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Questions tagged [best-practices]

Questions asking for best practices in a given field. Be aware, that sometimes there might be no generally accepted best practices, in which case the question is likely to be closed for being subjective.

346 questions
171
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10 answers

Top level domain/domain suffix for private network?

At our office, we have a local area network with a purely internal DNS setup, on which clients all named as whatever.lan. I also have a VMware environment, and on the virtual-machine-only network, I name the virtual machines whatever.vm. Currently,…
Otto
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113
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8 answers

Best practice: Should I always install a fresh OS for new employees?

I had an argument with a superior about this. Though at first glance the prior user of a laptop only did work in his own documents-folders, should I always install a new OS for the next user or is deleting the old profile enough? The software that…
ExNought
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98
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10 answers

Is it better practice to buy RAID disks individually vs. in bulk?

This may sound like an odd question, but it's generated some spirited discussion with some of my colleagues. Consider a moderately sized RAID array consisting of something like eight or twelve disks. When buying the initial batch of disks, or buying…
smitelli
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97
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5 answers

Windows Active Directory naming best practices?

This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory domain naming. After experimenting with Windows domains and domain controllers in a virtual environment, I've realized that having an active directory domain named identically to a DNS domain is…
Anton Gogolev
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96
votes
18 answers

What sysadmin things should every programmer know?

As a programmer, we tend to take sysadmins for granted. The few times I've been without a good sysadmin have really made me appreciate what you guys do. When we're venturing into an environment without a sysadmin, what words of wisdom can you…
Nathan DeWitt
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82
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5 answers

Choosing between meaningful and meaningless hostnames

Assume an environment with a puppet-managed cluster of different servers - various hardware, software, operating systems, virtual/dedicated, etc. Would you choose meaningful hostnames (mysqlmaster01..99, mysqlslave001..999, vpnprimary, vpnbackup,…
keymone
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75
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5 answers

How do I protect my company from my IT guy?

I'm going to hire an IT guy to help manage my office's computers and network. We're a small shop, so he'll be the only one doing IT. Of course, I'll interview carefully, check references, and run a background check. But you never know how things…
Jesse
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62
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7 answers

Best Practices in Username Standards: Avoiding Problems

I'm interested in finding out what people's experiences with standard usernames is. I've always been in places that used {firstInitial}{lastname} (sometimes with a length-limit). Now I've users that want {firstname}.{lastname} - and now it comes up…
Mei
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48
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8 answers

Should I expose my Active Directory to the public Internet for remote users?

I have a client whose workforce is comprised entirely of remote employees using a mix of Apple and Windows 7 PCs/laptops. The users don't authenticate against a domain at the moment, but the organization would like to move in that direction for…
ewwhite
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48
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7 answers

Cable Management Policy

We've all seen good and bad examples of cable management. What are objective, measurable requirements that can be used in a policy to maintain cabling order in the rack/server room/data center? I'm not looking for "Don't do spaghetti wiring!" but…
Adam Davis
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45
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3 answers

Ansible security best practices

I am going to introduce Ansible into my data center, and I'm looking for some security best practice on where to locate the control machine and how to manage the SSH keys. Question 1: the control machine We of course need a control machine. The…
Mat
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40
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15 answers

Should I keep my ex-employer's data?

Following my brief reign as System Monkey, I am now faced with a dilemma: I did successfully create a backup and a test VM, both on my laptop, as no computer at work had enough free disk space. I didn't delete the backup yet, as it's still the only…
György Andrasek
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38
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5 answers

How do you diagnose packet loss?

I realise this is very subjective and dependent on a number of variables, but I'm wondering what steps most folks go through when they need to diagnose packet loss on a given system?
KushalP
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35
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8 answers

Is it best practices to have separate login for a domain for domain admins?

I typically like to set up separate logins for myself, one with regular user permissions, and a separate one for administrative tasks. For example, if the domain was XXXX, I'd set up a XXXX\bpeikes and a XXXX\adminbp account. I've always done it…
Benjamin Peikes
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33
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12 answers

Active Directory: delete vs. disable departed employees

When an employee leaves your organization, do you delete or disable their Active Directory account? Our SOP is to disable, export/purge the Exchange mailbox, and then after "some time" has elapsed (usually quarterly), delete the account. Is there…
Matt Rogish
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