Short story. A former employer did almost everything “server less”.

So, instead of any physical servers, there would be AD controllers, file servers, and remote desktop servers in azure VMs instead.

I’m pretty sure that some of the largest deployments were nearly as expensive per year as the hardware would have been to just run it in house. Like, you can buy a whole-assed server, capable of running your entire workload, every year that you run “server less”

And what did I do? Well, I managed and maintained server VMs that happened to be in azure instead of a device that the company owns.

The whole thing was baffling. Why anyone would do things that way just amazes me.

Good to know. I’ll examine everything carefully. I’ve been debating on replacing my existing monolithic iSCSI storage configuration with Ceph, so maybe that will weigh in… Having something that can access Ceph natively is a big plus. Otherwise I need something to sit in between that can basically translate Ceph to iSCSI luns, which is just more complexity that I’d like to avoid.

A lot of things to consider. Thank you for the comments.

I have not observed anyone using it in a cluster.

From the brief Google searching I’ve done it appears to be possible, though, I’m not sure if proxmox skills will help me professionally. I used VMware before because I needed to learn VMware esxi and vcenter. I know it fairly well at this point.

I want to target a hypervisor solution used in large companies, I’m not sure that’s proxmox. Currently I’m leaning towards OpenStack, since I know some cloud providers use it for VPS offerings. I know enough about hyper-V that I know I don’t want to use it, ever. At least outside the context of Azure VMs. I can’t really do Azure cloud at home (they’re is a way, I’ve looked into it, but it’s very expensive), though my current workplace uses Azure extensively.

I’m just not aware of any company using proxmox as a VM platform, whether single host or clustered.

Can anyone weigh in on whether any of these can be used for a cluster?

I use VMware in my homelab via vMUG, and I’m sure that’s going to get destroyed next, so I’m looking for an alternative that can allow for running VMs across hosts using shared storage with migrations between hosts. I’d prefer FOSS, but the only hypervisor I know supports all of this right now is hyper-V. I really REALLY don’t want to use hyper-v… Most of my workloads are Linux, with a handful of Windows servers that I use for an internal domain and testing.

Maybe OpenStack or OpenNebula?

Any suggestions?

+1 for netbox.

Administrating a bunch of network devices and/or servers, etc… Netbox is the way.

I have clients that use internal, but they do it as a subdomain; so internal.contoso.com

Any internal only domains that I set up are probably going to go the same way. I’ve used domain.local previously, and the DNS headache I get from that is immeasurable.

With so many things going “to the cloud” or whatever, the internal.domain.tld convention tends to make more sense to me.

What’s everyone else doing?

I agree, but so far that’s not been very possible…

The scenario I’m in is a relatively small organization, and if we tried to unionize, I’m certain the company would either replace all staff, or simply cease operating.

For large non-tech focused companies like fortune 500s or something, the IT staff is a very small percentage of workers, and even if there’s a union, often the language of the Union contact explicitly excludes IT from the unionized workers; putting them more on par with middle management, which, as IT support, we’re definitely not.

The only viable unionization IMO, is in tech-centric firms. Things like software shops, or large telecom operations.

The only viable alternatives I can think of, which would not happen, is to have an association which acts like a union. Something like the stonemasons but for IT. The other option here is to have everyone in IT basically work for a placement agency, which brokers all employment, so whether you’re working for a fortune 500, or a <100 employee office, you’re going to be paid the same for the same work. The employer would be forced into getting their IT support workers from this organisation which would act like a union (not for profit type deal).

The reason I believe neither would happen is because for either to have any real teeth, there would need to be significant buy in from all tech workers, making it difficult or impossible for organizations to get their IT staff from anywhere that isn’t associated with the union.

There’s pitfalls to an industry-wide union like this too, since if you want to depart from the Union, as a worker, for any reason (or the union refuses to have you as a member for some reason), then you’re basically screwed… if there’s enough buy in for the “Union” to work, then the vast majority of companies won’t bother soliciting work, except from the Union…

I could keep going, but I am in favor of unions. If I’m ever in a position to join one, I will. And if I find an IT job that has a union attached, I’ll apply.

So far, I haven’t seen it.

I’m not a cybersecurity admin, I do sysadmin and network admin work mainly. I’ve taken more time off this year from burnout than I have worked this year.

The problem isn’t exclusive to security, and it’s not getting better. The entire IT support industry is grinding it’s workers to the bone and there’s already a need for more workers. By the time this grinder is finished, there won’t be anyone left to do support.