 And I am live and for any of you that said hey, I didn't get a notice that you were going live poor planning on my part because I just finished a live stream with my friends over at 45 drives and Hey, things are going really well and we ended up going a little bit long So I didn't get the time to set this but I also didn't have time to set a really long video because I have a few more things to Get done today Maybe if I feel like I have some time later. I'll do another live stream if not I've been doing them on some of The weekends. I do enjoy the weekend live streams as well where I get to talk to a lot of you So I am not in my usual place, which is also why I'm doing the live stream now I am at the CNWR headquarters in Toledo, Ohio and I'm gonna pan the camera round because this kind of gives you a view of the city So in case you're wondering it's gonna here we go. There's the city behind me We're in downtown Toledo That is where the headquarters is we still have our office towards Detroit technically That's in Southgate. There we go point it back at me but all right but I just wanted to give a few updates on things so I just got back from New York and Awesome. Unfortunately. I wasn't there long enough because I couldn't reply to everyone excited to post on LinkedIn I've got some messages and I actually think I need to In message me on this if you have a city I should visit I was so out there, but I actually might be going back to New York for something else I was at New York to do a Wi-Fi. I post I was going near a lot of people offered me invites And thank you for anyone that wanted to take me out to eat or anything like that I wish I could I mean I messaged people back that I wish I had the time we were there for a Engagement with a client doing some Wi-Fi which we will be doing a video on actually did do some filming while I was there but I want to go back just because It's New York and New York's a cool place to be but I also will probably extend my time there So I can get back with I love actually interacting and meeting with all the different people I know that work at other IT places and things like that. So definitely absolutely Would like to that now I do see someone just mentioned about traveling I'm gonna do local to the United States first before I start leaving the country Not that I have a problem leaving the country. I just need to Figure out because the timing I hate being on a plane is actually probably my biggest I'll just be honest. I hate plane rides. I have no fear of heights I have no fear of planes, but being like this even if I guess sometimes I read first class But just sitting there in one place for too long and then yeah, it just it drives me crazy It's an anxiety thing, but it's not a fear thing. I don't fear and anxiety are different, right? I think so anyways We'll get too far off topic, but I will be posting how we do the Wi-Fi surveys We might want to do a few more videos on it because I haven't done a lot of Wi-Fi videos and we were talking about it Going yeah, I kind of missed doing those. We're still doing lots of Wi-Fi and Tuning environments walking through how that works walking through what the reports look like I think that's gonna make we filmed what we did or I filmed what Jason did we'll get real specific here and the Video that will come out of that it's gonna be you know, like some thought process how we do it What what these Wi-Fi survey entails what it looks like software and tools we use and we're also Gonna possibly be reaching out because I've had some other companies reach out to me Maybe well, I'll take the time to compare some of these Wi-Fi tools And how they work and you know compare them to like the tools that are easier to use such as some of the ubiquity tools this was a ubiquity Wi-Fi network and it's Well those things it's it's not black magic, but sometimes people think it's a little magical getting the Wi-Fi tuned it also kind of brought up because Some of this stuff like hey, we think we have a problem with the Wi-Fi Well, actually you have a loop in the network. You have a dumb switch creating Too much noise on your network and you've got too much broadcast traffic which aren't Wi-Fi problems But they will manifest in Wi-Fi problems So that's some it really sometimes when you're talking to people This is why I like getting out there and always as much as I can not just talking over email But like sit down face-to-face. Let's have lunch just talk about the challenges of working in IT or just laugh about the challenges And working in IT and it gives me other ideas of like hey What are the gaps that maybe some other professionals have that I can help? Overcome in what happens is a lot of these people Get tasked with Like hey, you're the IT person also you're the DevOps guy who supervises the DevOps team to make sure things are provisioned properly and This has a plug on it So we're gonna it's gonna make that your problem too and they get pulled in a lot of direction So it's not like they have the time to deep dive on any specific topic Which is a lot of the consulting that we end up doing is on where people go look I don't have the time or the specific You know skill set because I'm not gonna do this very often and may hire us where we do have me having a good generalist knowledge, but Behind those doors. There's a lot of other technical people that work here See if you are that do have certain disciplines and knowledge or even some of the knowledge that Jason has that may be Leveraged to do things just kind of just an overall for how we do stuff So yeah, that's one of those things like I like bringing all this real-world knowledge to all of you And it's part of the part of the process on there I will take a few questions like I said I have another thing going on So I'm gonna only keep this live should go in for probably about 10 or 15 more minutes Let's see we got what is the best free backup solution for VMware vSphere I know Synology and QNAP both have backup apps for this does TrueNAS. There's not any Native apps that like TrueNAS doesn't produce any of the backup apps I really look to see what's in their Repertoire of things so if you're still using VMware vSphere most people seem to have gravitated towards Veeam and I know Veeam has a free tier. We use the business tier of Veeam So we're we at CNW are we use Veeam for all of our commercial client backups For things, but I don't know I don't know what level or what you're missing because I know they have a free tier on there But if you're paying for VMware if you can afford that you can probably afford the paid tier of Veeam as it's a good product, but I will admit the Synology backups are also really good I I definitely we have clients using those we The way we use things that there's kind of a divide. Let me just Explain really quickly here as this is a discussion We have internally with we were having at our management meeting earlier today Which I got to get back to in just a little bit The challenge with backups are who's going to manage it, you know I can put together a solution that you manage but not me That's fine and we do consult consulting on that like hey, would you like a Synology backup? It's a great tool. It works wonderful. You have to babysit it Oh, you want me to babysit and validate your backups world We want everything kind of uniform so we can uniformly monitor it and in that circumstance We're going to use something like Veeam. Veeam is a good tool for that and it works really well That's why we like it our Team the tech people they know it very well. So it's not that knowledge is not with only one or two people It's actually well documented how to do the restores and we have lots of people that can follow through on that so when there's a Issue and a client needs data pulled back. We have a process to document We know where the repositories are we have the logins with our team so You know, I'm going to reach out to Oliver. I think it'd be fun to have him on a live stream He shows up on mine. I I haven't really thought about Bringing them on I should I don't know why I I thought about that today actually because he came on the 45 drives live stream Uh, I've chatted with them many times saying the the whole big team is awesome the Working with them has been over. I I was started looking back because I mean I think it was like all the way in 2017 I think is when they got the Kickstarter campaign going and I got to know some of the people over the years and I'm like, wow, I've been working with xcp and g for a long time and they're just Really in tune with the community is an easy way to say it. You spend some time in the forums You see them posting on the socials. If you didn't see they're working on some new announcements where they're working with Amper to bring forth some more things. They've got new partnerships with new hardware vendors. So yeah, um, they They're good on the socials and everything else. I think it'd be And by the way, if you look up Oliver Lambert, he has been on other podcasts. So he's he's not mysterious in any way he's definitely someone Who's very much in front of the socials doesn't mind. They're at the events. Um, I don't know what us events They'll be coming to but there's been several events That are big open-source events in europe that they were part of they very like I said very much participate in those communities which thing is great. I mean Is kind of what we want, uh Is to have the people meet us where we're at so us as technical people we're going to participate in the forums We're going to talk about what we like what we don't like or challenges We're having and to see the dev teams join us in those forums Answer our questions directly sometimes to clarify misunderstanding or sometimes go that's a great idea We should implement that way and I've watched ideas Start as a post in a blog. Um, one of my you know, it's funny The dev team ran with it over at xcp and g the backup validation Was an idea that was kind of crowdsourced from the vates team joining my live stream And everyone's like, why don't you just use someone and I think it was sam I feel and I could be wrong. It was sam Sheridan. Uh, who said hey, we could just have the guest tools Validate the backups and do a restore so you can restore it without testing the networking and someone said that's great And they they built it all out and it works here today. So yeah How'd the wi-fi job go the wi-fi job went well that uh, I'm excited to do the video on it I'll probably do a video on it next week is my plan. Um, Jason has to finish writing up We we did their findings. We fixed it and we sent them maps. We did all the fun stuff but the next thing we need to do Is we're doing a little bit more formal over write up because that's what we give to our clients And I have a few things to cover. I want to share more with what we give to our clients This is actually it came up again Uh in our manager meeting that like you want to see the reports that we put together and what an assessment looks like I mean, we're willing to show people if they want to know what that looks like and give you A redacted in terms of company name, but we can still show you any non Personal identifying details of what a formal assessment looks like That might be kind of a fun topic to have As a video and of course a fun topic to do as a With the wi-fi one like here's the assessment. Here's how all that works. But yeah, it's definitely um We the way that the end result there's actually something interesting that I'll be talking about and for those of you that didn't notice Tom's got a mac book and One of the discoveries was my mac book mine's an m1 And it was roaming better than the other mac books So that became a puzzle because first it starts as a wi-fi problem Then it turns into a puzzle then it turns into oh, there's a problem with the way mac does roaming Then we found out a way to work around how mac does roaming and then we found out because tom being tom And i'm not much of an apple person. I just happen to have this mac book air It turns out i've disabled things that make roaming Worse and by disabling them roaming got better So uh it's something anyone who's owned a mac book and had a roaming problem Is probably googled and by the way if you google mac book roaming problems, especially with the m series ships You'll land. I think first on our morocchi page where it doesn't work right with morocchi Then you'll find the ubiquity page Then you'll find lots of other vendors with wi-fi where their problem is the mac doesn't roam One of the things I was doing Uh to show the difference in the way roaming worked was really interesting because The I was roaming with my phone At the same time so I have my laptop seeing what wi-fi is connected to and my phone seeing what wi-fi is connected to I'm holding them together like walking around this big building and you're watching my phone switch networks switch Well switch ap is not network So it's it's roaming from ap to ap no problem nice and smooth And the apple will sometimes drop a ping because it goes hold on Let me hang on all the way to seven negative seventy seven here Let me just keep hanging on to this ap that's too far away even though there's one above my head Um and then doing the switch so lots of little interesting things uh what What is this wi-fi meshes and divide this and control by cloud app? I'm going to go a unify Um, you don't have to With the unify system you don't have to tie it to their cloud at all you can Self host the controller with no cloud interface. Um, so that's the one I'm going to say is the best I got my m3 ear because if you're talking about the battery, I will say I definitely like it. Yeah, I mean mine's still the m1 and I mean the battery just lasts all stinkin day. It's just like It's ridiculous. I I haven't been able to get rid of it because it's so Here's the thing is the m1 super powerful. It's reasonably powerful. It gets everything done I want it done It's almost like a chromebook to me though because I mostly just use a web browser and an ssh Like those are the two primary things that I got running on this. Um and When I keep looking at higher end laptops I actually want high end in terms of quality build But I don't really necessarily need a fast processor As a matter of fact trying to find a passively cooled x86 laptop is harder Most of the most of them will go. Oh, look, we stuck in i9 that clocks up to You know really fast rates for speed. I'm like, I don't need any speed. I'm running a web browser I would rather trade that but it's um hard to find the right model that fits that because I get it Most people probably do have a use case for faster cpu When it comes to the laptop, I don't really do any work I send emails from this like emails lots of emails lots of forum replies. I read the news I do my live streams like this like which also my live streams done in a web browser I'm just sending this out via web browser Um, what do you think on free bsd linux? It's it's a heavy lift. It was a fun April Fool's Discussion, but it's a heavy lift. It's Could it be done anything's possible if you've got the money and resources and the developers? Uh, what are your thoughts on the scale the true nascaldre airfish? I've been moving All my release candidate I'm not no no not everything yet Because I didn't have time to move a couple of them But all the ones I moved to release candidate are smooth. I I can't find anything wrong with them. They just work Uh, have you ever had issues with iphone's the unified ap's with dual band network ended up having to split 5g into two ssds Yeah, there's lots of dumb problems that are apple. So by the way, the apple m1 Like the macbook air along with the apple. I don't have an apple phone, but the apple phones I'm gesturing towards my android phone. Uh, apple just doesn't roam through wi-fi very well So I don't know why apple does what apple does Yeah, you think you need the performance, but you just don't really need it. Um With the laptops like you know, how much work I can get done matter of fact, I did think about Looking at jeff geerling did a weird little laptop review, but I don't mind I thought about playing with a pine book from a network engineering standpoint a pine book would probably work Uh, I don't know Because I I don't know if it's quite fast enough for some of the browser functions that I need because What you run into if the processor's too slow, you'll notice this if you try to use your raspberry pi for desktop It's okay, but things do render in the browser and they may not render fast enough for you. Uh, so that could be a problem Uh net bird self-hosted is if possible separate the stun component accessible via the internet management via vpn Uh, I don't understand the question The idea of net bird you you shouldn't have to wrap net bird in another vpn because net bird itself is a vpn So I don't see why you I don't understand what you're trying to do The idea of net bird is we're going to have a node in the cloud Somewhere somewhere access wouldn't have to be in the cloud you can self post it You need to have a node one of them on a public ip where the control plane is so everything can talk to it I mean, could you build a vpn then wrap it in a vpn? Yeah Uh, I think that's if that's a question. Um, but I'm not exactly sure what your goal is there Uh, do the forum post in the net? I think the net bird people have some forums Uh, where you can post that in there. I'll take a few more questions and I'll do it for three more minutes. Um You want the management interface more secure so not expose the internet? Oh, um, you know the way I do that generally and we Granted we have jump boxes Uh, so we'll take the management interfaces and you can do this like Digital ocean the node whoever you want to use You can you can go and filter to certain ip ranges or ip specific ip addresses Because we have static ip's here at our office Each of our offices has static ip's we will then add those ip's to the allow list in our cloud systems. That's what allows you to Go through and you know easily man have the management interface like locked down Now we don't know of any flaws the management interface if you do expose it But this narrows it way further because now think about the bar You've set for someone to get into your management interface first. They got to come from my network That's not easy to do to come from my network So I don't have like a free guest wi-fi that goes out the same ip's Where you could stand outside my building but By the way the bar of I have to find a flaw in net birds interface And I have to be standing somehow outside of the cnw our offices is a pretty high bar Uh, what are you running for your site to site multi-state vpns? Um, honestly because of its integration we just I just had someone else it wasn't even a consulting It's just an IT person has talking to um They had to do a five site and they were started and go wow five sites five vpns no overlapping Uh networks, but you know, they want to be able to mesh them all together and I started building out the rules I said throw tail scale and I get like oh, yeah, that made it easy Tail scale does great if you don't want to have to build any of the rules Wire guard is solid if you want to use wire guard if you're using all pfSense um Huge number of our clients use ipsec not because More than any other reason then that's just what's available to them or for example We have some clients like they have to have ipsec tunnels back to One of their own service providers and so we can't control What's at the other end so we have to use ipsec on our end? Have I looked at the pre-day sessions at geek on I don't know I I go there to hang out with my friends So I don't always look at the sessions as much Um, I'll I'll just be honest. I don't always I'm I'm more of a uh go there and hang out and I I will probably end up joining maybe a panel session So I don't really know High time if I don't learn new skill in it first explore get hands on nature of its own abilities forever Uh implement something practical. It really helps. Uh, and it's weird Let's see. I first explore get hands on The nature of its own Sure always oh we always poke at that Uh, do you have an experience with uh Portmaster application firewall have never used it I run a seven site one with pf sense and open vpn Uh, but it's such a painter out. Yeah, I mean, that's the nice thing when you start using something like tail scale And and granted we mentioned net bird earlier net bird and tail scale very similar But net birds fully open source including the control plane. I think it's a great tool on That integration and pf sense makes it so much easier You're like hold on I want to publish a route for this particular thing You know, you just go and hit here. These are the routes. I want to publish. What do you want to make them active? Well, I'm going to make them active over here So now I can build it so I have this particular route on this particular client active over here And now I've just made all these work automatically without having to think about it. It's really nice um Uh jason slagle realized here. Yep. I just finished the 45 drives uh thing and so I jumped on a live stream here I'm about to end it though in a couple minutes and go hang out with uh jason slagle and the people who are just down the street I'm assuming message me if this has changed that I should If I'm there by 415 I will be able to meet you at the bar Let me know jason Uh Do I have a I have a video with an overview on uh net bird along with several others If you type in net bird on my channel, you'll find me an overview video along with a few others um But if you go to awesome open source the youtube channel, uh, they have a full video on it and I'll answer the question what's on my shirt before I leave. I don't even know what shirt i'm wearing I'm looking myself I think it this is a shirt my wife got me and I it's uh Some gaming shirt. I really don't have I don't know where Says choose your character. That's I don't have this is a shirt my wife caught me We're giving you lots of goals because you aren't here to swap them off That means they're having a meeting and I am now getting assigned the tasks. All right Yeah, I think yeah smash brothers is the word. I was trying to think I mean it's That seems like what this is hard to see. Yeah, that's definitely smash brothers. All right now. We know it's on my shirt Yeah, it has pacman and all the game characters. Yes Yes, that is what's on my shirt Late skew tail. I hope you had a good trip. Yes trip went ah Trip to new york was fun, but yeah, the next trip is to the bar because that's You know more fun stuff that I got to go do that's where the manager meeting continues So we had a man to be all day But there's there comes a point where the manager meeting switches from coffee to the bar Because we got to continue the meeting And that's where we're going to end up next But uh Nonetheless, uh, oh, I will answer this question as and I don't know Uh, what do I think of the recent acquisition of deft by summit? I don't know Um, I just don't I don't keep up with the politics behind the scenes on there Uh, so I I I don't know It's all those things that I don't know now What usually you don't find out until much much later is my context there If I watch them jumping ship Then then you know exactly how the acquisition is going. Um, if you see them staying it's good Um, the same thing, you know with uh, any of them akamai lanode You watch for people to jump ship and you're like, oh look people are changing jobs. I guess things changed over there Um Let's see. Oh Everyone attempted to hawk your services at a bar to fix their wi-fi all the time But usually not usually they're not the most target audience It's amazing if they have wi-fi that works. Um So she I I'm not always at the fanciest of ours Uh, any plans to do a new tanix review for people who want to be curious? No I have zero interest in new tanix because my friend rich teslo The over at two guys tech. He did a review. Rich's review is actually really good. Um, it is A breakdown of new tanix as compared to vmware. Also, uh Most of you won't like new tanix. It's very locked down. It's very proprietary There's no ice because of your nfs because there's no shares and there's no pass through so Um, if you're fine with all those things watch his video on new tanix Um, if you aren't fine, but you just want to watch a video on new tanix He's got a whole video on new tanix, but I don't really have um uh Any reason to look at new tanix the reality is and I pointed this out before If you look up type in the words new tanix for sale And you'll find some wall street articles, etc You know financial articles about it being for sale because they haven't been making money So they were looking to sell the company. They're That's the thing new tanix is actually if you type in new tanix makes their first profit You'll find out 2024 is the first time they become profitable according to another financial times article So I'm not really interested in the company. I don't know what they look like um Like I know some people that use it like On the side like I've talked to IT people to go. Yeah, it's in our data center. It works I don't pay the bill Like we have some stuff in there and they don't have any complaints about it But I know it's very locked down and the fact that they don't support a san System was I thought an interesting side effect that of course means that will rule out a lot of people who may not like it It's like hyper-converged with our software end of story. That's how it works Um, I don't use proxmox enough. So my opinion is cool. They're doing it But I couldn't tell you if it's an amazing feature or just something I don't know what its status is is the problem. Um, I don't matter of facts Uh, we're building here an xcp and g system to start importing VMware so I can do some videos on that But I don't know if I'll have time to do the same thing with proxmox It's taken enough time to Build the systems and get the lab up and running just because time Is not infinite So yes, it'd be cool to test it. But yeah Yeah, I don't know that they support sand But a little proxmox doesn't require sand two different takes on hti. I mean, yeah it all depends in What your goals are and if it fits your goals and fits your alignment at all, um I don't have any interest in zscaler not on I mean, I once again, I know people using it It's not on my client base. So it's not high on my party list to take a look at it When you start getting into the commercial software, the reality is I'm not really a mouthpiece for them Uh, and I don't really use their products in if I were to be a mouthpiece what I There was a good video I watched on this about taking advertising money. I mean I need to take advertising money to pay my bills I've been trying to keep that really light But I could go all in and take a check from those companies I think what people don't realize and more youtubers. I'm glad I'm I'm seeing them be very open about this because I'm trying to be Very open about this as well. It's wild It's sometimes it's hard for you the consumer you may know that there was an ad spot in there But did you know that a youtuber was given 60 70 000 or more for a video on a product and Those lines get blurred quite a bit like you need to be you know using this. This is an amazing product Let me tell you how awesome this particular software is. Thank you for sponsoring the video And they don't say that to the end. You're like, oh wait Was that a excitement for the product or were they excited because a check for 70 000 or more dollars was written to them To talk about the product the offers you get from these companies For things I don't really do any of the vpn companies But if you want to know why youtubers do another youtuber had recently broke down and he had a channel similar size as mine He went through the process of actually talking and engaging with the vpn people I mean the vpn people I think were willing to pay him 15 000 of video if he did if he said he was using the vpn $15 000 to shill a vpn plus affiliate commissions Now you know why so many youtubers shill vpns. Well, let's see Uh vmware at xcpd and windows triggers uh reactivation windows. So you want to make sure that your software assurance with ms. Yeah Yeah, the problem is it's a mix because my ad revenue has I make less money today with more views than I made two years ago Because ads have been cut on youtube So even though I've got more views and more subscribers. I'm making less money per month on youtube And it takes money to run the channel takes money and time to produce everything Uh, I'm lucky because I'm self editing all of it which has allowed me to go for longer without ads and But if you're watching the revenue, I have an event go down every month because I was I was hoping the ads would turn around They haven't uh, so now I got to find some advertisers or other ways to kind of You know create the baseline of money not an easy thing to do. Um without me saying yes to blah blah blah vpn Or small ad at the top. Yeah. Yep. Yep Ah, yeah, this is an easy one if the product sucks Well, here's here's the one uh, and I'm not going to say it's a product that sucks I'll say wazoo is pretty cool wazoo offers a lot of money to youtubers and I have not said yes to them They've reached out to me several times and I just didn't reply Uh wazoo, I don't think wazoo is a bad product But did you notice how all of a sudden all these different youtube channels? We're talking and I don't mean channel I mean channels and the plural start looking up wazoo videos You'll find a bunch of people were doing them because wazoo had opened up their checkbook to influencers There's the one of them that you know, uh, it's kind of fun Uh, just figuring it out To be fair, I'd chill them in for 15k too. Yes. They they really reach out and um It's wild what they're willing to offer as influencers So, uh, but I'm going to leave this here because I'm going to go do I said I'd stop at about four it's 402 Uh, so I'm going to try to make it the bars. We're going to is just down the street Maybe when I get home tonight, I will feel like doing another live stream and uh, I'll go from there I like doing live streams and I actually like this setup where All this is is one cable to a camera and uh, I can sit anywhere sometimes I like to be outside of My basement, but we're in my studio. I love my studio. Don't get me wrong, but it's kind of cool to be somewhere else and You know get the cool view of whatever's going on back here Go see this and I just whacked the table. Sorry, Jason There we go. So look at that city skyline Something look construction. Sometimes the police go by you get you get all the brain stimulation going Oops I'm going to knock this over in a minute All right, I'll leave everyone with that. Thank you for joining and like and subscribe all that fun stuff Maybe I'll do a live stream labor. Um, but yeah, take care. Have fun and I'm going to go enjoy your meeting later