will_

Hi, I'm after some confirmation that what I'm planning is sensible. We need to upgrade our Windows Server 2008 installation to Windows Server 2012. Our main support company has suggested we replace the entire server with a Dell T430 and offered to provide this service for £6500. This feels like a rather drastic upgrade and, frankly, we can't afford it. Our current server is an HP ML110 G7 which is plodding along fairly happily. The CPU generally ticks over at between 2 and 10%, and we're currently using 10GB of the 16GB of RAM installed, although the disks are getting a bit full for comfort. We're a small junior school (8 classes altogether, 1 ICT suite and around 20 laptops) so it really doesn't get thrashed particularly hard. I suspect our support company likes to spec for the worst possible scenario. My proposal is to keep the HP server but: - upgrade from 16GB to 32GB of RAM to allow for more caching - replace the data disks (currently 3 x 300GB SAS in RAID 5) with 2 x 4TB WD Re (not red) SAS. Partition each disk into a pair of 2TBs. Mirror the two 'Stripe A's for shared user data and use the two 'Stripe B's for a pair of backups, populated alternately so as to provide two levels of roll-back. Shared user data is accessed concurrently but it's usually the same file being accessed by a class so slow access times can be tolerated. - replace the OS spinning disk with a 256GB SSD, probably something like a Samsung 850 as I'm not convinced our use is hard enough to justify enterprise grade SSDs. Use this stand-alone (not in a RAID) for both the OS and user home folders, backing up the latter to the 2TB partitions. Home directories are access concurrently and putting them on a spinning disk would cause slowdowns as head jumps around all over the place. - install Windows Server 2012 onto the SSD in another machine and migrate it to the server when it's ready, so as to minimise down-time. The HP currently has all its disks connected through a P410 RAID controller but I wonder whether this will cause problems if we try to install Windows 2012 in a different machine and then migrate the disk to the HP. If so, there's a spare SATA socket on the motherboard that we could use. Happy to hear your thoughts, tips and suggestions! Thanks, Will

Thanks, all. I have a few quotes being drawn up as we speak, for NUCs, Lenovos and Nanos.

Hi All, As often seems to be the case, I think I'm probably asking the impossible. My wish list is: - micro form factor, to be mounted between the monitor and its stand - reasonable future-proofing (maybe i5 processor, although I concede my knowledge is out of date in this area) - reasonable value I fear I may have to choose two of the above. It's for a primary school ICT Suite, so mega-performance isn't really an issue but longevity of service is. I was looking at the Dell OptiPlex 3020, which gives me form factor and price, but only comes with an i3 processor. Shame because I like Dell. I'd welcome your thoughts!

FOG installed (or at least configured) the DHCP server, so hopefully. I don't think the problem is with the DHCP being served to the client, though; it is that the server's IP address is changing so the client can't find the PXE server specified in the DHCP offer. That's a good point. I'll have a look today. That's another great suggestion. Thanks. I'll try it.

I don't think so. ...Unless its process has a more obscure name which I'm unaware of.

allow-hotplugs removed. Cable unplugged and re-plugged. It's definitely something to do with an event firing off. Just to be doubly sure, I'm going to try restarting the whole server. (It's not yet doing anything except frustrating me!)

Oops! Over-enthusiastic spell-checker. Yes, it should have been eth1. I've edited my original post and put the brakes on the spell-checker's auto-correct! I'd left them in to catch the cable being plugged in and unplugged (which is happening quite a bit while I'm trouble-shooting). I'll remove them if it doesn't affect that. EDIT: Come to think of it, maybe it's a hotplug event that's kicking DHCP into action. I'll try disabling it.

I tried removing the auto lines and running /etc/init.d/networking restart but it left with with: eth0: no IP address eth1: 10.0.252.10 <-- the troublesome DHCP lease, not the static IP in interfaces

Really? I'll give it a try but the man page for interfaces says,

A client connecting to the server showed this on its PXE boot screen:

/etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.d/ is empty.

Hi, I'm trying to set up a FOG server on Debian 8. It has two network interfaces, both with static IP addresses. eth0: 10.0.248.68 / 255.255.252.0 <-- This is to connect to the outside world. eth1: 10.0.252.1 / 255.255.255.0 <-- This is for clients to connect to Client machines awaiting a rebuild are connected to eth1, from where they are offered an IP address in the range [10.0.252.10-254] and PXE boot into FOG. This is where I'm stuck. As far as I can tell, DHCP is somehow overwriting eth1's static IP address - it keeps changing from 10.0.252.1 to 10.0.252.10. Weird. This doesn't seem to make much sense to me. I'll nip down to the server now and try and get you some more concrete information.

One disadvantage that I've found of running LearnPad software on non-LearnPad hardware is that, because the devices aren't rooted, silent installations aren't possible. The installation requests can still be pushed out to the devices but you have to go round to them all and say yes when it asks for permission.

Go to learnpad.co/install on the device. You'll need to enable 3rd party installers (or something like that) and then find the installer in the Downloads folder/app.

Just bought one Hudl to test it on. Looks great so far.