital sovereignty at my workplace, I'm wondering whether fellow EU sysadmins have ever attempted a PoC for an IT environment that avoids US technology altogether.

Has anyone successfully identified viable alternatives for components such as:

• Endpoint operating systems (e.g. Windows)
• Endpoint management (e.g. Intune, SCCM)
• Identity and access management (e.g. Active Directory, Entra ID)
• Endpoint security (e.g. Defender)
• Productivity and collaboration suites (e.g. Microsoft 365)

What did your architecture look like, and where did you run into challenges?

I'm particularly interested in real-world experiences, lessons learned, and whether you felt such an environment could realistically move beyond the PoC stage.

User said they forgot their password.

I offered them to change it.

They accepted.

I told them to note their new password.

They said it's done.

I am now waiting for them to change it.

Few minutes later, another user messaged me saying that the password I gave (they wrote it plain to me, meaning they now know the password of another user) is not working.

They sent me the password they tried. The user noted the password without noting the uppercases and mixed the numbers.

I love my blue collar users.

We have encountered cases where users who have installed the October 2026 update fail to connect to our company Wi-Fi, which uses Aruba access points.

So far, our workaround has been to forget the company Wi-Fi network and reconnect by entering the user credentials again.

According to our vendor, there is an issue with authentication to the RADIUS server after the latest Microsoft security update is installed.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

The specific update is October 13, 2026—KB5127648 (OS Builds 26300.9711, 26200.9711, and 26100.9711)

And there was much rejoicing (yaaaaaaaay)

https://www.xda-developers.com/as-microsoft-kills-off-publisher-libreoffice-steps-in-with-free-support-for-your-pub-files/?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=6acfd14a02c21c0001a241d6

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/10/topgolf-saved-over-11-3-million-after-leaving-vmware/

A successful migration from VmWare. I hope it gives some hopes for those still stuck with them.

Hey guys, I’ve recently taken over the role of sys admin in the company I’ve been working for as an operations admin for the past year. I’m implementing a series of changes, processes, policies and trying to structure our Microsoft environment, our domains, back up solutions, company and vendor accounts, etcc

It’s been a bit of a journey and honestly I’m also learning things on the go especially when it comes to documenting changes and getting our employees to understand what’s to be implemented before pushing it ahead (this has saved me from a lot of trouble but at the same time has delayed things a lot because apparently people hate changes and having to make minimal effort)

But at the same time I’m still having to run the daily operations in the company which includes embedded generation applications, approvals, quoting some small service work calls, looking after the service jobs with our subcontractors, monitoring portals, liaising with the engineers and site managers before attending site, solving solar troubleshooting enquires etccc

So like im taking a new title as sys admin (still going to get this updated on my contract) but I still take to take care of the daily operations and often I don’t have time to do the sys admin stuff properly which means im doing that at home where I also don’t have a lot of time. And when trying to implement my changes in person our electricians and my manager etc are very impatient and if something doesn’t work straight away they just don’t want to spend the time on it. We have a new company CRM one of our employees is vibecoding and my manager and the CEOs wants to replace all of our paid software with that (for like scheduling, hse forms, worker register, claims, inductions, daily prestarts etc) and today my manager told me that the priority is to test the new vibe coded system (and by this he means tweaking it so it replicates what the other software do) as he would rather get this done first and is less worried about passwords, insinuating that all the IT stuff I am doing in this take over is just password resets 😭😭 This was shocking to me because after all the changes I’m implementing there’s no way this is the only thing that comes up on his mind, like if this was all IT did then the company wouldn’t have spent hundreds of dollars weekly on an external IT support vendor before I took over

Anyways, if anyone here is or has been in the same situation and has some advice for me/words of encouragement I’d really appreciate it

For context I’ve just turned 23 and like my job but I’m worried that im having to disregard our internal IT needs because if I cease to do the daily operation stuff this will affect the flow of the business. As a result, this makes me anxious because I know our necessities but don’t have the time to commit the way I desire . (We are still doing better than when the company was on the hands of the external IT vendor though so I guess that’s something to consider hehe

I have used tools to get recommendations for AD hardening, but not as clear cut for Entra. What have you used for that that have been helpful beyond Entras built in advisor?

What's the motivation with the sysadmin who argues against best practices?

The guy who argues with other people against buying enterprise class hardware and he claims its cheaper to get computers at Best Buy.

The guy who is so proud of himself for buying IT supplies at Walmart.

The guy who argues a 3 year replacement cycle is totally unnecessary and argues it should be 5 years.

The guys who builds servers himself and keeps them under his desk and argues this is actually better and cheaper.

The guy who puts 96 gigs of RAM in the receptionist's computer since he argues then it won't have to be replaced for 20 years and is cheaper this way.

They're here and on every other forum and randomly rear their ugly heads. These guys are a small business owner's wet dream. They're so damn proud of their ideas and believe in them so strongly.

Lately it's felt like every technical problem is so hard and I never have a straight answer for anyone. Maybe I just need to get better at communicating how IT works, but it feels like half the time I don't know why something happened or how to fix it. I've been in IT for 5 years and my current job has fewer easy wins (onboarding, tasks I've done before, etc). I'm migrating a client to 365 and it's been effortless because I've done it before, but when it comes to making our SharePoint site look better (how the hell did they make modern SharePoint *worse* than the 2010 version?), fixing intermittent printer issues, solving issues with other apps, Intune, etc. I just feel lost.

I know part of the solution is studying and I am getting a cert and doing a self study course for one of the softwares we use. But it just feels like there is no time and everything takes me forever. I end up asking my coworkers for help, making reddit and spice works posts, calling vendors for help, etc. I feel like I'm not doing enough work to justify my role and I feel behind on certs (this is my first one, I tried studying for the ccna but eventually gave up).

I'm honestly considering transitioning to something non technical or less technical, but my people skills aren't good enough for a lot of other roles (and trying to improve on that front hasn't worked).

Anyway, advice or commiseration is appreciated!

That is all...

We should have a list of shame linked in the sidebar or something.

Update: They're not even gonna let us reduce license counts at all.

If anyone is wondering why radius isn’t working for a large amount of users. This patch has confirmed broken 802.1x authentication. I wanted to spread the word as this is probably affecting a lot of us. Will update this post after I rollback the patch.

This is fucking funny.

TL:DR Channel 4 had to postpone a launch of a new TV Program due to technical failure. According to sources to the paper, it's because an AI Agent deleted the entire season with no way of recovery - So hundreds of people now need to re-cut the entire season.

Full article, in Swedish - but should be pretty translate friendly.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/31oE8A/the-challenge-sverige-raderad-av-ai-bara-veckor-innan-premiaren

Based on the Microsoft Learn documentation, leaf certificates issued by Intune Cloud PKI should be revoked when the Configuration Policy settings (except for Name and Description) are changed.

I wanted to test this by changing the Subject name format value in the SCEP settings but my one issued certificate stayed valid although it did get removed from the device. However, this is contrary to what it says here Remove SCEP or PKCS certificates in Microsoft Intune - Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn.

On there, it says:

"A SCEP certificate is revoked when:

• An administrator changes or updates the SCEP profile."

I then removed my test device from the group that the SCEP profile is assigned but this still hasn't revoked the certificate, which again, is what should have happened based on the documentation.

"A SCEP certificate is revoked and removed when:

• A user unenrolls.
• An administrator runs the wipe action.
• An administrator runs the retire action.
• The device is removed from a Microsoft Entra group.
• A certificate profile is removed from the group assignment."

Anybody else run into this?

I handed in my notice two weeks ago and I finish mid-November. 9 years here, started on the helpdesk and ended up running most of our infrastructure by default, since nobody else wanted it and I kept saying yes.

The asset and config side is in Hudu, which my predecessor set up and I kept current, so network diagrams and device records transfer easily. Everything shared is in a Passwork vault, so it obviously stays with the company and won’t die with my departure, and my manager can see what I could reach through the access report, and we’re rotating anything I knew the password to because revoking my account does nothing about what’s in my head, which again happens swiftly enough with password managers.

Now the ugly part, there are maybe 15 systems on that list that only I have ever logged into. The monitoring stack runs on two Debian boxes I built in 2019, out of support now, and nobody else here has touched Linux. Our backup appliance has a quirk where a specific job fails silently if you restart it in the wrong order, and I know that because I spent a (long) week figuring it out back in 2022. Our ERP vendor calls my mobile directly (we’ve known each other for 6 years), stuff like that.

I’ve started writing runbooks but it’s so complicated and I feel so overwhelmed already, every few hours I remember something new which gets me wondering as to what I’m still forgetting, and all of this implicitly assumes that the reader can/will follow it. The two people staying are both Windows-side and have seldom used a terminal. Writing “ssh in and check the service status” does nothing for them.

How do I spend the 5 weeks I have left? Documenting everything produces a manual nobody can execute. Training the two of them properly means picking maybe 4 systems max and accepting the rest gets rediscovered by whoever comes next. I don’t want to be pinged every few days after leaving.

I'm assuming Google Drive creates and deletes some temporary files, which could cause issues. Is there a way to work around this?

I posted a simple job on upwork for app development, got a ton of responses like I thought I would and nearly all of the cover letters coming back were exactly the same. I mean, developers aren't even trying anymore. They just have AI agents monitoring upwork for jobs and responding. FML.

We have multiple Teams rooms that are an hour off. Currently it is 8:33 and our Teams rooms are showing 7:33. We are located in Manitoba who recently decided to no longer do the time changes.

I have been working with a specific Teams room to resolve this issue. The steps that have been completed is to set the underlying Win 11 IOT install to Bogota as per the Microsoft article. We have also toggled the time zone in OWA away from Central to a different time zone and then back choosing the option to update the calendar appointments after the change, and then switching back to central.

Checking Teams on the web shows the correct time zone and there is no way to flip that time zone to a different one and then back as it opens the local time zone settings.

One thing to note is that a different Teams device configured for the same room is showing the correct time.

Are we looking at needing to reset our Teams rooms or are there any other steps that we can take before resorting to a reset?

We are a Dell shop and use All in Ones. We've had about 11 (out of ~300) of these doing the following- user will be at their desk working, or will sit down at their PC and it has gone into a black screen. It's continually power cycling. No light codes; the power light comes on just when the computer power cycles on. The dell screen comes up briefly then it power cycles again, fans run when the power is on.

We've found that: removing power, taking off the back cover and popping the cmos battery, RAM, mini-molex connectors from PSU to MB, then reinstalling all these gets the PC to boot normally. Have tried doing BIOS updates which are ineffective. Dell Support had me send two logs (from two PCs) gathered by their Log Collector utility. Only one suggestion from them, "Turn off Intel Turbo Boost". Except not all of the effected years of manufacture have this option in the BIOS. These span 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 OptiPlexes. TIA

Hi.

I recall once finding a table on Schneider's website once showing what UPSes (so, the UPS, not the NMC) could be firmware-upgraded while keeping loads powered. Rather long table with devices listed by model-names Sxx-yyyy, if I am not mistaken.

The global enterprise-web-site-enshittification has now reached the level where my search-foo is inadequate. I admit defeat.

Anyone got a memory of this table and maybe even a URL?

So, I‘m part of a small MSP and I had a client call about phone (voip) issues. I go out and checked the one AD/DNS server and see it says it’s unlicensed, troubleshooter doesn’t work and can’t change key; I get it working finally giving Network service access to some registry folders. I keep looking for phone issues and see that the dns forwarders are wrong in DNS so I correct them. I'm looking at firewall traffic and QOS and everything coming back good so I head out.

I get a call that users can’t reach internet so I hop in again. Server nslookup; has no idea who the server is. GPO couldn’t open; says can’t find domain. Same for AD trusts. DNS server is not starting giving error 1067 saying its looking for 127.0.0.1 (tried setting 127.0.0.1 or the internal IP of the server for server DNS) for the interface (the servers internal IPv4 was checked in interfaces when I could last see it) in event view and to change it in DNS server manager but I can’t open that. I tried to remove the DNS service from the server after reconfiguring ISP DNS to the firewall dhcp scope for internal (firewall handles dhcp but server does/did dns) but that also errors about windows remote management service (again network service account staple) isn't started.

I keep running into the same thing time and time again; it’s like the network service is being restricted as I keep getting access denied or services that depend on it aren’t working. The only other thing I have a theory about is SentinelOne was deployed to this server but it’s not in the portal. On 10/3 in the logs; I see this device was pushed a decommission automatically at 8pm when we aren’t working. When I check the server, it has sentinelone installed but I can’t remove it because it just loops.

I’m thinking SentinelOne hosed my server because the network service user seems to be highly restricted and SentinelOne has only been in play for about 3 months. I’m going to start with a cleanup of it with support when I get in tomorrow. Has anyone seen this before and any idea what to do about my DNS/Server problem? I’m really at the end of my rope and not sure what to do except a disaster recovery with my backup vendor and then move over data; but sentinelone will still be on the backup and not in the portal for removal so I’m still stuck I bet.

Did anyone else get burned this morning by last night's update, where the certificate presented by an NPS policy defaulted back to the cert at the top of the list instead of the one you selected, preventing users from authenticating? This happened on both of my NPS servers, which triggered the dreaded 8 am panic call. The fix was to set the certificate back, but before then, RADIUS clients for Wi-Fi were down in my case.

The security log for the user: Reason: An internal error occurred. Check the system event log for additional information.

The system event log: The TLS server credential's certificate does not have a private key information property attached to it. This most often occurs when a certificate is backed up incorrectly and then later restored. This message can also indicate a certificate enrollment failure.

We have an active directory server that was recently set up on Windows Server edition 2025. It was a little slow when initially set up but after about a week active directory started taking minutes to open, if it even does, and typically freezes up when trying to do anything beyond opening the program. We are able to open directory using the cmdlet dsa.msc /server=hostipaddress instantly but when trying to add a user after opening this way it will throw an incorrect parameter warning. If instead we used the cmdlet dsa.msc /server=hostname it would open exceedingly slow and if attempted to open multiple times it would open the multiple instances at the same time seemingly regardless of distance between attempted openings. We have tried talking with Microsoft support, but they have not been able to help yet do to the wrong team being assigned. Any suggestion on what to check helps. below are the errors and logs we have taken or seen.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q-CMlMajgBQf5_dBF_NGDPgAO1qTjPyG/view?usp=drive_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Du2XAxhumE_p_9jJNcV1tpWEfgeOUzGO/view?usp=drive_link

I am not an IT professional. But my company is struggling with an old building. A poor design currently holds our roof solar panel inverters in a room that also holds our IT server rack. The inverters put off some serious heat. Previously the mini split burned up 3 coils. We moved to a small unit to cool the room 2 months ago. It worked great until it recently burned up. Moving the rack will be costly. Is there any chiller/unit that could properly cool this room? Moving the rack might be the best solution.