NDNA: April 2024 Freeform

good morning everybody and welcome back to next door netadmin it is that time of month again it is time for the free form yeah so this month has been a long one huh cuz we've had the Acme Deep dive going three episodes all in a row and on one level I'll say that was a lot of fun we got to cover a lot of stuff in those deep Dives and from a Content creation perspective I didn't have to come up with new topics so much I kind of knew in advance what I was doing on the other hand it was the same thing for three weeks just different facets of the same thing so you know it was a lot of fun if there are other deep Dives that we want to examine in future I'm 100% open to that but I'm also so okay with there being a little bit of a change and we're done with that for now and maybe we'll have more to cover on it in the future who knows so here we are I said if you if people had comments to let me hear them and I appreciate the comments that have come in um there haven't been any there haven't been any comments saying that they hated it so that's a plus and while I realized that the last episode was kind of Windows Centric You Know It uh it did not seem to be a problem as far as people were concerned just not perhaps as applicable to people running other operating systems and that's okay that's 100% okay I'm glad that people were able to get something out of the other episodes and learn more about the implementation side in terms of details even if it was not directly applicable to their OS of choice cool so other than that what am I talking about today in this free form am I just blathering for 20 minutes yes I'm probably blathering for 20 minutes but I do actually have something to talk about and it's this is a term that you may have heard other network admins use or you may have heard your local it person mention in passing that word is e-waste what is e-waste broadly speaking e-w can be understood as any sort of electronics waste whatsoever whether that's stereo systems toaster kettle computers switches routers all of it but when an IT person is using it we're probably not talking about the stereo system or the TV unless it's a smart TV fine um but E-Waste is not something that you should be throwing in the trash and so usually what an admin will do is end up recycling it somehow there are dedicated electronics recycling shops sometimes depending on your municipality um there may be an Electronics return program similar to like a Bottle Depot you may also have other freestanding associations uh in our area we've got the electronics recycling Association as an example and that may be an option for you as well but however you do it recycling is a good idea for this which leads to a different thing Al together the practice of E-Waste not as a noun but as a verb you may hear an admin or your it person say oh yes I'm e-ting that okay what is this broadly speaking again we're talking about Electronics waste but but the verb as you might have expect is just the process of sending something to East and particularly when admins use this phrase a lot of the times they may be indicating that they are intending to recycle this through a standard electronics recycling stream they may also be recycling this by bringing it into a home lab or another context of that sort is this ethical generally speaking I would say yes within limits what are these limits well obviously our responsibility as admins is not to take equipment that still has a use but there is a lot of equipment that genuinely does not meet business purposes anymore it's older it's slower it doesn't have the features necessary for continued use in the the corporate environment that it is needed in okay this is just the way that things go but just because it no longer meets business requirements for that specific context doesn't mean that it is useless in another context but another rejoinder to that would be well maybe we could resell it maybe we could sell it to somebody maybe but the honest truth of it is that's a lot of effort in and of itself if you are a large uh Corporation you may have uh some sort of outlet for seconds or for used equipment or however else you deal with that I know that these exist however for most small to medium businesses the effort of going through a proper disposal stream you have to make sure that the discs have been cleared you need to make sure there's no confidential uh data left over you need to make sure that you've got proper recording of the sales any taxes that were needed and then you have to put it through the accounting books and all of this requires paying for people's time as well there's a lot of effort that goes into that and so for many small and medium businesses it's easier to just say it's already been written off it's been written off out of the books and it's easier to deal with it that way okay that's a valid business decision where that takes place where that is the case there is space for an admin to bring that into a home lab context or use it in another fashion not for a business but uh it typically speaking if an admin is going to take charge of equipment in this manner and recycle it through a proper recycling process and then back into their own use the admin also knows enough to make sure that any confidential company data is erased the equipment is secured and a lot of the times they're also the best place person to do this if they are recycling it they know what needs to happen and you don't need to go through the additional certification process of have the discs been wiped has this has that has the other thing if you're a business that is big enough to do this it's a good thing to do there's no harm in having a checklist none whatsoever but for small or medium businesses maybe not so interesting so here's an example of what I'm talking about long time ago like I got to say 17 18 years ago now at this point thereabouts uh when I was a co-op student working a co-op job I one of one of the tasks that I had to perform was recycling equipment this was really old equipment like Pentium 2s Pentium 3s that age of equipment and they were old desktops they had had a hard life working in a lumber mill they were full of wood dust and sawdust and everything else they were not they were not going to be going anywhere they had to be recycled so I asked permission is also a wonderful thing to get for this kind of thing I said okay if I am taking this and I am recycling it does the business care what happens to to it after it is taken to recycling and they said no we don't care whatsoever it needs to be taken out of the Mills it needs to be taken out of where it is it needs to go to recycling if you know one or two pieces of equipment is of use for some reason then by all means we don't care and we don't need to know anything further about it okay where you have permission like that that makes things really really easy and there's no conflict there whatsoever we're not removing equipment that still has a business use it's been shut down it's old there is no use for it it's going to an Electronics recycler or it's finding a new home elsewhere that's the end of the story to some extent the same is true for or other larger equipment servers switches routers Etc as long as it has a use for the business we're going to keep it there we're going to make sure that it is still working and still functioning as long as we can if it no longer has a business need if it no longer meets requirements I need at least gigabit Network this switch only does 100 megabit then you got to replace the switch that doesn't mean that the old 100 megabit switch has stopped working but it does mean that it no longer works for this business's needs and in this fashion you can get a lot of ewed equipment that looks and to some extent performs just as it as just as well as it did a month ago two months ago a year ago it just no longer meets the needs for that business and it's not worth the business's time or effort to go through the full security cleaning reselling tax documentation and all the rest of that work so it just gets written off admins can populate a pretty decent home lab if they happen to work for businesses or uh in an area that allows them to recover some of this validly ethically ewed equipment again I'm emphasizing the ethically part because there are some customers for example I have another customer that I'm working with they just replaced a server and they're like we really have a tendency to hang on to things until they're of absolutely no use I'm like this server has no use for you you're not going to be doing anything else with it if you're going to be creating any new services or anything else you're going to be putting that on your new server where it's still Reliable Hardware you could keep this as a like a lab or a test environment that's absolutely an option um and the customer went okay well I guess we don't need it but I want to make sure that it's not going to go to any other business I want to make sure the discs are wiped and everything else and we really want to make sure it's not being used or resold to anybody else perfectly within their rights I said okay we'll bring it back to my office I will personally make sure that the discs are are wiped and I did that and I forwarded them the information I said okay here's what I've been able to accomplish the discs are wiped as much as they can be it will now wait for electronics recycling and it's still waiting we we collect enough electronics recycling to have a pickup done roughly about every year or so give or take we only had that we we had them stop by like two months or so before we took this server and so the customer has continued to check in go hey I want to know has it been recycled yet has it been recycled yet and the answer is it hasn't been recycled yet it is still in storage it is not being used it is not going anywhere else you have asked for this to go straight to recycling and not to be reused or resold do I understand why they're so keen on making sure that it doesn't get used by anybody else I really don't I mean the data has been destroyed the discs have been wiped we've made sure that it's not going to be a problem there's none of their data left over nothing can be recovered from it okay fine do I understand why then they're so Keen to make sure that nobody else can use anything to do with the server even if they bought new hard drives or anything else I don't understand that but that is within their right and so I honor that request I have to ethically it will go to recycling it will not go to a home L lab it will not go to any other customer it will not be used in emergencies it's off the table so there are definitely companies that feel that way about their equipment if we can't use this anymore nobody else should be able to use it either I can't argue that it's their equipment they get to call the shots on that but if you can get past that there's benefits to allowing your admins to use old equipment because if you have that in your home lab if you have that in a test environment if you have that elsewhere even if it's not in the work workplace because funnily enough when you're in the workplace you're kind of expected to be doing work stuff and a lot of companies don't have time for oh yeah absolutely take a full day every week just to play around and experiment with things that have nothing to do with any business request whatsoever most companies don't have that kind of flexibility they really don't so an admin will continue to experiment with things and play with things but they'll do it at home on their own time or as a hobby let them do that if they can do that with your old equipment that genuinely does not serve a business purpose anymore that's a win for everybody that's a win for the admin who gets to better their skills and gets to play around with Enterprise equipment in a context where screwing up doesn't mean that you've brought the business to its knees if you screw up at home it's just your home that you have to worry about that's a lot less stressful I speak from experience it's a benefit for the company that gets to reap the benefits of the admin's increased knowledge confidence familiarity with the equipment because they've gone and acquired that knowledge and then they get to bring that into the business environment and it's a benefit from an environmental perspective as well the longer you can extend the useful life of a piece of equipment that took quite a bit of doing to manufacture that's a win all around it will eventually still go into the recycling stream hopefully precious metals will be reused and everything will be disposed of as well as it can be but increasing the useful lifespan of the equipment as much as possible even if that lifespan is not in the business world is a benefit it's a win all around for admins then how do we how do we do this properly can you just say oh well the the company's getting rid of it so that means I can just take it probably not you probably want to at least check in with somebody and make sure that the company doesn't have policies similar to the customer I mentioned where if they can't use it it has to go for Destruction it cannot be used by anybody else if you don't ask you don't know if that's the case and lack of knowing is rarely sufficient excuse to get out of a problem if one exists in future so it's better to check first like I did with my Co-op job hey do you care what happens to this after it gets recycled no and we don't need to hear about it perfect then there's no worries whatsoever and if there are reservations then you can explain to them I'm not taking this to sell it on eBay and try to make a few bucks cuz that's if if there were bucks to be made pretty good bet the business wants to be the one making the bucks so I'm not taking this to resell it I'm not taking this to you know try and live large I want to take this to develop my skills I want to set up a test environment I want to use this to develop my skill SKS and increase my knowledge outside of the workplace because I'm busy while I'm at work I've got a bunch of stuff to do to help you guys so if I want to improve myself on my own time I need some equipment to be able to do that there are arguments that you can bring to the table and that might be persuasive if it is good go ahead it's it's something that is a normal and natural at least to me uh part of the life cycle of this equipment you just have to make sure you check first to make sure it's okay and hopefully businesses that you talk to will be able to understand that this is a net benefit to them as well that's pretty much everything I think that I'm going to talk about today the last video was kind of long so this one can be a little shorter that's okay as always thank you very much for uh watching if you have any suggestions for things that you'd like to see me talk about in future or topics you'd like me to discuss whether that's a multi-part deep dive or whether that's just something that you know a one-off that you'd like to hear about if you have something like that let me know the comments are open so for now thank you again I am your next door netadmin and we'll see you next time

Channel: NextDoorNetAdmin

Views: 28

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Id: WNrKSrfNK7c

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024