Soulfish

I'd go for option C: purchase a new server for around 1.5k! Our new Dell R715's with 24 cores, 64gb RAM and 10gb network cards didn't cost 5k . Unless that 5k includes more than just the server (and it'd have to be a lot more!) it's just not value for money. For something as important as a MIS I'd be much happier if it was running on hardware that was in warranty. You can always keep the old server to do secondary tasks (print server? backup server?).

I have to say it just looks like an Intel branded version of a blade server chassis, but without some of the flexibility you get from the HP/Dell/IBM/Cisco offerings.

Well OK the modem is still technically sitting in a box in my office until we move the phone system to the new server room

Our new EMC Celerra array turned up with its own Modem. It's there as a backup connection should something go wrong with the array so EMC can remote in out of hours

What they really need is to team up with HP/Dell/IBM and support running OSX Server on specific versions/configurations of enterprise level servers. If I can't rack mount it then it's not going to be run as a server. If we can't run OS X server then we're certainly not going to be running macs. To me this stinks of Apple sticking two fingers up at the enterprise market and rather than embracing how it works, going "we know better than you, so you'll be doing as we say".

We use the papercut client here. There lack of MSI isn't that big a deal - it runs on login directly from the papercut server (although caches its self locally). They're supposed to be giving us an MSI version at some point, but to be honest I'm not that fussed . What I'm more interested in is getting the features of the manager mode popup available off-the-glass on the embedded Papercut-MF installs .

+1 on Lync. The systems center family of products could be good as well

Well having just done something similar I'll tell you what was on our wishlist for this summer just gone New network infrastructure (actual cabling!), new network kit (Juniper ), new servers for thin client virtualisation, moving everything to windows 7, new wireless network (Ruckus), new SAN. Other things we'd like to do include a new phone system (MS OCS tied into our existing exchange setup), CCTV system (mobotix), centrally controlled door access controlled . Ohhh and an office that actually has space

When we used FOG we had great success with imaging the Dell Latitude 2100 netbooks

After last years debacle I vote for this

Congratulations

Personally I'm a big fan of Backblaze. It's an online backup service that costs $5/month for unlimited space. Having used it for a couple of years now it's a great service that just sits there in the background uploading everything to the "cloud". Saved by bacon a couple of times as well . I know they have a Mac client as well so I thought I'd make the suggestion. Not quite what you were after, but for around £40 a year its great peace of mind and its great if you ever need to get hold of something stored on your PC since you can login and get the file "restored" ready for you to download . Only downside is the time it takes to get everything uploaded. Took me around 4 months of 24/7 uploading, but now its done it's just any differences that are uploaded

Congratulations on the nomination to all at Cutter. Great bunch of guys You mean you missed him at BETT this year, after being "stranded" for so long?

You can have a CA installed on a 2008 R2 DC. I know since we do it here

Spiceworks does Asset management, and can handle purchases being logged through the helpdesk. Best of all its free

For us all IT related purchases have to be bought through the IT Department. Firstly it ensures we know what IT equipment each department has, it also ensures that only compatible equipment and software is purchased. Secondly in 99.9999% of cases we can get much cheaper pricing for better products. By using our existing suppliers and government contracts (such as those offered by Buying Solutions and other regional consortia) we can ensure that we're getting the best price. If an IT order is received by the finance department (and all orders have to go through them anyway) then it gets forwarded onto us if we haven't already signed off on it.

We're using XenDesktop and Wyse Xenith clients here. Around 100 desktops so far with plans to scale that in the next year or two. Working really well so far. We only paid around £200/unit for the Wyse Xenith, and that was with a premium because it was a new unit in high demand because of it being a "zero client" for XenDesktop. The Wyse C10 was around £170ish

From everything I've heard they're supposed to be pretty impressive bits of kit. Not had the chance to try one myself though

I used to run FOG on CentOS 5.3 (which was then upgraded to 5.4) ontop of Citrix XenServer.

+1. At the end of the day Wireless isn't a big thing for Cisco. They offer it more because they have to. I don't believe it's a bad system, but I don't think it has the capabilities of the dedicated enterprise wireless vendors out there.

Great news Time to upgrade

SCCM with MDT 2010 here. WDS with MDT 2010 is easier to setup however, but both are capable of having a single hardware independent image

More info would be great. Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post it publicly. If you've got pricing structures they'd be great as well

Just saw that over on xkcd. Another great comic

I sure hope not - our boiler keeps packing up