_techie_

Hi, Yes we have 3 physicals left (one Physical DC, Backup Server and Another Physical host that has a few small roles). I have it set to backup to Veeam Repositories (one on the actual backup server, and the other on the last physical host, but mapped back to the backup server). It seems to be working great, but the only lacking point I can see is that you cannot run SureBackup on the Endpoint Backups from within VEEAM B+R to validate the backups. I have even tried a restore of the last physical host as a test back to the Virtual infrastructure as a VM, which works brilliantly!. I did shutdown the last physical host, and disconnect the vNIC on the restored VM to negate any duplicate IP issues etc. You need Veeam B+R 8 Update 2b, and a specific version of Veeam Endpoint (0.9??) but have a look at their site, I think something is on there. Cheers. Mark Wiliamson

I think it was the config of my virtual lab and the network side of things IIRC. I rang VEEAM support in the end and they guided me through the creation of the virtual lab, and got it working.

Hi We have a number of WYSE Xenith units here. I have come across an issue where if the Ethernet cable is unplugged and the unit restarted, the device is essentially unlocked. We have had an issue where a units client name was reset, thus stopping the printer mapping from working. Reading the wyse guide, this can be locked down in the privilege entry, with a line of lockdown = yes. However it is unclear what level to set the privilige entry to... Anyone done this? Cheers _techie_

Thanks for that.... I'll have a look at your suggestion! Seems I have some work to do. Cheers muchly.

I did backup the course, but only received a MBZ file. You cannot export as a traditional ZIP in 2.2 Extracting this just gave me a load of XML files, and some files without any extensions with random filenames. This is very annoying! Cheers for your suggestion though.

Hi. We have a Moodle 2.2 Site, and I have two courses which I would like to download all course files for in bulk. These are simply assignments, PDF documents, power points, and hyperlinks. Is there an easy way to do this? Previous experience of moodle was 1.9, and simply browsing the moodledata directory and copying the contents was the easy way. There just seems to be DAT files in the moodledata directory in 2.2 Cheers Mark

Buy VEEAM V7. You can backup to disk, then tape. Works seamlessly.

We have an interesting issue with IE11 and History: If no previous history was already recorded, IE11 did not record any history. I resolved this, by adding the S attribute to the History folder in the users profile, which works great, bing bong, history is working and recording fine in line with other policies. I am now working on mandatory profiles for our students, which is working great so far, apart from History (and Recent Items more later on this one!), which I want to redirect. I have added the S attribute to the redirected folder as a logon script, which is successful. I have tried using a GPP reg key to do the IE History folder redirection (HKCU\...\UserShellFolders\History > L:\IE_History), which works okay, but when using IE11 in use, the history just doesn't work quite right, and causes IE to crash. I have tried also adding a GPP reg key for Shell Folders, as well as UserShellFolders, but again this causes instability in IE11. Remove the redirection, and history works smoothly again, but, obviously, at logoff, all history is wiped, due to the mandatory profile! Any ideas/policy changes/etc to keep this running smoothly? I have spent a while on this! Cheers Mark

Hi, We have an odd issue here, with Airplay. Originally our Apple Tv's were on wired connection, and we had an SSID for our windows managed domain laptops. Airplay worked great, but we had broadcast type issues with our domain laptops on our Wireless as I had enabled multicast on that SSID to make Airplay work. Back to the drawing board! After creating a new hidden SSID for my Apple TVs and iPads to use Airplay, sticking them on their own VLAN, getting all the ports tagged and Firewall rules set, we now have a weird issue I cannot resolve. The Apple TVs are all upto date 6.1.1 and both my devices are on 7.1.1 Airplay from my iPhone and or iPad Mini works fine, but the initial connection to any of our Apple TVs in school always results in a 10 second delay. Once connected, everything works great and it is zippy and responsive. Our boarding housemistress has a 3G iPad Air and Apple TV 3 and the Airplay connection there is instant. Both my own devices still have the 10 second initial delay. We all have authentication bypass on our Lightspeed filter settings and same block level. Both my devices Airplay instantly at home, and I have reset my network settings on my phone and pad but still the issue exists. I can only assume it's a Meru Config issue somewhere. Any ideas? Ta Mark

Turns out it was the multicast flag on that SSID. Turned it off, and now laptops speedy again! Happy days. Cheers Mark

Hi. We only have active inspire on wired teachers desktops, albeit they are on the same VLAN, and broadcast domain as said laptops. How would I find out about the 2x2:2 stuff, and what does it actually mean? I did have a look at inSSIDer, but didn't get any further with it, can you use it to gauge wireless coverage and "black spots/poor coverage"? Seems like I have some more testing tomorrow to do, and experimenting with settings on the meru controller, and getting the stopwatch out! As far as I am aware, we (IT Support) have no 802.11b devices, but we do allow BYOD (on seperate SSID, VLAN and subnet). Since the AP's are sharing wireless signal, would this have any impact? Also, if I was to setup another VLAN, SSID, and scope/subnet just for the Apple TV's and iPads, with multicast enabled just for that SSID, would the performance just for those devices suffer, or is it just a limitation of a Windows kit not being upto the job??? LOL

Our prep domain laptops are also on the same vlan (1-default) as the Apple TV's (wired into LAN) and only certain iPads are allowed onto the same SSID. I also have another two SSID's which use a seperate VLAN, and subnet and DHCP scope, but have not enabled multicast on this SSID. Would enabling IGMP on all switches make any difference (clutching at straws here). What exactly are the negative effects of using multicast (a brief explanation of the issue, as I understand what multicast is, just not quite how it can be applied etc.) I do have another issue in that one iPad user also uses vnc viewer to wander around his classroom and teach from (connects to his teachers desktop PC.) as well as use the Apple TV in his classroom (that's another issue altogether!). Cheers Mark

Thanks for both your replies guys... The wireless cards are Qualcomm integrated to the laptops, and yes we are on the latest drivers. As regarding firmware, I presume you mean updating the BIOS in this instance? I do have multicast enabled, this was to allow our apple tv's and iPads work together. I am unsure whether broadcast is on, but I doubt it. The problem only seems to be located in our prep department. It is windows 7 enterprise, we rollout all updates via WSUS, but how would I find out about the hot fix rollup? All updates are downloaded to the laptops in the evening. AV scans are also scheduled for this time, 6pm prior to the WSUS updates. Apart from a few applications, the policies are the same. We have offline files disabled and all users have folder redirection for my docs, music, favourites etc etc. Generally at Logon we have roaming profiles which can vary between 3-10MB dependant on user. I am looking at mandatory profiles for our prep students, as we do have lots of niggly issues with profiles at present. Hopefully by doing this I can keep the profile small and under control. I am unsure on your last few questions! I presume MCA is something related to multi channel, and SCA is single channel? What benefits would having 5GHz and 2.4GHz do? I am aware that the firmware on the access points was 'downgraded' to work with the current firmware on the controller. We are due a controller update in the summer to the 3200 series and system director 6. After what you have mentioned, I am now possibly considering putting the Apple TV's and Staff iPads on their own VLAN, Subnet and DHCP scope, so that I can enable multicast just for that VLAN. Thanks for your help, I now have a starting point for moving forwards. Cheers Mark

Hi, We have an MC3000 controller, 320iAP's and 20 HP 250 laptops in our Prep school. The laptops are N compatible wireless. There are 8 classrooms with 6 AP's feeding the classrooms, and one in the staff room/reception area. There is Approx 1 AP per classroom, with 100Mb uplinks to the AP's via an HP 2530 PoE switch. 1Gb backbone via Fibre and uplinks back to the core switch and controller. No error on any of the switches, so I am slightly confused as to what's going on. Meru performance around the rest of the school is fine, and we have 10 laptops per floor in science with 1 AP per classroom there without complaints either! Logon performance is slightly reduced than with a normal wired LAN connection, (Approx 50 secs vs 30 secs for the Wired). However this was testing one laptop. The connection speed recorded on the laptop was 65MBps, but I am getting complaints about slow and failed logins with pupils (no error messages were able to be provided however). This seems like some kind of bottleneck/throughout issue. Would having 1GB uplinks resolve the issue to each AP? I think that this would just push the bottleneck to the Gb uplink so would not solve the issue! I have been wandering around with one of the laptops and the Meru system director, and hopping between AP's is fine, and connecting to all AP's is fine. All AP's are reporting in fine too to the controller. Is there any decent wireless troubleshooting tools, or someway of determining where a possible problem.could be within the rest of the network? Cheers Mark

Hi, As this is a free product, it does have some limitations, however it is one of the easiest to get started with and start understanding MDM. We currently have some iPad Mini's enrolled on it for tracking and assignment really. Purchasing of Apps and distribution is a whole seperate process and covered under the Apple VPP (Volume Purchase Program). You can get discount on bulk apps purchased, but for your school, but this wouldn't cover BYOD without your students being managed under Meraki (needs a profile installing). This sis something I have been thinking about, and it would need some sort of app portal for staff to recommend apps for students to use, then download, but have been purchased by school as part of the Apple VPP. Hope this answers some of your questions. Mark

Hi Rob, yes its Mark the Network Eng from the girls school! Perhaps you could send me some screenshots of your setup on the NPS/Meru on how to do this? You have my work email? Cheers Mark

Hi Today with support from MERU, I finally got our captive portal working with our SSL cert! Long overdue task! We have a VLAN for BYOD associated to a SSID with which the captive portal works. This uses RADIUS authentication and AD credentials so that users in our boarding houses can be tracked for safeguarding reasons. This is currently for both students and staff, however I would like to provide slightly more elevated access for Staff to certain web services on our LAN. I was intending on setting up a new DHCP scope, mapped to another VLAN on the Meru along with a new SSID for the staff to use. Our Sonicwall could then allow access to certain servers. We also have our content filter, the Lightspeed rocket. Users currently have to authenticate twice on the BYOD SSID. Once to the captive portal and again to the Lightspeed Rocket, as they do not have the Lightspeed user agent installed on their own device. Is it possible to pass credentials from the Meru captive portal to the lightspeed rocket via the RADIUS? Or Is it possible to specify the captive portal to only allow certain AD groups for a certain SSID? (So that when staff connect to their SSID it will only allow them through if they are in the AD All Staff Group?) Any help would be great!! Cheers _techie_

Hi I have VEEAM now in my new job, and I am loving it. I am now getting some SureBackup Jobs setup, and they seem to be passing the "Heartbeat" and "Ping" Tests fine. Its only when I come to do SQL and Mail Servers that I hit issues, and get the Error 10061. On my SQL server that failed the script test, how can I check Port 1433 on TCP/IP is running and configured correctly. Using the VEEAM KB: KB1249: SureBackup SQL Script Verification It says to use netstat -ban and I get a load of information, but nothing comes up as the localhost or IP of my SQL server along with Port 1433.... Slightly confused here trying to get these final details to work! Any help would be great. Thanks, _techie_

Hi, Just getting into the 'mare that is vsphere 5 licensing we have 4 vsphere 5 enterprise academic esxi hosts 1 vsphere 5 standard academic esxi hosts 1 vcenter server 5 standard What is included in the support for the vsphere 5 enterprise renewal costs? Is this a 3 year or 1 year renewal? Cheers _techie_

Hi RobD. Just out of interest, are you at Monmouth Boys School? I can PM you some more details if you like as I'm also at the girls school just up the road.... Keep in touch, anything you need I'm happy to chat, and discuss with you. In basic answer to your question.... Basically about 30-40 VM's per host (we've got win 7 VM's, 2GB RAM, with 25gb hard disk.) Citrix Xendesktop is what we have, so you have 2 main components apart from the VM's. The web access, and the management server running desktop studio. The hardware setup is your basic esxi host setup, with switches linked to a SAN(s) depending on how much storage you need. The more VM's the more hosts and storage you need basically. You would need some sort of calculation done by a citrix architect to get specifics but that's the basics. Disc usage is very disc efficient with Xendesktop as you have gold images that you create other base disc images from per datastore. The actual VM's are tiny 16Mb discs that get pulled out of the base disc image for each datastore. We have 3 SAN's, 2 HP MSA units, with a further HP P2000 SAN added quite recently apparently (I've just started at the girls school).

Hi, Thanks for the info, I know they recommend that you use forward incremental to tape, however, I was thinking about backing up the entire repository to tape, rather than just one job or jobs.... Hence sticking with incremental. I only really want to restore from tape in terms of complete loss of servers and disk backup repository. How are your tapes setup? Do you have one media pool for incremental jobs, and one for full backups? Do you have a set of tapes that you use fore sch week (week 1, week 2, week 3, month Nov 2013....)? What retention have you got on disc in in terms of rollback points to disc? Sounds like you have a similar setup with what I want to achieve :-)

Hi, We currently have Backup Exec 2012 running to Tape for full backups, incremental to disk. I have VEEAM installed, (just waiting on license now!) and have setup some jobs on some small test storage area. All jobs setup as reverse incremental to save space, and make restore points easy to manage. All working well! My plan is go down the following route (just waiting on about 10TB of storage to arrive). All backups to disk first (to make restore quick and simple for requests) then backup to tape. My question! How are other people setting up their backups to tape, and are you using forward incremental with scheduled full backups in VEEAM? With my increased storage, I think this should all be possible. I.E. how many restore points are you running for servers and when do you run your fulls to tape. What about tape rotations etc? Any pointers would be cool! Cheers _techie_

Had a browse through the HDX policies but couldn't see anything.

Hi, We have Win 7 SP1 with Xendesktop 5.6, running on VMware. All VM's have vmware tools installed, and citrix VDA 5.6. I have silver light 5.1, Adobe flash 11, xvid 2.7 and java 7.45 on the VM's. All other tasks seem to perform quite well, apart from playing WMV files both embedded in our firefly VLE, or from a simple network share. This occurs when using our wyse xenith and xenith 2 clients. The problem does not exist when accessing remotely through my workstation with the citrix receiver client, only the wyse xenith boxes. All other video formats seem fine, AVI, QuickTime, FLV etc. and it's nothing to do with IE9 either, as the videos play fine on my other IE9 fat clients, or the addon's in IE. We have tried recoding the video in H.264, which then plays fantastically well. I can only assume it's something to do with Windows media player, and the Wyse units. I have read a lot about a Windows media redirection, but can't seem to see where to configure this on the Desktop Stufdio console, or even if this is possible? Any ideas? Cheers _techie_

I have just changed jobs and have inherited BE2012 with an 8 slot auto loader (LTO5). I have one large media set with 25 tapes. I seem to be having similar issues to yourself. I have been told that you really need to have a specific tape rotation setup, with one set of tapes for full backup over the weekend, that gets done every weekend with a new set. You can then do incrementals to disk in the week if needs must, or have incrementals to a single tape every day if it will fit :-) I have had the awful free VMware VDR to get rid of, a really hateful piece of software. If your virtualised, get VEEAM, backup to disc. VEEAM v7 also supports tape which is something I am looking at implementing once a week with a forward incremental back with synthetic full on a Saturday which then goes to tape and off site on a Monday morning. (I think I migrate use our prep school building which is standalone yet still onsite an away from the two server rooms). It's not just you though, it's probably something to do with your media set, the overwrite protection and write method (append/overwrite). Hope this helps, Mark