Summative Tests going badly

[disinfo]

Hi All,

 

Just to let you know my summative test sessions are going really badly as expected.

 

We are running 90 users concurrently on a domain controller that happens to be the student fileserver serving 700 workstations.

 

Great thing is I have a brand new dell poweredge 2950 sat in a cabinet doing nothing, I intended it to be the new fileserver which would massively releive pressure from the KS3 Testing server.

 

Unfortunately i've not had time to set up the poweredge yet because i've been concentrating on rolling out the DPS clients.

 

We are being ofsted inspected tommorrow, and yes we have two test sessions running tommorrow! Isnt that the most wonderful idea!

 

 

./ Rant over

[russdev]

What issues got with it maybe we can help.

 

Russ

[disinfo]

Just running very slow and having an impact on the rest of the network.

 

To be honest its just the server thats not up to it, it has a Promise Fastrack Software assisted RAID (fake raid, whatever) and the disks only just manage the task of serving files during the peak hours.

 

During the tests today the % IDLE time on the logical disk counter was at 0% for almost 5 mins.

 

Im hoping that once i have this poweredge up and running and all of the student homefolders moved accross things will be a lot better.

[tosca925]

We did it with 30 kids yesterday with no problems. We did 120 last year all at once and had very little problems too.

 

Suppose we are lucky.

[disinfo]

We also did 120 kids last year with very few problems, unfortuantely more and more roles have been piled onto this server due to lack of funding.

[plexer]

We've given up on it completely now.

 

Ben

[webman]

We've just done 4 tests in the last 2 days as well, only 2 clients crashed.

[Sylv3r]

We are doing it with 60 kids tommorrow.

 

Last year we had OFSTED in so decided to scrap the tests for the one day OFSTED would have been in school when the tests were ran.

 

Last year we had no problems putting 180 students through - will let you know how we get on tommorrow - in the practices things did seem a little slower then last year.

[disinfo]

Well to my relief the head has decided to not run it during today and tommorrows OFSTED inspections.

 

That should give me time to apply the latest patch from RM and hopefully it may resolve some of my issues.

[AlexB]

Ran 4 sessions yesterday and 1.5 sessions so far today.

 

Yesterday

4x software lockup

2x software crash

 

Today

1x software lockup

2x software crash

2x pupil test being automatically completed before they are even presented with the instructions screen where they can press proceed... solution, student just failed, live with it.

[bossman]

AleB: my thoughts precisely.

[pickman]

First ones today. Luckly got the update just before it started.

 

Did not go to badly just one machine crashed but the test recovered to the right place.

 

only running 30 machines and half of year 9 over 3 days.

 

also running a RM network (perhaps this helps)

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

We recently went to a Vanilla network and they work so much better. Last year with RM CC3 the whole network crashed, on brand new servers and infrastructure. This year, the practise tests have been running sweet as a nut.

 

Tests are being run next week (Mon-Wed) 60 kids at a time. That's the bright idea of our IT Teachers - If it fails, no time to repair it as test window is nearly closed.... Never mind, they've only had 4 months to plan it and a whole month to run it!

 

We'll see how it goes but should be interesting.

 

Oh, our software is on our Terminal Services box, so it doesn't get touched during the day so the software is the sole thing running on that box.

[Finch7]

Not had time to read all posts but update the APS with the patch released today. Otherwise you may have some students unable to log on to the second test. We had 8 out of 74 unable to do session 2.

[AlexB]

Lost another 7 in the last session, this time to the issue we patched this morning, sadly the problem occurs during session one and that ran yesterday, before the patch came out, nice one...

[Guest frankybaloney]

Lost another 7 in the last session, this time to the issue we patched this morning, sadly the problem occurs during session one and that ran yesterday, before the patch came out, nice one...

 

Same issue!

 

Now go to install the new APS which should have been downloaded automatically... and its not there!

[Sylv3r]

We had a small cohort of 63 kids to both tests today - not a single problem and everything worked as expected... or not as the case may be.

[pickman]

90 pupils all done over 3 days.

 

1 test crashed with invalid parameter error

 

1 test locked up (my fault some how a below spec machine had sneaked in and taken residence in the computer room)

 

both recovered the tests to the point wear they crashed and contined on fine.

 

Network did noticably slow right down and logging on to the test was quite slow.