psydii

m.2 is like USB C, its the connector, not the protocol. Most (all?/Many?) m.2 storage devices these days use the NVMe protocol which is a thin layer on top of PCIE-x and that's simply not capable of being on the far side of a SATA connection. So you need an pciex to m2 adapter instead. Also regarding it beind hard to fit, the module is 2280 form factor but the adapter card is set up for a 2260 card (the mounting screw in the middle of the board).

That looks like one supplied by one of the 'big three' IWB companies. A quick search also suggests that it may have been sold under other brand names, one of which is indeed in the "big three". Might be worth checking whether you've got one even if you've never bought a Conen branded product.

"one is none" I'd be tempted to recommend a 2019 for the new DC and then work out a plan to move to 2022 as soon as possible. 2022 and 2025 might not be fully compatible with other ancient things that are probably lurking on the domain (Exchange 2013?)

0) If you have a product that does all the filtering you need on the ipads in the way you want, this should be possible. 1) move the ipads on to their own vlan so the are double NAT'd, the ipads have a 192.168.x.x address, and this egresses into LGFL via a gateway/router/fw that has an LGfL 10.x.x.x address as its WAN interface. 2) depending on the solution chosen step 0, this gateway might be the 3rd part firewall, or your own (school managed) router/firewall (with the ipad filteirng being an app/vpn based solution). 3) In SchoolProtect, set things up so traffic from the WAN interface of this gateway DOES NOT HAVE SSL/TLS inspection enabled - leave that to you 3rd party filter. 4) apply a default set of policies to the WAN interface of your gateway, and from then on ONLY use the 3rd party filter to controll what users on the iPads can see. Just be aware that sometimes you may encounter a situation where your default SchoolProtect policy is more restrictive than your 3rd party filter, and you will need to relax the SchoolProtect policy to allow the traffic, but generally we find we don't have to make adjustments to the filtering. You just need to remember to check both locations when something odd happens.

The NM is a managerial and "leadership" role. So these are the skills where the biggest gap is likely to be. These can be developed on the job with support from your peers and SLT. Work with Finance to understand how to build a budget proposal. Work with Finance to understand how to track expenditure against the budget you have been allocated. Understand what data from the service desk matters to senior management Understand what data from the service desk matters to *you* keeping ahead of problems. Understand what HoD's and the key users of the service want and need. Make sure you are collecting data to measure how you are performing against their expectations. Discuss with your link SLT whether the priorities of the HoD's/ Key users aligns with the priorities as SLT perceive them to be. Write a monthly report that summarises your expenditure against projects and targets, the service desk metrics SLT care about, and the metrics you care about that you want SLT to know you care about. Documentation: Read all the documentation that exists for each system and service. Anytime there is information in a document that you don't fully understand, set aside time to dig into and and understand it. Any system or service that is not documented, document; you may not initially understand it fully, but again, set aside time to dig in and figure it out. Technical training - the above documentation piece will help you identify where actually vendor training might be useful. Finally work with Finance on asset lifecycles. There is a planning aspect here related to budgeting, but also an operational aspect around procurement - many IT projects cross out of the "buy it from amazon because its the cheapest" through "get three quotes against a quick and dirty specification" and into the "write a detailed spec, invite suppliers to tender, score them and award", and sometimes even into the "use a framework/hire a specialist with insurance to run the tender". It's good to be ahead of the auditors.

Further to @PaperCutterAl and @DWilson1997 I'd look at what you might be able to do with windows scheduled tasks, handy to delay starts of needed applications, and potentially restart them if they aren't running. Generically you could perhaps have a powershell script (signed by a code-signing certificate from your CA) that does the necessary registry shenanigans before calling the .exe or even 'just' re-implementing the entire .bat?

Really fascinating, on paper those Dells are the same spec as some of our Lenovo 100w g2's and Acer B311's, yet for us the Dells were often unusable slow. I seem to recall that many cheaper machines were HS200 (eMMC 5.1) and the ones that worked well were HS400 (eMMC 5.1a) (something I think we found out by tearing things down and googling part numbers!) If you've got 4 cores, 4Gb RAM and HS400 speed emmc, and fully entra/intune managed, with shared user profile (with extremely aggressive storage sense settings applied) Windows 11 should be fine for basic web-app based work. Important to note, this is just straight Windows. No OneDrive client, No Teams Client, No Chrome, No 365 apps installed. No vendor software. No SCCM client, No 3rd party spyware/antivirus either - Just rely on network level filters and Defender xdr for this class of machine.

Slightly worried my immediate reaction to that was "oooh, that's a good idea!"

Microsoft Purview communication compliance keeps an eye on Copilot for us.

Well, I suppose there's the question of what Windows CU and Papercut client is running on this machine vs others, and perhaps is Papercut installed/running in the same way on this machine as it is on others? What happens if you kill the pcclient process before printing?

No idea, but for completeness sake, have you rebooted the computer? Have you tried on a different computer? Have you tried using a different Windows/AD account?

Use and abuse Class Teams Assignments: /forums/office-software/237668-coursework-teams-onedrive.html#post2034410 On the syncing of departmental (team) folders to multiple devices: Teachers *mostly* didn't move around, so no too much of a problem. The plan was to move everybody to using laptops instead of desktops, this followed a year or so after, and everybody agreed it was better. (but we'd let the desktop PCs 'atrophy' and moved to brand new flat panel displays at the same time we moved to laptops, stacking the deck somewhat). 300,000 files is, I seem to recall, the limit of OneDrive/SharePoint sync client so members of departments that have accrued near that will need to be a little more focused with the folders they choose to sync. If departments have way less than 300,000 files, then teachers can use the shortcut feature of SharePoint to add it into the OneDrive - this way the setup on each computer they log onto is automatic. And as long as they don't move around too much, and you don't go wiping/re-imaging machines every term/half term / year then they should be fine (after the first logon session). I think when we rolled it out we advised people to visit all the classroom they were timetabled in during the start of term inset day, just to get ahead of sync issues. We also advised them that going in via the web might be quicker and more consistent. These days its about 50/50 some prefer the web, others like it all in Explorer. Departments where they are using the Student Work folders directly, often the teacher will choose to sync each Class Teams' Student Work - Working Files folder to their laptop for review. We have an aggressive "Storage Sense" policy we can deploy to those who make heavy use of this so they don't run themselves out of space on their laptops. I'd have the same aggressive policy apply to the classroom-teacher desktops if we still had any.

So supply teachers (long term, inducted, GDPR trained contractors) can’t use sims now?

I think any vendor would have a hard time getting a general "contractors may not use our product while they work for you" clause to fly.

We see something similar. Its on my to do list to look into and fix. I say on my to do list, I really mean some where on a list, ready to be added to the backlog that will become the to do list once I've ha da clear run a the more urgent things for a few weeks. As far as I can tell it seems to be because the icon gets created as Teams/other apps install, before OneDrive client has finished syncing for the first time for that user on that machine. I don't think there is any way of triggering things to only happen after OneDrive completes a sync. If you find a good way to solve it, please do share it. We use a really really rough GPO Preference to delete shortcuts that have computer names in their filename. It contains the problem, but we have to tweak things every time we find a new icon that is multiplying.

Sounds odd that they want you to cost it out, without letting you see how other similarly centralised services within the mat are themselves costed. As for benchmarking against others - it also depends what is in scope for the IT service to be delivering. I've seen things fall apart because the incoming MSP and the local SMT did not appreciate their existing inhouse service delivered way way more than desk-side break fix and backup tape changes. Watching SLT panic as they ran out of paper and toner, and teachers weep because the technician was not allowed to spend an hour with them training / developing curriculum materials. Who does the Business Manager call if they need remote access to the CCTV on a Sunday?

In case anyone is wondering, 27" is too big. Mostly 24" here, but that's because we refreshed some very very old all-in-ones quite recently. Had we done it when they should have been retired we'd probably ave gone for 22" due to costs. The 27" ones were thrown in as part of a value-add effort by one bidder on a more recent refresh, (they'd already got the best price but, hey if they wanted to be sure!) We declined that offer the next time!

https://lever.co.uk/

Take a look at the Lenovo 13w, web pricing might put you off, but an edu-reseller can get you the real price.

We do have engineers here quite often, but we're pushing the bulk of 3.5M copies through 4 devices (we have many more, but the bulk hits one of these four, and they are sized appropriately). Departmental photocopiers almost never have service call outs. Our HP workgroup printers seem to completely die after printing about 300,000 - 500,000 pages, but we've only ever seen three hit that milestone in 15 years, they are usually retired before then because their toner price has gone through the roof. These days there are so few people/departments using the workgroup printers most are 10 years+ and still have 50% left in the toner!

Used Canon, Riso, Konica, Ricoh, Sharp, and considered several others during tenders. I've not seen a compelling reason to move from Sharp for a decade now. We do also have Riso in the mix though. For desktop printers we have always done them in house with HP, (though I have also inherited Canon/Xerox/Brother/Oki desktop fleets, with no particular problems)

Counter point: running sims on prem its not that hard. Is the installation documentation on the ess support site these days? Do an install, then restore from the backup using the ess tools? Do you have a backup of the Document Storage Server? Here is a brain dump of things: Use FQDNs for everything. This requires AD DNS and DHCP to all be correctly setup and working well together. Stale DNS records will give you a very bad couple of days three times a year. SQL advice: 32GB ram at least. Set SQL server to use total ram - 4Gb (or 8Gb if you have enough) 6 cores is enough - SIMS does not seem to make good use of them, though it has got better at it over the last five years. FAST cores is what matters, though again as long as they are fairly modern (<3yrs) you can be pretty sure they are fast enough. (though if you are spec'ing a new box just for sims - let the vendor know its for an SQL app that values clock speed over core count) SSDs for all the disks. RAID 10 for all the things server grade SSDs are fast enough. If you have a SAN you might not have a choice as to the underlying resiliency. Have the database(s) and log files on a separate volumes to Windows, have the SIMS share on another volume, the Document Storage folders can be on this same volume. Make sure you have three times the space on your database and log file volumes as the current size of the database. Monitor all volumes for space and add more, do maintenance when they a start to fill up. Schedule the ESS performance/re indexing patches to run at the correct cadence. (to be determined by how you use sims across the school) SOLUS can serve its files from the same volume as the sims share. Windows/Domain Security: Do not use a domain admin account to install anything! Follow the SQL Server best practices for administration accounts. Configure SQL server for kerberos authentication Have a specific domain account that is used when pushing out the clients it should not be a domain administrator. Use a GPO to add this account to local administrators of your client workstations (but not your servers!). Take steps to protect this account (Make it a member of Protected Account group, rotate its password each month, disable when not in use), it will also need to be a member of a group that can access the sims share (see next block) On the volume where the SIMS share resides, remove USERS from the ACL, replace it with Local_SIMS_Users "Read Only" and Local_SIMS_Administrators "Full Control" (two local groups you have created on the sims server), on the domain server create a Universal Groups called sims_users, add all staff and the account that will be used to install sims onto clients to that. Also you will need to create a sims_administrators group, add the data team and timetabler to that, then back on the sims server add the DOMAIN\sims_users and _administrators groups to the matching Local_SIMS_ groups. On the SIMS Share, remove EVERYONE READ WRITE, and add Local_SIMS_Users Read Only. On the SIMS Share, and add Local_SIMS_Administrators Read Write. There is a census related folder in the SIMS share, you'll want to break inheritance on that folder and remove the _users group's access and grant the census team RW. You should use the pattern above to create a census group (unless its the same set of people that make up the the _administrators group, in which case just use that). This allows you to better protect the SIMS share from prying eyes. You will also need to configure the client firewall to allow communication between clients and the sims server as per the ESS documentation. If you haven;t done this before, it can take some playing around with to understand and get it right. Do not say "to hell with it" and turn of the firewall or throw in an any:any:all rule. Also there are some things in the ESS document about resetting permissions on the credential store - this should not be necessary if you haven't broken your clients through some poor administrative decisions. You may find you need to tweak the client timeout settings in the connect.ini - some activities (particularly around timetable updates, marksheet updates/reports and bulk attendance changes) can lock enough of the database that other clients start crashing - upping the timeout value mitigates this. Final thought for now: push sims updates during the school day - schedule half a day where sims will be unavailable and you can be sure all the computers will be powered on. Overnight, or in the holidays you are just guaranteeing sever days of pain when staff come back in. Much better to just have a maintenance window during a school day.

The beatings shall continue until morale improves. When I was at school there were a few sets across a few courses where failure to meet expectations would (allegedly) result in sanctions. These were never the top or bottom sets though. It was a carefully chosen cohort - a mix of those who could get the target if they applied themselves, and those who should be doing even better but were coasting. The idea being those that could if they tried could exceed those that ought to be better but were just coasting, and those that were coasting might notice that those that those who were applying themselves were now exceeding their own performance. and those who began to consistently getting 80%+ were moved up into the upper set(s), where theoretically they would be motivated by trying to keep up with their new peers - some found this worked extremely well, and others were reduced to tears by the pressure and actually moved back down again. For those already in the top set(s), they were generally either motivated by the prize (offer from top-tier uni in desired course), or from the intrinsic joy of being really effin'good at it. It seems a fundamental failure in helping students set their own goals and aspirations effectively if they feel it necessary to sanction the top performers for not being better.

Issue the students signing certificates that are only trusted by the compsci lab computers, and dial back Heimdal's aggressiveness around novel executables on the compscie lab machines?

Can you just have a standalone outlook.com account and use the Outlook that replaced Mail in windows 10/11?