Soulfish

Application pack says w/c 11th July, but at the moment we're hoping to hold the interviews 7th July.

As John says we did advertise previously, but unfortunately didn't end up appointing. Hoping to be second time lucky!

Cheers - appears that hardware is in the wrong position

Hi All, We're now advertising for the post of IT Support Technician at the Hammersmith Academy in London. We're a brand new academy set to open in September, with the building being handed over soon! There's lots going on and as a new school you'd be joining a very small team of people at a very hectic time as we move on towards September. Salary is 25k (although more may be available for exceptional candidates). More info and job packs etc can be found at Hammersmith Academy - Hammersmith Academy - School info - Vacancies - IT Support Technician JD is attached to this post. If anyones got any questions feel free to post or drop me a PM and I'll do my best to answer them IT Support Technician Application Pack.pdf

I'm actually in exactly the same position (brand new complete new build non-BSF school with no managed IT provider), and we had also always anticipated going ParentPay. Reading this thread is making me reconsider however. I'm not overly keen on Parentmail (we're already signed up for an alternative messaging system), but how does everyone find the alternatives?

Current plan for entire of summer = Build, configure and setup new IT infrastructure for new build school. Considering there's currently no existing school, the building isn't finished yet, we want staff working in around a month and I have no staff yet I think I've got my work cut out

I do something similar at the moment. Roughly 1.5 - 2 hours car/train/tube/walking to get to work and the same to get home again. Much better role, much more money and a much better team of people to work with persuaded me to take the role. I am looking to move ASAP However!

We're not using FMS, so that's out. @bossman - that looks ideal. I'll have to download the trial

No one does any form of asset and inventory management?

That should work and give you an amazing system . Lightning fast!!

You would get speedups, but the issue I see if getting the virtual hard disk images deduplicated otherwise your going to need more space than the SSDs are going to provide. Without the fancy tech that Citrix/VMware provide with their VDI solutions you generally have to create lots of virtual hard disk files for each VM.

SSD for VDI is great, providing your VDI solution and/or your SAN solution can utilise it . If you're using something like XenDesktop with either PVS or their new Machine Creation Services with a SAN that does dedupe/thin provisioning then you'll get some amazing speeds. Or if you wait for the new intellicache feature to work with XenServer/XenDesktop that would also allow you to use local disk (or SSD) to cache the VDI images on each server and once again SSD would be great there

Lots of shiny kit - one of the reasons I'm bringing work with me I have too much stuff still to get quotes for! And yes lots of pretty pictures

I don't actually have any servers at the moment. Or a network. Or a building. Our entire IT infrastructure currently consists of 6 laptops .

Looking at asset and inventory management and was just wondering how everyone here does it? I've read lots of threads and done lots of searches on the subject, but I'm interested to see if there are any solutions people are using that I haven't considered or if people have any opinions on what we're looking at. Essentially we're looking for a full asset management system for everything including IT equipment. One that we're liking the look of is Asset Management Software and Asset Tracking, but unfortunately its not cheap. Our director of finance has used AssetGuard in the past and likes it. Whatever system we use we'd like it to be able to read in barcode data from some form of scanner (the parago system uses ipods/iphones to do this) to either create new assets or update asset information while out and about the site. We really don't want to use an excel spreadsheet and unfortunately due to a million and one other tasks as the moment dont have time to build/develop our own system. So what does everyone else use? Any good systems, and any we should stay away from?

Too much to do and finish

Well I'll be downstairs in the bar once I'm checked in but if no one else is around yet I may be forced to do some work!

Hopefully I'll be there around 6pm depending on traffic. I do have a 5-5.5 hr drive though!

+1. I know a fair few large companies that are looking to move away from BES wherever possible (where they don't need the million and one features that full BES provides) to activesync based devices. Activesync has caught up compared to several years ago, and iPhones/Windows 7 based phones are pretty good now

Had the same Dymo at my last place and tbh it lasted pretty well. Which model did you have?

If you're public sector definitely purchase the phones through the Buying Solutions mobile contract framework direct from O2/Vodafone/Orange. I've yet to see normal contracts that come close to what a lot of them offer, although it depends on just what you want. The other framework agreements (like the Crescent frameworks) are also pretty good.

Ohhh I'd also be interested to see what people do. Putting in a new network, so looking at labelling everything. Currently looking at getting a DYMO | RHINO 6000 but would be interested to hear what others are using

XenDesktop 5 is radically different to XenDesktp 4, so stay away from XD4 guides if you can (for anything other than basic this is how it works info!) . Citrix Product Documentation Library is a good start, and has some nice guides on setting up quick PoC tests. The citrix forums and brianmadden.com are also good resources. I'll have a think and post up some other links when I've got five minutes

I'm aiming to get there for around 4-5ish on the Wednesday. Staying both nights, but I own an embarrassing lack of geeky clothing

Insight, WStore and ITQs through buying solutions CITHS framework are how we tend to buy. ITQs make it nice and easy when we know exactly what we want to get some really good pricing