psydii

There is someone here who worked for RM (RM were there when the subdomains of .sch.uk were created back in 1998) and now works for Nominet. I'm drawing a blank on their name *EDIT* Steve Forbes (not sure of his handle), but perhaps they remember he knows someone who remembers?

Just to be clear, I'm not advocated for removal of the executive and non-executive boards, just that if an LA school landed themselves a comparable fine, it would be a very real possibility.

We have a slightly older (2017) Aruba IAP setup. Its great, and all support issues are dealt with promptly. Just received a replacement AP last week, and a couple of weeks ago had a bit of a glitch with airwave and that was resolved promptly. This support and warranty coverage was all included in the initial price. We regularly have 800+ devices on the wlan, broad mix of staff laptops, shared trolley laptops, 1:1 dfe stock laptops, iPads, BYOD and hundreds of student phones (that absolutely can't be in school can they, because you're not allowed to have a mobile in school are you, dear student...)

At the most basic level without vendor specific tools... either a wpa2/3 secured network that is only switched on during deployments, or, perhaps if the end user is unboxing the device, 802.1x/user auth based network, I believe you can get public certs for authenticating the network to the device.

Just done a test myself. I am not convinced that it does open instantly in the App with "no downloading". The first time I got a warning that I was in view only until the file was read and given I could see objects loading in, I suggest that "until the file is ready" means "until the file and associated resources have downloaded into the Office Files Cache". The second time I opened the file in this way it was instantaneous. If the file has been hydrated by the OneDrive client in the user-facing folders, opening the file should be instantaneous too. Also I had understood that the locally installed 365 Apps understand what is going on an also use the Office file cache to rapidly sync changes for collaboration. I haven't tested this. As observed by others, you do need to be using modern office file formats with up to date 365 Apps, since docx etc. are actually zipped folders, they don't play well with differential sync, and rely on the office cache for quick syncing of changes.

Would have thought a rule to allow SOLUS to contact devices on the VPN subnet as per the documentation should fix it. In csv: SIMSSERVER10.x.x.xIP, VPNnetwork/netmask,Protocol(TCP/UDP),PortThatSolus/WorskationNeedsToBeContactableUpon e.g. 10.10.1.125, 10.11.23.0/24,TCP,52965 10.10.1.125, 10.11.23.0/24,TCP,52966 10.10.1.125, 10.11.23.0/24,TCP,8739 except that 10.11.23.0/24 is a network address an not valid in the firewall config doc. Also I'd have to pop wireshark on a client and deploy solus to know what ports in which direction are actually required. There are other windows management ports that would need to be open tcp 135, 139, 445, 5985, 5986 and UDP 137,138 spring to mind. You might also want to check the vpn clients can reach your DCs on tcp port 88.

Looked at this a while ago and our our sims support official stance is "don't even try to get this working... not even you psydii" The trouble I have with the LGfL firewall/VPN/MIP system is that how it actually works is fully obscured by their management system, so without experience/knowledge of the underlying tools and systems and how they are configured, working out the correct config for unusual requirements is next to impossible. That said LGfL firewall and filtering is one reason I can sleep at night. Trying to figure this out... Is you SOLUS server in an LGFL subnet or do you double NAT? Do the remote computers, when connected to the VPN, present with IP's from your internal subnets or a VPN sepcific LGfL-managed subnet?

Indeed.

I would observe that if you are trying to 'break' it and struggling, then perhaps the sync process is sufficiently robust to be relied upon. I do commend though wanting to understand how it works, how it breaks and how to fix it *before* you roll it out to your users. For us (OneDrive roll out started with 1709, and completed with 1903) since 2020 students in most courses are exclusively working through Teams so use the webapps. That said plenty of people still work in the desktop apps and also in photoshop (saving to OneDrive folders on the local machine)... It mostly is just fine. Teachers whose classes handle large files have a working practice that reminds kids to save their work well before they log off. We see maybe one student every few weeks whose files didn't sync across before their session logged off. But teachers allocate seats/laptops to specific students per class so we send them back to log on to that pc to recover. If urgent and the student can't remember where they last were we go spelunking for it and between our service desk software, defender and sccm we can usually find which machine they saved their work on, even if they can't remember. I would mention though that nobody should be having 2gb PowerPoints, and if they are causing problems have people re-work them to be smaller? It is not unreasonable for employees to have to alter their working practice when new technology comes into play.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/files-needing-attention-faq-5c944ab8-1dd5-44f3-9dc6-9cd35846f8ab There is an interplay between the onedrive client managed files and the "office file cache" that I do not fully understand. The above document suggests that the "office file cache" is only used if the file is not already on disk and managed by the OneDrive client app. However I am sure I have read (and believe I also have experience of) that for collaboration (i.e. the ability for multiple users to edit the file simultaneously in the locally Microsoft App Suite apps and with others working remotely / on the web) the Office File Cache is used, and some magic keeps the local version in OneDrive sync'd with that. My impression on how this all works is as follows: If the user double clicks via explorer, it triggers the OneDrive client to download it. If the user opens from the web and chooses open in App, the Office File Cache is used. If the user opens a file through a locally installed app using the SharePoint/OneDrive (default) UI, the file (probably) opened via the Office File Cache. If the user forces the file-open UI into the standard win32 control then it is invoking the Explorer based method for opening the file. I have not really tested this thoroughly so I could be wrong... but I'm pretty sure I am mostly right. Anyhow for the best experience you absolutely want to have "File Collaboration - .... by syncing files with Microsoft Office" enabled.

"you can't realistically finger-point in a scenario like this" But if it were a single school (with the fine scaled appropriately), particularly a LA school, I'm pretty sure this would cost the Head and Business manager their jobs, and the governing body would be removed.

I can well imaging that if invetry struggles with a single institution split over several sites it would struggle with multiple orgs (across multiple sites) syncing up with a single central MIS. Curious to know though, in what way inventry struggles with multisite?

ipconfig /flushdns on the sims/solus server should speed up how long it takes for solus to be able to see the client properly.

Generally that's not how things work in the big cloud providers. Mistakes happen. Systems and processes exist to reduce the chance of a mistake getting into production, but they are inevitable. What is learned is what needs to be done to prevent that same human/systems failure re-occurring. If a human pushed the wrong config to the wrong system, then a system needs to be put in place to prevent either that happening again, or happening at such scale so quickly again. Individuals come and go, so there is no point in singling someone out because blaming a specific person prevents the *organization* from learning. Because what ever happens, the next outage will be be triggered by the actions of a different human.

Opened up my inbox this morning to a blizzard of SAN error alarms, and then it went silent. SAN turns out was 'fine' (degraded but fine), it was just that 365 went down in the middle of the SAN telling me its problems making it look like the SAN had completely died. Teams and Outlook were back up for us by about 0820UTC, most people have their files cached by the onedrive client so we are shielded from the current lingering problems on the sharepoint side of the farm. SIMS sits on our SAN so I thought I was going to have a very bad day.

For reference: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/buying-procedures-and-procurement-law-for-schools/find-the-right-way-to-buy Anything over 10K you should check to see if you can just order it off a framework, anything over 40K you should look to see if you can run a mini competition through a framework (though this is where you really have to start making sure you do things right to avoid a challenge) If there isn't a suitable framework or your needs differ from the terms of the framework you can set up and run your own contract and buying process. psydii's note: If it is for a potentially long term contract, and you are not a procurement expert you should be working with one to get this right, they may even come with insurance in case the process is successfully challenged by a disappointed supplier. If above £213,477 you must either use a framework or run a full PCR Compliant buying process, again working with consultants if procurement is not your area of expertise.

They used to have to sue to survive, particularly where they invested a lot of money on development and had either a superior product or to protect their original research and development. That they are in the top three today with a low churn rate show they have a good, competitive product. It is, however, still a fragile position and if the market is not fair and open we all lose.

Has anybody done the numbers and looked at how BringMoreData's graphs would look if ULT had awarded to Bromcom?

The colour chosen I seem to recall is recorded *locally* per user (and per device). If you can find out where, you might be able to use GP to sync the config. I recall I decided it wasn't worth the hassle, and the calendar users should accecpt that the colours chosen would/might be different for each user. Lots has actually changed in outlook since then, so it might be that this is now stored in the users' mailboxes.

I remember back in the BSF days the consultants warning me to be careful on how I ran (small by MAT standard, but quite large from the point of view of a single school) 'tenders'... there was a lot of slack given by the market, but the larger they were the greater risk of a challenge... and would I want my name associated with a case taken to court that would tie up *all* future procurements for *all* schools in the horror of running full OJEU compliant processes every time. We'll have to see how this shakes out, but I fear quite soon that anytime we buy anything more than a class set of keyboards and mice we'll have to use a framework, or external consultants. So, I guess, congrats United Learning, you're famous. They allege they have the government on board for a challenge to the courts considered opinion that procurement law was broken.. which if true doesn't surprise me. I am not sure this ends well for anyone. *these tenders I was running had nothing to do with BSF, they were just interested in helping out a lad who was new at contracts and procurement.

Here's my strategy: write it up - make sure it fits on one page (well two, one for people who like words and one for people who like spreadsheets). Watch it get dismissed/ignored. Gradually eliminate every Head Teacher, member of the governing body, and finance and business team who stood in its way. **cough** Wait. Repeat each year After several cycles yours is the only consistent strategy document left, and there is a long evidence trail for how deviation from the strategy has poorly served the school. You will now be on your third Finance Manager, you'll probably also have a new governing body and IT will be the Head's priority. The strategy you wrote four years ago will now be adopted by the Head and the Finance manager as theirs. IT will now be well funded for 18 months. Make the most of them.

The regularity of the events is astounding. Points to a software/firmware issue in my mind. Just checking the are running latest/stable firmware? Or (long shot) power problems - if you've got UPS's but the switches are not protected, it might be worth cross referencing with voltage drops/spikes etc.

Offline files worked perfectly for me over 15 years across many thousand users and devices (with a wee wobble in the lead up to and shortly after 2775511). I've found OneDrive provides more friction and problems, however they are more quickly visible and resolvable for the end user. We are 'pure' OneDrive for offline access to files these days. (Offline files still is there for the handful of users that need access to legacy file shares, it still seems to work and I've not had any issues that could be traced back to the offline files system). I would strongly recommend that you disable offline files for shared devices though, caching files for users new to a machine chews up server, network and desktop time leading to slow logons. OneDrive on the other hand kicks in after the logon is complete, so files may initially appear to be missing until the client has had a chance to pole sharepoint online for what files should appear where and present them on the user's local filesystem.

I'm old enough to remember IntelliMirror (https://www.techrepublic.com/article/intellimirror-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt/), and while that branding has long gone away, Offline files and folder redirection still exist. I have long been/was an advocate of this way of working, and it seems to be the immediate correct solution to your problem. It does have three caveats. 1) Files modified on a laptop away from your LAN, where there is no VPN, will diverge from what is on your LAN causing version conflicts and potentially data loss if say a member of staff becomes accustomed to leaving a laptop at home and working from a desktop or alternative in the building. 2) Large shared folders are particularly prone to version conflicts and it is not recommended to cache these... however colleagues obviously want to be able to cache these! 3) The Roaming Profile system has been depreciated since 2016, it still exists and where it works remains wonderful, however you will bump into problems, and have to give it up entirely when you move to OneDrive. I would strongly recommend, if your staff are laptop based (and therefore use basically only that computer where ever they are working), that you migrate to OneDrive (via Known Folder Move: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/redirect-known-folders) as quickly as possible, perhaps without turning Offline Files back on, so the improvement is tied to the idea of OneDrive which gives you runway to start implementing other SharePoint/365 based solutions.

I wondering if it might be switch 1 that is the problem if all the others drop off? When switch 1 loses sight of the other two... do the other two remain up and functional? I might also troubleshot by unplugging the redundant paths between the switches... that way you can test what order the switches are dropping out of the cluster and through systematically working through the options for the physical topology isolate which switch (or cable/port) is causing the drops. To be honest, if this was an old procurve network I'd be suggesting you check for spanning tree changes, because a minute is about the length of time would take one of those to reconverge spanning tree after some topology change.... and if it is spanning tree, you can see/infer from the show spanning-tree commmand which port/switch triggered the event.