sidewinder

Maybe easier to just get a wireless card with a detachable antenna and then attach something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/OMNI-DIRECTIONAL-WIRELESS-SIGNAL-BOOSTER-ANTENNA/dp/B005ERFXXI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1334667878&sr=8-3 which could be mounted on the roof Of course that is less useful if he has more than 1 PC I've got a feeling wireless repeaters are quite specific about which routers they work with, and I would have thought you would need more than the wireless key and SSID to set it up

I know there have been loads of VOIP threads already, I have read the vast majority of them! It is something we really need to get done here, just trying to consider our options. Quick overview of our school & network: - 3 sites, each connected with 100Mb fibre and VPN between each. External access is 10Mb EFM line. - Old (around 10 years?) internal phone system in senior department, 6-8 external numbers, as for lines, not sure. Can't find an ISDN box or anything, not sure what comes in. - Approx 30 extensions at this site - Other 2 sites just have 3-5 standard phone lines per site First of all, hosted or internal? Everything I have heard so far says avoid hosted unless it's only a few users, which I have no problem with. Opinions? Should I be going for total VOIP including SIP trunks or just internal and keep analogue lines? (I'm thinking keep analogue lines, for now at least) Finally, what is a ballpark figure I should be looking at for a controller, and per handset? Also, I was thinking perhaps I could start learning Asterisk/FreePBX, buy a couple of cheap IP phones and get a whole test setup and potenially do it myself. Or (bearing in mind my limited VOIP knowledge, which will improve) should I be looking at purely off the shelf solutions? Finally, with the links between schools, is it realistic to have the VOIP traffic passing over the VPN or could that be problematic? Thanks!

We use Inty MailDefender here, works very well

All sorted now....I did it in 5 minute chunks, re-synched DC's and checked a few clients had updated before I did the next change - seemed a bit risky doing it all at once since I assume there would be authentication problems if the clocks got too far apart.

Yes...and it was only last week I was reading a thread where someone warned not to let the virtual DC's sync from the host and I thought 'ah, I better change that' I actually added a physical DC last week, whether that has anything to do with it I don't know, it's probably more down to the virtual DCs I would guess Edit: actually yes, because a virtual one was still the PDC emulator. I've now changed that to the physical DC

I especially like that you've just plonked it in the kitchen, after all where else would you put a fruit machine?

I'm not actually sure how this has happened, but I've just noticed that all clocks, on servers and all clients are half an hour slow. I imagine because they are ALL wrong then we're not getting any issues with Kerberos (hence why I've only just noticed it) but how do I go about getting it set correctly? Just change the clocks on the DC's?

I didn't go to uni, I'm not really sure why but I chose to do an HND instead. It hasn't harmed my career, I'm earning good money and have enough experiance that I doubt a lack of a degree will hurt me much as far as IT jobs in this country go. However....I really regret not going, REALLY regret it. Ok I might have been a year or 2 behind where I am now earnings wise, and would have had a large student loan, but I think it would have done me the world of good when I was younger - its only in the last few years I would say I am a confident person, uni probably would have sped that up a lot. And from talking to plenty of graduates, it does genuinely sound like 'the best years of your life' Also, I would really like to work abroad in the next few years, not necessarily in IT, but I'm finding that my lack of a degree could be quite a big disadvantage away from these shores.

Start at £1m and let him haggle you down

That's the model we have at our 2 bigger sites - been rock solid since I installed them last year, no complaints

We have Watchguards here too. Nice and simple to configure the firewall - setting up web filtering/spam filtering etc is a bit of a faff although the price for them makes up for it somewhat

That is really interesting actually, thanks! To be honest I didn't really do a huge amount of research when I set it up, just assumed there would be a huge overhead. I'll make it all fixed size VHDs then, means I can split the data up a bit too

I'm re-organising our Hyper-V hosts, and most migration is easy with SCVMM but this one could be a problem. It's a file server with a fixed size VHD for the system disk, but a local RAID5 array of 3 disks for the data connected as a pass thru disk (as it seemed like there would be too much overhead making it a virtual disk) If I moved the VM to another host, recreated another pass-thru disk on there (probably a larger size one), then restored all the data to that disk, should all the shares stay intact? I'm thinking in theory they should, since everything about them is stored on the system disk, and as long as the data is in the right place (D:/) with the correct permissions, it shouldnt matter that it is technically a different disk. Is that correct? I'm going to test all this before I start anyway, but just wondering whether I'm correct or am I missing anything?

I got it too, and it does look genuine to me, genuine as in a genuine marketing survey. Probably wont bother completing it though - a minute/no chance of winning £750 is not really worth future spam

Thankyou for this, so simple I dont know why I didnt think of it before. Previously had everything writing to a single file, which obviously made it a huge pain trying to search through for a single PC/user

Seconded. So much fun, though not so sure about for a stag do If you want laser tag try Adrenalin Rush - Welcome to the Frontpage - that is run at our school sports ground in Chiswick

It's not a surprise to be honest. I can't see where they have an advantage over online and supermarkets. Big release - people either order online and get it cheaper and on day of release/before day of release, or they go to Asda/Tescos who (I assume) sell them as loss leaders or sell them cheap when a certain amount is spent etc. I can't see who would go to Game to buy a new release at full RRP when those options exist. I realise they could probably never compete with supermarkets but surely could get a bit closer to online prices?

Done Agree with Pete's point though

I had an unusual IT upbringing...born too late for the home computer craze, yet around 1990 when everyone else was getting a NES, my parents decided to give me their old BBC Model B instead. Annoying at the time, but at least I got to understand things a bit more, and learn a bit of basic, even if it was after everyone else! Acorns at school but never knew much about them, wish I had understood more at the time because they were great machines. At home I had a 486 until about 1998 then an original Pentium 100Mhz until about 2001 when I finally had enough money to buy myself a modern PC! But those old computers were the ones that got me interested in hardware, taking them apart, praying they still worked so I didnt get into trouble with my dad, upgrading bits and being amazed that you could make them go faster!

Thanks, very good point. That's the sort of thing I needed to know. For that alone, I think I'll avoid them

One server has Hyper-V VMs on it, the other would be user data. I use SATA for almost everything currently, do have SAS drives for system disks in some servers but thats it.

What do you all use? In the past I've used WD RE drives since they have a large cache and are listed as enterprise class. However currently only the 1Tb seems to be available, and as drive prices are still quite high, it isnt cheap (although £100 per drive isnt too bad I suppose) Also, I'm dubious about using such large drives for RAID5 following various discussions on here Realistically can I get away with 'normal' grade SATA drives or should I stick to the enterprise ones? And do any other manufacturers make drives similar to the RE4? Or should I just go for the 1Tb and use them in RAID1? Realistically 1Tb per volume is about what I need (we're a small school).

Not seen it in person yet but judging by the size I don't think it's repairable!

Thanks for all the ideas. I will present them all and some rough costs to SMT. It would be nice to have something adjustable ideally but I'm not sure what sort of budget they are looking at

Our junior school has been allowed to purchase a video camera for recording school plays. At first I didnt think it would matter too much which model they got, now though I've come to my senses and realised it will be ME that probably ends up having to convert it to DVD, unless any come with such software? All the camcorders seem very cheap these days, and I havent used one for years. I see they mostly record onto SD card, which is great, but in what format, and am I going to need to buy a copy of Premiere or similar to get this stuff onto DVD or do they usually come with such software? Budget is about £3-400