(OT) Re: The Exchange takeover, stealth Mailscanner, SPF, and other thoughts. Subj was: Re: help me

[Alex Crow]

On 19/10/10 13:43, Nigel Kendrick wrote:
>
> Reply below
>
> *From:* mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info 
> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] *On Behalf Of 
> *Alex Crow
> *Sent:* 15 October 2010 17:25
> *To:* mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
> *Subject:* The Exchange takeover, stealth Mailscanner, SPF, and other 
> thoughts. Subj was: Re: help me
>
> Martin,
>
> However that might not play out quite as well as just letting them 
> shoot themselves in the foot - if you put a "stealth" MS box in front 
> of Exchange, then management would just think that the Microsoft stuff 
> did just as well as the old Linux software. It might be better to 
> explain it should be tested with and without the Mailscanner solution 
> as a comparison. However if Nigel is leaving, why not just let them 
> fight their own war!
>
> --> Yes, they can make their own plans now.
>
> Nigel, I presumed you pointed out that in addition to the £16k for 
> exchange they would need something to stem the spam-flow, and given 
> their need for "a throat to squeeze" (the usual reason) it would 
> probably be commercial?
>
> --> Company motto seems to be "If there's two comparable ways to do 
> something, pick the most expensive."  As well as the email fiasco...
>

Wow - sounds like times I've been temping in the public sector. When you 
have in-house expertise and a cheaper system, don't use the former and 
ignore the latter as /obviously/ the more expensive it is, the better it 
must be.

>   1)  They are currently ripping out our ADSL lines/VPNs to replace 
> them with a BT managed 'cloud' system.  Not only are the links more 
> expensive and in some cases slower (we have some sites running 
> 20Mbit/2.5Mbit LLU that are going back to 8Mbit/883K), but they have 
> to pay an annual support charge and submit a request for any router 
> config changes.
>

Again, very similar to the public sector. I wasn't in IT at the time 
(wanted to be though) and was at the DfEE. I said how BT were 
deliberately holding back evolution of broadband to their own benefit 
(this was 1997/8) and the dept. boss at the time nearly sacked me then 
and there. Despite privatisation they still seemed to be in love with them.

It was only about a day later when one person on the team asked me to 
print and fax said boss all of his emails to his home number - I 
explained it would tie up his phone line all day (about 350 mails) - but 
I was told not to be "insubordinate". The boss guy then complained about 
his phone line being engaged all day and accused me of stupidity, both 
staffers complained to the agency and that was the end of that job. 
Really stung at the time as I needed the money despite the hellish 
environment.

> 2) They need to 'move' a central server to from my offices to their HQ 
> -- so they buy a second, identical server (Dell 6850 rackmount with 4 
> Quad core Pentiums, 16GB RAM and 300GB RAID 5 SAS (3 disks)) and 
> someone is going to do a data dump this weekend and drive it up. There 
> would be no problems with the downtime, but for some reason I have no 
> inclination of questioning, they aren't just going to backup this 
> server, shut it down and take it with them.
>
>

Ah, well. Maybe they want to keep the old one for DR purposes - although 
thinking about that they probably have no clue what DR stands for...

I imagine they will attempt to "save" by replacing you with a nice fresh 
paper-MCSE on about a quarter of your salary. They will find the true 
cost of that the next time excrement meets ventilator.

I am glad my small but thriving financial sees things a little more 
pragmatically - hire good people and give them some freedom and 
opportunity to learn and things can be a lot happier.

Good luck!

Alex



> [Snip]
>
> Cheers
>
> Alex
>
>

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