IT BS thread

Change management sucks. If you let the wrong people run it, it's impossible to get anything done. On the other hand you have cowboys making changes that they don't understand the grand scope and Fubaring everything.

 

Years ago, like 15 or so, I tested a change mgmt app, it was pricey, I work for local Govt so it wasn't going to happen, but was it ever sweet... They have since gone out of business, I can only assume they priced themselves out of the market as the product itself was outstanding..

RJ

 

I'm with you.. We too moved to cloud for email. Whomever designed our cert process should be fired. Not sure if MS or someone within. What's even more disturbing is that the contact came back indicating to follow troubleshooting docs. Well duh, you take these fucking calls then

 

The one shop I’ve worked that had a decent change control was a big pharma place. It was draconian as hell and I hated it, at first. To make a change required
• An RFC (request for change), with approval from the department manger
• testing in the Dev environment
• approval by the change committee (which consisted of IT department managers, business reps, and the QA group.)
• coordinated implementation (that way the network guys didn’t drop the network while the server guys were trying to do their changes.)
• review and confirmation that the change didn’t break anything.

There were emergency and standard change procedures too, so windows patches didn’t gum up the works. And, if something went down hard we could get it back up again. My current shop fights anything but rudimentary change control and we get bit in the butt all the time.

 

That’s per NIST, and exactly how the government does it.

 

Interesting, at that shop ITIL was the basis of everything we did. Personally it gave me comfort that we were so rigorous with change control. Everything was computerized and the last thing you want is some programmer messing up the process with an typo in a critical system.

 

You’d be surprised how they all line up: ITIL, ISO 27001/27002, NIST 800 series...I think they are just constantly borrowing from each other.

For example, the ITIL change management processes line up perfectly with the NIST configuration management controls. Running separate dev, test, QA - the low side - and preprod and prod - the high side - satisfy all of the FISMA control auditing that’s all NIST based.

I get FISMA, FISCAM, and HITECH audited annually. It’s soooooo much fun.

 

Love me a good audit. The best ones at that shop were the FDA and EMA (the European equivalent of FDA) The FDA would lock themselves away in a conference room and read your procedures and review the logs of what was done. The EMA would read your procedures and then literally put on white white gloves and ensure we did what we said we were doing. Making tablets is a dusty business. If the procedure said the equipment was cleaned daily the FDA was happy if you said you cleaned it, the Europeans were happy if it was actually clean.

 

Ugh audits. No one mentioned the audits when I started my current job a year ago. Prior to that I had never worked in an industry that required or had regular audits.

We just had 3 audits by customers in the past month. A lot of shit I am still trying to get fixed from my predecessor so the audits are currently painful and a pretty steep learning curve.
Doesn't help that I am a shop of one. I really need to hire a Network Administrator and Linux Administrator.

 

Hahahaha!

 

LOL, that is awesome.

 

I need some web host recommendations - For reasons completely within my control I have to leave the best web hosting company ever, JSI hosting. For the better part of 15 years I have been hosting client websites from a server in my basement, but I'm moving. I had, emphasis on had, been recommending bluehost. Yeah, that's proven to be a bad recommendation.

So, does anybody have some good recommendations for web hosts? Price isn't the most important measure, can they actually serve websites to the internet is.

 

So here's a list of web hosting companies to avoid as they are all owned by the same corporate overlord and tech support is out of the same India call center. (Damn, I am going to miss JSI hosting )

slick.com
AccountSupport
Arvixe LLC
A Small Orange
ApolloHosting
AppMachine
Berry Information Systems L.L.C.
BigRock
BizLand
BlueBoxInternet
BlueDomino
Bluehost
BuyDomains
CirtexHosting
Constant Contact
Directi
DollarHost
Domain.com
DomainHost
DotHosting
Dotster
easyCGI
eHost
EmailBrain
EntryHost
Escalate Internet
FastDomain
FatCow
FreeYellow
Garin IT Solutions Co.
Garin Technologies
Glob@t
Homestead
HostCentric
HostClear
HostGator
HostNine
Bluehost, HostMonster
HostV VPS
HostGallo
hostwithmenow.com
HostYourSite.com
HyperMart
IMOutdoors
Intuit Websites
iPage
IPOWER/iPowerWeb
IX Web Hosting
JustHost
LogicBoxes
MojoMarketplace
MyDomain
MyResellerHome
MySocialSuite
NetFirms
Networks Web Hosting
Nexx
PowWeb
PublicDomainRegistry
PureHost
ReadyHosting.com
ResellerClub
Saba-Pro
SEO Gears
SEO Hosting
SEO Web Hosting
Site
Southeast Web
SpeedHost
Spertly
Spry
StartLogic
SuperGreen Hosting
Typepad
Unified Layer
USANetHosting
vDeck
Verio
VirtualAvenue
VPSLink
Webzai Ltd.
WebHostLife
webhosting.info
Webstrike Solutions
Xeran
YourWebHosting

 

I have a friend who worked network security at RackSpace for a few years and loved it. Said they ran a tight ship. I don’t know if price is a consideration, but I have heard good things about their security and uptime.

 

I used rackspace back in their early days, it was spendy, but they were a good outfit with on the fly scaling. I had my biggest client at the time on them, but their website was/still is, a monster. By the time I bought enough CPU and RAM to get the site running acceptably, the monthly cost made upgrading my basement server a very cost effective option. I'm looking at Amazon and RackSpace so maybe that's where I'll end up.

A VPS is expensive, but dealing with foreign based web hosting tech support is painful. I was just going to buy the unlimited site host plan and hope for the best, but BlueHost's corporate overlord tech support was awful. I'm telling the guy what the problem is and how to fix it, but that was taking him off his script. (totally talking myself into paying for a VPS, because building a Linux web server from scratch is less work that dealing with level .5 tech support. )

 

I've used Bizland for almost 20 years, no issues.

 

Got Win10 pushed to my laptop over the weekend...and it shit itself. Swell. Now waiting on the PC team to shit me a new one.

Of course I’m going from a Dell to an HP, which means neither of my docking stations work.

FML

 

Anyone have a recommendation for a small network switch for home use? I have an xbox and pc I want plugged in but only have one Ethernet cable ran into my bedroom. Download speed from my isp is 150mbps but I've seen it over 200 pretty consistently. Thanks!

 

I'm running the NetGear Nighthawk X10. We've had 4 iPads surfing, 3 TVs streaming, a PC and an X-Box gaming, plus various other devices and security systems (yes, plural). No hiccups, no dropped packets, nothing. Rock solid.

We have between 200 and 250 GB speeds consistently, and it's just been a BEAST. Definitely worth the money.

 

Well, after wandering around in the cesspit of web host review sites I settled on knownhost for my new web server company. We will see how it works out, but so far so good. I've moved all the sites to them without too many glitches. I didn't need to talk to tech support, so I can't say how good they are. (but you shouldn't have to talk to tech support for a relatively easy task of moving websites, so that's probably a good thing.)

The jury is still out on knownhost, but it is two BIG middle fingers to bluehost.