The last month or so, I've been watching a lot of clabretro's videos. If you find this sort of thing interesting (old enterprise software, and possibly the old servers/equipment that would run that software), you'll definitely like his channel! His retrorack is more from the early 2000s rather than the late 2000s, but there's probably still a good amount of cross over between what you're both doing.
It kills me that it never occurred to me there would be a market for videos of re-living the work I did from 1997 on. I could have made a ton of 'content' about that.
I'm really pleased he's embraced long form videos showing the steps (and the failures) along the way, in the early videos you can hear he's apprehensive about if people would find it interesting in a world of short form content.
He also has really great editing where he'll sometimes show the success of a step first if it's a long journey to keep interest and then go back through the details so you can tell he's put care into the production.
I also enjoy his humourous Paul Thurrott-like jabs at himself and the problems he hits too, it feels like he has a nice humility about himself.
Just a heads up, There was a lot of problems running RSAT (Remote Admin GUI Tools) on Vista when interacting with 2008 R2. Windows 7 quickly became required for 2008 R2. (Windows 7 is client OS of 2008 R2)
Just letting you know. You could also install one of Windows 2008 R2 servers in GUI mode and use RSAT tools on that to manage the others. Knew plenty of admins who did that.
None of the Windows side of that is tremendously far-removed from today.
Syteline... Progress... Ugh. I'm having trouble overcoming the violent undulations of my spleen. So many memories of performance issues, "dump and reload" of databases, and Progress clustering issues (though that was with QAD ERP and not Symix/Syteline).
That was precisely my thinking behind doing this. I don't get to deploy server core particularly often so building a lab around using it specifically felt cool, but all of the processes/methodologies around deploying those systems carries forward well enough.
Your Syteline experience mirrors mine haha, but since it's a lab I'm hoping I won't run into too many errors.
It doesn’t feel that 2009 is all that far away but… 17 years ago. I remember a lot of forums during 09” in fringe commodore groups and amiga. And they still go on.
But yes 2009 was a different time, to be a sysadmin all you had to effectively know was how to reinstall an OS and drivers and you were golden.
> But yes 2009 was a different time, to be a sysadmin all you had to effectively know was how to reinstall an OS and drivers and you were golden.
I got a lot of good business from helping small businesses recover from "sysadmins" who only knew how to reinstall the OS and drivers. I owe a lot to them. (So many bad Active Directory environments... So many ill-conceived attempts at using Group Policy, network segmentation, lack of understanding 802.1x, etc...)
2009 was right at the cusp of "cattle not pets" mindset, and many ways a transitional time from physical servers to virtual servers to disposable single-app VMs.
the first computer i got to use was a TRS-80 III i believe in highschool. this thing was already old at the time which was the late 90s, but it did the job. we had a full classroom of them, one of which was acting as a server with two floppy disks, and all the others were booting off the server, freeing the floppy drive for our data. we learned BASIC on it, so i guess that is all that was running on there.
the school also had a 286 i believe, (i am guessing by what models were common in the late 80s) in the library running Novell Netware that i was allowed to use. i distinctly remember wondering if that was unix, trying some unix commands that i had read about. i was able to use turbo pascal on it and a few other programs.
the science teacher had an Apple II i think that i was also allowed to play with occasionally. i remember pranking the teacher with a function that would turn the desktop upside down. and at home we had a PC or compatible. most likely a Tandy 1000 from RadioShack. i remember that the family bought some software for it. was it DeskMate? i don't recognize the screenshots that i can find online now. i do remember using word perfect and connecting to BBS systems with a modem, downloading software that i would try out and play around with.
oh, before all that i did a 3 week internship at a machine design company where i got to use autocad on a PC on whatever that was running on. probably DOS as well.
i had friends with ataris or amigas. but i never got a chance to actually use them, the friends were just showing them to me.
one more interesting detail from that time. at one point we visited friends who had an amiga i believe with a floppy drive that could write 10MB on a 3.5" floppy. i could not find a reference to that on wikipedia, so i don't know what that was. but i am pretty confident that i remember the 10MB capacity correctly.
when i entered university in the early 90s i got my first computer that was actually my own. it came with DOS obviously, while we were using unix at the uni (SunOS/Solaris/AIX (also one class where we got access to VMS)) and when i discovered linux, i made it dual boot, and i remember every time i reinstalled linux to upgrade it, i shrank the DOS partition until finally it was gone completely.
around the same time when i visited my grandparents, grandma, who was volunteering as a secretary for some NGOs wished for a computer. grandpa sent me out to get one, and i picked OS/2 to run on it. i believe i installed emacs for her to use, and LaTeX which i had learned about at uni. when i came back a year later, someone helped her by installing windows on it. could not have that. then i decided to change universities and study in my grandparents home town, so moved in with them, of course bringing my linux computer. grandma was intrigued and wanted to learn linux too. again, emacs and LaTeX set up for her and the G.R.E.A.T desktop system.
wow, long answer. i got a but carried away, sorry. i hope it is interesting.
I have one Linux -> Windows migration story that went really well. Early-2000s, I worked for a company that printed massive amounts of data and shipped it to clients. The data had to be printed and shipped, digital delivery wasn't an option at the time (legal BS). The Unix/Linux sysadmins were using a Linux box as a print server, having trouble getting a newly purchased, super expensive printer to print correctly. They worked on this "project" for weeks. The printer manufacturer didn't have a Linux driver and wasn't going to make one, so the internal team was trying to write their own. Finally, I told them to just use Windows as the print server; the Windows drivers are right there on the company website. The idea received relentless pushback: Windows can't handle the load. Our automation uses Unix-only protocols (ftp) to copy the data to the print server. Windows is too expensive. Finally, I took an old desktop PC, installed Windows 2000, added all the required printers, including the new, expensive printer. Installed all the manufacturers' drivers. Then I installed ftp, added the matching auth credentials, and it was done. The whole process took me, maybe, 2 hours. Naturally the sysadmins that owned this process were pissed; they hated it. But their boss loved it and it became the solution. Linux -> Windows FTW.
The last month or so, I've been watching a lot of clabretro's videos. If you find this sort of thing interesting (old enterprise software, and possibly the old servers/equipment that would run that software), you'll definitely like his channel! His retrorack is more from the early 2000s rather than the late 2000s, but there's probably still a good amount of cross over between what you're both doing.
https://www.youtube.com/@clabretro
It kills me that it never occurred to me there would be a market for videos of re-living the work I did from 1997 on. I could have made a ton of 'content' about that.
I'm really pleased he's embraced long form videos showing the steps (and the failures) along the way, in the early videos you can hear he's apprehensive about if people would find it interesting in a world of short form content.
He also has really great editing where he'll sometimes show the success of a step first if it's a long journey to keep interest and then go back through the details so you can tell he's put care into the production.
I also enjoy his humourous Paul Thurrott-like jabs at himself and the problems he hits too, it feels like he has a nice humility about himself.
Just a heads up, There was a lot of problems running RSAT (Remote Admin GUI Tools) on Vista when interacting with 2008 R2. Windows 7 quickly became required for 2008 R2. (Windows 7 is client OS of 2008 R2)
Otherwise, rock on.
An excellent point, I'm not opposed to using Windows 7 to work around those problems, or make the lab more homogeneous.
I just want an excuse to use my Vista netbook for a couple of months, even if it's going to cause me problems!
Just letting you know. You could also install one of Windows 2008 R2 servers in GUI mode and use RSAT tools on that to manage the others. Knew plenty of admins who did that.
None of the Windows side of that is tremendously far-removed from today.
Syteline... Progress... Ugh. I'm having trouble overcoming the violent undulations of my spleen. So many memories of performance issues, "dump and reload" of databases, and Progress clustering issues (though that was with QAD ERP and not Symix/Syteline).
That was precisely my thinking behind doing this. I don't get to deploy server core particularly often so building a lab around using it specifically felt cool, but all of the processes/methodologies around deploying those systems carries forward well enough.
Your Syteline experience mirrors mine haha, but since it's a lab I'm hoping I won't run into too many errors.
It doesn’t feel that 2009 is all that far away but… 17 years ago. I remember a lot of forums during 09” in fringe commodore groups and amiga. And they still go on.
But yes 2009 was a different time, to be a sysadmin all you had to effectively know was how to reinstall an OS and drivers and you were golden.
> But yes 2009 was a different time, to be a sysadmin all you had to effectively know was how to reinstall an OS and drivers and you were golden.
I got a lot of good business from helping small businesses recover from "sysadmins" who only knew how to reinstall the OS and drivers. I owe a lot to them. (So many bad Active Directory environments... So many ill-conceived attempts at using Group Policy, network segmentation, lack of understanding 802.1x, etc...)
2009 was right at the cusp of "cattle not pets" mindset, and many ways a transitional time from physical servers to virtual servers to disposable single-app VMs.
Funny; Vista was the reason I switched to Linux as well.
Microsoft's recent track record with Windows 11 seems to have kickstarted another Win -> Linux migration wave.
dos was the reason i switched to linux. (sorry, i could not resist, i am old ;-)
What did you use before dos?
VAX/VMS.
good question. let me dig in my memory.
the first computer i got to use was a TRS-80 III i believe in highschool. this thing was already old at the time which was the late 90s, but it did the job. we had a full classroom of them, one of which was acting as a server with two floppy disks, and all the others were booting off the server, freeing the floppy drive for our data. we learned BASIC on it, so i guess that is all that was running on there.
the school also had a 286 i believe, (i am guessing by what models were common in the late 80s) in the library running Novell Netware that i was allowed to use. i distinctly remember wondering if that was unix, trying some unix commands that i had read about. i was able to use turbo pascal on it and a few other programs.
the science teacher had an Apple II i think that i was also allowed to play with occasionally. i remember pranking the teacher with a function that would turn the desktop upside down. and at home we had a PC or compatible. most likely a Tandy 1000 from RadioShack. i remember that the family bought some software for it. was it DeskMate? i don't recognize the screenshots that i can find online now. i do remember using word perfect and connecting to BBS systems with a modem, downloading software that i would try out and play around with.
oh, before all that i did a 3 week internship at a machine design company where i got to use autocad on a PC on whatever that was running on. probably DOS as well.
i had friends with ataris or amigas. but i never got a chance to actually use them, the friends were just showing them to me.
one more interesting detail from that time. at one point we visited friends who had an amiga i believe with a floppy drive that could write 10MB on a 3.5" floppy. i could not find a reference to that on wikipedia, so i don't know what that was. but i am pretty confident that i remember the 10MB capacity correctly.
when i entered university in the early 90s i got my first computer that was actually my own. it came with DOS obviously, while we were using unix at the uni (SunOS/Solaris/AIX (also one class where we got access to VMS)) and when i discovered linux, i made it dual boot, and i remember every time i reinstalled linux to upgrade it, i shrank the DOS partition until finally it was gone completely.
around the same time when i visited my grandparents, grandma, who was volunteering as a secretary for some NGOs wished for a computer. grandpa sent me out to get one, and i picked OS/2 to run on it. i believe i installed emacs for her to use, and LaTeX which i had learned about at uni. when i came back a year later, someone helped her by installing windows on it. could not have that. then i decided to change universities and study in my grandparents home town, so moved in with them, of course bringing my linux computer. grandma was intrigued and wanted to learn linux too. again, emacs and LaTeX set up for her and the G.R.E.A.T desktop system.
wow, long answer. i got a but carried away, sorry. i hope it is interesting.
7 was fine, but in retrospect it was a bit of a dead cat bounce.
I have one Linux -> Windows migration story that went really well. Early-2000s, I worked for a company that printed massive amounts of data and shipped it to clients. The data had to be printed and shipped, digital delivery wasn't an option at the time (legal BS). The Unix/Linux sysadmins were using a Linux box as a print server, having trouble getting a newly purchased, super expensive printer to print correctly. They worked on this "project" for weeks. The printer manufacturer didn't have a Linux driver and wasn't going to make one, so the internal team was trying to write their own. Finally, I told them to just use Windows as the print server; the Windows drivers are right there on the company website. The idea received relentless pushback: Windows can't handle the load. Our automation uses Unix-only protocols (ftp) to copy the data to the print server. Windows is too expensive. Finally, I took an old desktop PC, installed Windows 2000, added all the required printers, including the new, expensive printer. Installed all the manufacturers' drivers. Then I installed ftp, added the matching auth credentials, and it was done. The whole process took me, maybe, 2 hours. Naturally the sysadmins that owned this process were pissed; they hated it. But their boss loved it and it became the solution. Linux -> Windows FTW.