Accessing SIMS from another domain

[laserblazer]

The HT wants teachers to have access to SIMS in the classroom. This is just to be able to use tracker stuff on an infrequent basis. I have argued for fixed classroom computers on the curriculum domain and then put the staff laptops on to admin. I don't think this will happen because of costs so it looks like I'll have to allow them access to SIMS from the curriculum domain.

The big problem I can see is that we have a mapped drive S on the curriculum server and there's any amount of stuff throughout the school that accesses it. Is there any easy way around this or am I going to have to remap the shared drive and physically change the paths on all the computers?

[K.C.Leblanc]

You could look at using Terminal Services, possibly with the addition of something like this,
Free 3 application license of 2X ApplicationServer

[alunmjones]

we have the x:\ drive letter mapped to sims on our curriculum domain and the s:\ drive mapped to it on the admin domain, we have a NETGEAR ProSafe VPN Firewall FVS336G, connecting the sims server to the curriculum domain all with a 1gbs backbone connection, only allowing the ports required for the mssql database comunication, we change the connect.ini on all staff pc's and laptops to point to the sims server on the admin domain.

works well for us all reporting is available and the speed has improved enormosly since we added the backbone link in.

hope that helps at all.

[laserblazer]

works well for us all reporting is available and the speed has improved enormosly since we added the backbone link in.

How many users do you have? I can't see us getting the money to upgrade the infrastructure but the amount of traffic vi the curriculum server will be minimal, although I appreciate that could change.

[alunmjones]

60 teachers and some support staff, the reason we change was due to most of our laptops beeing run through a wifi system that wasnt up the the job when i started, we installed new ethernet cabeling to most classrooms and beefed up the wifi to be used with 100 kids laptops, we did the sims change at the same time, we had sims running through an isa fierwall over an 8mbs interent connection befor via our LEA, it was very slow, its a vast difference to what it is now.

the staff use a lot more of sims now as it gets all they data they need really quikely and there happy, going to try and start linking sims in to our moodle soon so that it can handle assigning students to courses and setting up the course with the apropriate teacher to start with.

[superfletch]

Use a different drive letter than S: for SIMS and then use a login script to change the local connect ini and sims ini by copying a one you want to use into the C:\Program Files\SIMS\SIMS .net and windows folders.

Something like this??

copy /Y \\yourserver\yourshare\goodconnect.ini C:\program files\sims\sims .net

copy /y \\yourserver\yourshare\goodsims.ini C:\Windows



Be careful with Finance and Nova machines as these have extra stuff in the SIMS.ini

[glennda]

i think when you run the simsinst.exe there is a button in the bottom left corner that you can set up your options - you can then change it so that sims is installed from x: y: drive.

you will then just need to set up a trust between the domains.

I think the sims thing is right but ill check and get back to you

Toby

EDIT: its the settings button in the bottom left corner and just set this to say X:\sims etc - you may want to check this with your sims support team as it might cause problems

[Stuart_C]

We use SIMS across two domains though it's all hard cabled.
The two domains have a trust relationship and then I've addedd the "users" group for the foriegn domain into the sims security group. Works fine.

It depends on how you've created the S drive on your accademic domain. If you've used DFS I'd just add in another link so you've have s:\sims\ in the admin domain and s:\sims\ in the accademic domain.