Taking a laptop to different sites - ideas needed

[sparkeh]

One of our staff members works across 4 schools and we are giving her a laptop to take around with her. Using Sims is essential to her job so this complicates matters in that at each Sims upgrade there will be a period where the schools are out of sync meaning there will be sites where she can't access Sims.

 

I am trying to think a way around this that involves having a separate installation for each school. Then she would have a domain machine at each site.

 

I did have an idea where her laptop could have a vm for each school but this could be a bit complicated for her?

Another idea is to partition the drives in to 5 and have an installation for each school with a partition for docs which are shared across the installations.

 

Another consideration is encryption. This would be fairly straightforward with the vm idea but not sure how to go about encrypting a multi-boot system as described above.

 

So, any ideas?

[Quackers]

We have 1 teacher who does that here over 2 sites. We got her a Mac, installed Parallels and had a separate VM for each site she boots up. That was the best virtual machine experience, just did not work as well with others we tried such as Hyper V (Hyper V2 don't support wireless being host ethernet adaptor for example).

[featured_spectre]

Is there a chance for the domains to be federated?

[bladedanny]

Hi,

 

I do this with my laptop for two schools. I have three partitions, two separate domain joined win7 installs and the third is used as storage between the two (it's only a small partition as all work etc. is on the server).

 

For encryption I used truecrypt to encrypt the whole drive. When encrypting there's an option for multiboot, I just selected that.

[sparkeh]

Is there a chance for the domains to be federated?

No.

Hi,

 

I do this with my laptop for two schools. I have three partitions, two separate domain joined win7 installs and the third is used as storage between the two (it's only a small partition as all work etc. is on the server).

 

For encryption I used truecrypt to encrypt the whole drive. When encrypting there's an option for multiboot, I just selected that.

Ohhh there's a multiboot option? I didn't know that. Wow, problem solved I guess

[bossman]

@sparkeh:

 

Setup VPN for each sites Sims server and then create shortcuts to each site's Sims server, encrypt the laptop drive and that should be it as long as she has wireless access should not be a problem.

 

Let me know how you get on

[p858snake]

Any chance terminal services could be set up at each site?

[sparkeh]

Any chance terminal services could be set up at each site?

Nice idea thanks, but no. No chance. Imagine the chance of succeeding in organising a snowball fight in the lower depths of Hell. Less chance than that.

 

Think we will go with the multi-boot with Truecrypt now I know it can encrypt multiple installations.

 

Thanks everyone.

[sparkeh]

Hi,

 

I do this with my laptop for two schools. I have three partitions, two separate domain joined win7 installs and the third is used as storage between the two (it's only a small partition as all work etc. is on the server).

 

For encryption I used truecrypt to encrypt the whole drive. When encrypting there's an option for multiboot, I just selected that.

@bladedanny how on Earth did you get this to work? Truecrypt doesn't support full disk encryption with multiple OSes on the same disk. Its tells me so when I try it and in the documentation?!

[featured_spectre]

separate true crypts for each partition? Should work.

[sparkeh]

separate true crypts for each partition? Should work.

Hmm how would that work?

You install it on the installation on partition 1, it writes a new boot loader, you install it on the installation on partition 2, it writes a new bootloader... and now what? The encryption keys for partition 1 and partition 2 are different. Aren't you in trouble now?

 

I can see how it would work if you could encrypt the whole disk as stated above, but it tells me you can't do that.

[Firefox]

Seems a very strange setup. I would imagine RDweb or if using VM then workspace would be the best way to present this.

 

Was it just a cost factor that prevented this?

[sparkeh]

Seems a very strange setup. I would imagine RDweb or if using VM then workspace would be the best way to present this.

 

Was it just a cost factor that prevented this?

Granted its not the usual setup

Cost is certainly a factor.

 

Still, I've faffed around enough with this. I have created a Truecrypt container in each installation for her doc storage. Not ideal but she can totally be trusted to use the container properly and we have a working solution now.

 

Cheers.