psydii

Process for us is as per above, except for now the PA does the shouting. Works very well. Recently discovered, after a decade of guilt, that *nobody* reviews/updates their policies on time.

Over a decade after I set that up on a file share during a Bromcom migration, it still bothers me. Fine for some/most outbound comms, but disappointing way for handling in bound documents (for example their student file). Still, these days it would give me a chance to set up proper retention and sensitivity labelling... but being exciting for me isn't really the point.

Where do you file incoming/outgoing letters letters, investigation records, and other misc items that need to be kept on record for a while?

If its an IAP 315, it should mesh with its nearest neighbour automatically, and then you just need to configure EthO to bridge: https://community.arubanetworks.com/discussion/using-a-single-instant-ap-as-a-wireless-to-wired-bridge-and-as-a-wireless-repeater#:~:text=4.%C2%A0%20RE%3A%20Using%20a%20single%20Instant%20AP%20as%20a%20wireless%20to%20wired%20bridge%20and%20as%20a%20wireless%20%22repeater%22%3F I've never tried it. NOTE: if it is an AP 315 they are *only* controller based, and I have no experience of managing those bridged or not. (IAP 315's can be configured in Instant mode or Controller based)

Laptop: 3 yrs 5 yrs but replace if faulty and 3yrs+ PC: 5 yrs 10 yrs or supportablity threshold crossed. Monitors: 7 yrs never Chromebook: 3yrs As per laptops Tablets: 3 yrs DO NOT BUY iPads: 5 yrs 7 yrs Mobile Phones: 2 yrs 5 yrs Phones: 5 yrs 10 years Servers: 5 yrs 10 yrs or until unsupportable Switches: 7 yrs Limited lifetime warranty Networking wiring etc: ??? "25 yrs" in practice this is capital/lifecycle. Likely only need to replace if Wireless points (Unifi): 5 yrs 10 years Printers: 5 yrs only when they fail Display Boards: 5 yrs 10yrs+ or when they fail Key is supportable and security. Printers are isolated so any risks from firmware vulnerabilities are mitigated. The time frames above are ideal case based on optimal purchase window where product is new so support/updates are expected for the duration. This is one of the reasons we don't network our boards - if people relied on connectivity, they'd have to be replaced once they stopped getting Android updates, so we keep the software capabilities driven by the usb/hdmi connecting device (typically running Windows/macOS/ChromeOS).

Acrobat has tools for redacting specific text strings across multiple files. https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/batch-apply-redactions-across-multiple-files/td-p/12741111

Stares back in OS/2 LAN Manager.

I know. When you have bidco/topco/midco in the ownership chain you can bet your bottom dollar the businesses you see (Arbor / The Key etc) are funded by leveraged buyouts or similar debt based financing. There are/were similarly named entities in nest of companies between Montegu and Parent Pay too. (not suggesting any links between Arbor and Montegu, but that the "bidco" thing is common) https://www.mondaq.com/uk/corporatecommercial-law/1024418/private-equity-comparative-guide

Glad to hear you found a non disruptive solution. Point of pedantry though, PDCs and BDCs haven't been a thing in 25 years. PDC Emulator, yes. Other FSMO role holders, yes. Global Catalog, yes. But BDCs, no, not since NT4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-ds/manage/understand-fsmo-roles https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-adts/f96ff8ec-c660-4d6c-924f-c0dbbcac1527 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-adts/4f99984d-2e90-48e6-b472-f5869e5b90ed

I think they knew what they were doing. All MIS vendors will benefit from SIMS doubling/tripping their price over the next decade. With the speed at which SIMS next gen is now improving, they may well have a competitive product before they drop below 30% market share. If they manage to keep 30% who end up paying 3x the old price, their revenue is *higher* than when they had 80% of the market, and the rest of the market can more rapidly raise their prices to achieve higher returns on investment than they would have if SIMS had continued into oblivion under the Capita/ESS. I am very certain that Arbor would rather it were a three horse race. In a two horse race the competition commission is much more likely to take a dim view of the price hikes necessary to give the investors the returns they are expecting. Of course if SIMS NG doesn't continue to improve at current rate, there is no chance SIMS will survive, investors in Montegu will take a haircut and Arbor (who owns them eh?) and Bromcom will compete head to head and have to be very careful on how they set pricing. Indeed I think that if the market *doesn't* accept higher costs for MIS, Arbor might well be in trouble who as far as I can tell are still burning investors money. Bromcom at the current market rate manages to be solvent relying purely on revenue and assets. (To summarise: SIMS can set what ever price they want - there is real competition and if the price is too high, customers can move. But if the rate of abandonment of sims slows *at all* it is an indicator that, at least some, of the market accepts that price. Which means there is room for Arbor and Bromcom to raise *their* prices too. As long as Arbor/Bromcom don't raise prices too swiftly, this will continue until another provider with deep pockets sees an opportunity to undercut/disrupt the market again. If they do raise prices too swiftly, or they get unreasonably high, DfE/Cabinet Office will likely step to spoil the party. The real winners will be Bromcom's owner, because Arbor and Montegu need the price to be higher, but Bromcom are profitable at the current rates.)

Since setting up an account on bluesky a couple of weeks ago, I've not found myself opening Twitter/X at all. I'd previously tried Threads and Mastodon (still on Mastodon, and still check it most days) but Neither managed to supplant the place Twitter had in my habits. Judging by the notification badge, there's a joke in here about Twitter behaving like a needy ex, but that is perhaps best left for others.

I'd need two of those to replace our 8212zl. We have 20 10Gb/s fibre lines, and another dozen or so 1gb fibre links. so that's four of the six bays filled. We might be able to get away with 1 10Gb/s copper per server to each side of the chasis, but I'm pretty sure the reference designs for hyper-v and vsphere clusters require more connections than that. Also feels wrong to not be upgrading the backbone links to 40gb/s given it we went to 10gb/s in 2009 and we have project on the horizon where being able to throw >10Gb/s from off site to the media suite is on the wish list. I mean I'm glad to have something modern as an option as a 'natural' successor the venerable procurve, but just sad it doesn't seem to have more oomf that the sixteen year old 8200zl.

Putting corporate greed and mis-management to one side for a moment; it's the Mergers and Acquisitions, and subsequent de-mergers/devestments that really cause the problems when it comes to modernisation and consolidation of banking/utility IT systems. A friends dad was 12 months off completing a *15 year long* project to merge two banks IT systems and processes, when they were suddenly forced to de-merge. From what I understand, he basically quit on the spot. The de-merger took another decade. I worked there briefly as a temp five years into the merger project. There was at least one process that required staff to print an email with some codes, walk across town to a (mostly) mothballed site where a terminal existed, enter the codes, hit print and then walk the length of the building and up a floor to where the last line printer was, collect the print-out and return to the first office to cross check each line against the output of another system running on NT. The building appears to still be moth-balled which suggests that system might still be in place!

If a second line on a diverse route via separate ISP is not viable you might be able to pay for 4hrs break-fix on your primary line?

I expect since not many will have deployed this to production DCs, the AD team will be keeping an eye on DC related tickets, so open one sooner than later, and you may find you get CE (PFE) level tech engaged after a day or so.

Dunno, we paid less that twice that for a somewhat better spec’d, ‘better’ branded, [emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji640]][emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]]” screen with five year warranty, in a situation where we couldn’t go and get competitive quotes, and the supplier new it. Honestly [emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji640]][emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]]” should be the minimum for any classroom, and given how affordable they are , the price of [emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji639]][emoji6[emoji640][emoji637]]” boards *has* to be something extraordinary to persuade people the savings out weight the benefit of their [emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji640]][emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]]” brethren

Its been four/five years since I was using it, but I seem to recall excluding folders was possible. https://www.thinkscape.com/SharePoint-Online-File-Migration-Tool/#:~:text=Use%20optional%20file%20name%20filters%20and%20exclude%20paths,exclude%20files%20that%20are%20over%201GB%20in%20size. Skim reading the above, I feel as though I probably did similar to avoid some legacy redirected folders like appdata / downloads / recycle bin that has been hanging around on the fileservers since 2009.

But seriously, open a ticket with Microsoft.

Pretty sure it will be some sort of machine account password change problem. Probably clients not using modern methods, caused by either some misguided gpo/setting being forced from long forgotten legacy setting, or a client being well out of date (what client versions are in play?) or a bug where modern behaviours aren’t working when they should be in the October updates. The other possibility is replication not working (if snapshots were used during the dc upgrade very bad things could have happened), but it could just need a nudge. The final thing is something I haven’t seen in years, but some client side recovery tools used to roll back machine state to before its last machine account password change. Is there any chance this might be happening?

create a 'dummy' assignment using the assignment app in the Team, and this provisions the Student Work library, which can then be added for easy access as a tab.

Oh thanks for the tip about the new requirement to have and Application registration. If you are using SDS and Teams you can set an assignment in the class team to do exactly this. The folders are put in the Student Work document library.

You might be surprised with a P1 AD problem on their new shiney platform. FWIW, i'd be looking to see if clients are trying to use NTLM and that is blocked on the servers, and also something around the computer default passwords which has changed (perhaps clients are blocked from changing password, and the passwords are expiring?) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/whats-new-windows-server-2025#:~:text=Improved%20security%20for%20default%20machine%20account%20passwords https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/whats-new-windows-server-2025#:~:text=Legacy%20SAM%20RPC%20password%20change%20behavior edit: machine passwords don't expire in versions prior to 2022+ I haven't seen any info to suggest that's changed either. But the symptoms to me do sound like an issue occurring at / after a machine changes its password.... So, is replication actually occurring properly between the DCs? On a problem machine, is the pwdlastset attribute the same on both domain controller?

Open a ticket with Microsoft. https://support.serviceshub.microsoft.com/supportforbusiness/profile you'll need to do it with a credit card and a personal Microsoft account.

If you are in a position to kill the power to the fused spur, you're probably in a position to open the box and disconnect the battery. That said, turning the network switch port off and on again is very much more comfortably on the IT side of the system.

While not a Bromcom school, the challenges are universal. Inventry used to have a windows application that way perfect for this. Super fast for the teacher at the gate and went straight into the MIS. For some reason they replaced with an app that takes multiple taps and some typing to find students. They could of course tap in, but by the time we re-jigged things (physically) to make that possible we were using a third party system for attendance, at which point you have a race condition between inventry, and the teacher in the classroom on a system that wouldn’t see the data from inventry for at least 15 minutes. Furthermore there (was) the issue of cascading P1 mark back into AM reg if AM reg mark was absent (but I don’t think we do that anymore) These days the SLT member notes the name/tutor group on paper and passes that to reception, if the student arrives early enough. A bit later (but starting before P1) the gates are further secured and students have to register at reception and give an explanation. This data is entered into the third-party system which also handles sanctions and rewards. The attendance office reviews lates etc shortly after the start of P1 and begins the process of contacting parents for absences or persistent lates. This is definitely a set of processes we would be expecting any replacement MIS to streamline.