@[email protected] yes, if you're caught you'll get into legal trouble.

Amber

@[email protected] don't fuck up or they'll sue you also if you ask for their help they'll upcharge you and try to get you to use licenses that are much steeper prices so you get to just fuck around and find out. are you using everything correctly? dunno.

Lina Isidora :v_sap:

@puppygirlhornypost2 actually now that i think about it it seems to be somewhat of a standard across the 'big server' industry: definitely heard of oracle doing audits and upselling, as well as the volumetric licensing

with oracle tho i've heard about them automatically(?) "upgrading" you to a steeper plan if you try to use some gated feature in, say, their db software..

Amber

@[email protected] the entire concept of a tiered system instead of paying for what you use is just a scam to get more money. Specifically, cough Microsoft does this a lot. Oh, want intune? Well you can pay standalone licenses that gives you not quite what you asked for, or you can upgrade your M365 subscription (and, keep in mind while $5/mo per user -> $20/mo per user is reasonable when you're at ~5 people when you get to the size of like >400 users it's hard to justify something like $8k/mo for a specific feature you need)

Lina Isidora :v_sap:

@puppygirlhornypost2 this begs the question of why do organizations use their products? can't imagine something like proxmox wouldn't cover the needs of a business small enough to not negotiate custom terms with vmware

disclaimer: i've only ever used proxmox to access a vm and didn't do administration on it or any alternatives

Amber

@[email protected] Sure sure there were other things in the specific license that i wanted. It was like 3 things that could have been an extra $5 instead of going from $5 -> $20 or whatever the actual price was. There was Azure Premium (can't remember which variant, but it was helpful because it'd allow me to use AADFS for single sign on with password backwrites. password backwrites are when the on premises domain controller is able to sync back the passwords from azure cloud. by default you are not licensed for this so you need p1 or p2 azure in order to do a hybrid deployment.)

Amber

@[email protected] so like that would allow me to do self service password resets. the issue with doing self service password resets without password writeback is that you'd end up with people's m365 based emails having a different password than the on premises domain controller. so you'd end up with conflicts there (if i create a user in azure instead of locally on the dc allowing the dc to sync up then my on prem dc won't be aware of it)

Amber

@[email protected] i love windows sysadmin btw in case you can't tell because a majority of it is just being able to do math for licensing and hack together powershell scripts to do the functionality you want because you can't afford the cool tools that microsoft provides. nothing like making registry updating group policy objects because i can't do things like lock down the allowed wifi networks for a given device without intune because of course, they deprecated on prem sccm and have been neutering active directory because their MDM (mobile device management) intune is subscription based and generates more revenue

Amber

@[email protected] nothing like a client asking for what would have been a very basic task 10 years ago and having to tell them "I need you to pay >$8k/mo in order to do that"

Lina Isidora :v_sap:

@puppygirlhornypost2 yeah, this does sound like industry standard across b2b saas offerings most [smaller] companies don't usually have this level of scam but some are trying

Amber

@[email protected] the cost of training new people. you see, windows sysadmins aren't usually as flexible as i am. they've spent their entire life being taught one way and may be extremely skilled with something like Hyper-V. You have to factor in that they will spend weeks/months learning how to do the Hyper-V equivalent in proxmox or esxi. They may have to redesign the entire way services are deployed. It's a nightmare to migrate. If you already have an existing microsoft shop you're just kinda locked in (i love me some vendor lock).

Amber

@[email protected] well yeah a little company couldn't get away with licensing like microsoft or broadcom (new owner of vmware which is why vmware sucks now). the only reason they're able to is because they have a monopoly and nobody can really go against microsoft. i mean what are you gonna do even if you managed to make a hyper-v replacement that behaves similar to hyper-v microsoft will sit there suing the everloving shit out of you for copyright infringement (mainly around likeness, so don't copy their ui or workflow or anything and now guess what you have a product that's just another hypervisor instead of a replacement to hyper-v that people can easily migrate to without having to give up their experience in hyper-v administration)

Lina Isidora :v_sap:

@puppygirlhornypost2 but surely it isn't just old microsoft-based businesses using their stuff? i feel like there must be something like a "generous" free tier to get them addicted and past the point of no return.

Amber

@[email protected] you'd be correct, they often snag education because they'll have promotions. for instance, this client managed to get an old ass Office 365 (separate from M365 licensing, an A3 O365 != A3 M365 in edu. I learned this the hardway as the microsoft rep condescendingly explained to me that intune was only available on M365 licensing and that we had O365 which is deprecated). Anyway, there was a deal for schools of certain sizes to get free O365 licensing for all students, and of course we currently utilize that. It's no longer available and upgrading to m365 would basically instantly cost thousands of dollars per month. microsoft gets you this way.

Amber

@[email protected] they also have competitive pricing for small businesses. if you have 1-5 employees something like $20/mo is reasonable especially given the amount of stuff E3-E5 licensing has, not to be confused with A licensing which is strictly for students on education, which is also not to be confused with the faculty licensing that's separate from just straight E3-E5 also ignore the fact that there's O365 A, E, Faculty (forget the cute little letter for those licenses) on top of M365 A, E, Faculty.

Amber

@[email protected] this is like 6 licensing tiers alone but what's better is that they're numbered, there's A1, A3, A5 and so forth so i have like 36 different license types to keep track of in my head

Amber

@[email protected] none of them do the same thing

Amber

@[email protected] I actually think there's A7 but i'd have to check lol i don't wanna rn

All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Vari-Vari 🌸

@puppygirlhornypost2 @[email protected] I'm...quite certain on-prem SCCM isn't deprecated. They do keep trying to push people to cloud attach it to Intune, and there may absolutely be bits I don't use in my environment that have been deprecated from on-prem, but I'm currently updating to 2409 (released in Dec, so that whole YYMM naming schema is as accurate as ever).

Amber

@varimbehphen @[email protected] i mean they have taken down the documentation for modern ADFS deployments and i'd assume sccm. it's not entirely deprecated it's just that if you do not already have an existing onprem sccm install good fucking luck getting one. just like how Microsoft KMS servers are not deprecated but if you try to get one they'll redirect you to azure licensing (real, i tried to talk about KMS for VMWare horizons and then the lady was like just use azure and i was like bro we have a 1gig connection our students cannot just all use azure's VDI wtf)