jpaterson

IT Systems Manager Closing Date: Monday 12 December 2016 at 12 noon Overview An exciting opportunity has arisen for a forward thinking and collaborative IT Systems Manager within one of Scotland’s leading independent schools located in the West End of Glasgow. The successful candidate will work within a small team of technical IT staff responsible for the design, development, support and maintenance of the School’s mission-critical Microsoft systems. This role includes working on all aspects of Microsoft administration, including strategy, design and implementation. Kelvinside Academy has led the way nationally in its integration of digital learning into the learning and teaching environment. All staff and students use mobile devices daily with interactions often involving the schools virtual learning environment to help ensure that delivery of the curriculum is both relevant and at the forefront of modern capabilities. We are an ambitious School and are committed to delivering an all-round excellent education for our students which equips them fully for the ever changing world ahead of them. Our progress and success to date has recently been acknowledged by the Scottish Government - we are the first school in Scotland to receive the prestigious “Digital Schools Award”. To enable us to continue with the implementation of our strategic objectives in this area, a candidate of the highest calibre is needed to lead the way in maintaining and developing the necessary infrastructure and systems, and to support staff and students as the school progresses the development of its digital environment. Requirements It is critical that applicants understand the concepts and challenges of configuration management, virtualisation, and remote administration. They should possess an ability to develop innovative solutions for the benefit of the organisation as a whole. Applicants will have knowledge of the practice of systems administration, including: identity management, security, patching, packaging, automation and backup. They should also have experience of scalable and resilient systems, having managed multiple servers in a heterogeneous and complex environment. Applicants should possess knowledge and experience including, but not limited to, Windows Server 2008 and 2012 operating systems with associated storage and system operation; x86 and x64 hardware; monitoring, virtualisation including Hyper-V, configuration management databases (especially using the System Centre components for this purpose, e.g. SCCM). The post will involve the management and deployment of systems and services onto our infrastructure platforms which include Azure and Office 365, so knowledge of cloud platforms would be beneficial. The Candidate You should be highly-motivated and enthusiastic about working in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment. You will have the ability to lead changes in the standard infrastructure that supports and delivers core services. You will show a high level of ability to develop your skills and possess a firm commitment to professional learning. Excellent interpersonal and communications skills are essential to the role. You must be committed to delivering an excellent level of customer service to staff and students whilst meeting the organisations strategic goals and financial objectives. Suitable applicants should have a degree relevant to IT Services or vocational experience which demonstrates equivalent professional development. ITILv3 Foundation Diploma is desirable. The successful candidate will be required to undergo PVG checking. Essential Skills and Experience • 5+ years supporting Microsoft Windows systems (Server and Desktop) • Direct systems administration experience of Windows Server 2008 and Server 2012. • Direct support experience of Windows 7. • Proven experience with Active Directory, Group Policy, NPS/RADIUS, SQL Server, Exchange Online (or on-premises equivalent). • Powershell and command line scripting. • Solid networking skills (Routing, VLANS, ISCSI). • Experience of SAN management. Desirable Skills and Experience • Training in or awareness of / interest in ITIL. • Experience with Endpoint management, OSD and patching using SCCM 2012. • Awareness of Wireless technology (Wireless Network Administration) • Microsoft or other industry standard certification How to Apply Prospective candidates meeting the above criteria should forward their CV to: [email protected] Please note that interviews may be conducted prior to the closing date

If you can front for a bit more, the Denon MC2000 is a very good DJ unit. Denon MC2000 | eBay I traded up from that to a Denon MCX8000

Another less hassle way is build a specific golden image from your base image with it already installed.

have you tried the Dreamspark download VS Profressional? Works fine here with program command line.... vs_professional.exe /s /noweb /norestart /CEIPConsent /AdminFile Admindeployment.xml /ProductKey #########################

We use ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus here. Have done for a few years now. Very good, fully featured product, but not cheap if you're needing more than 5 techs or want change management features etc. Looking at System Center Service Manager moving forwards.

Hello folks, It's been sometime since I've been on EduGeek, and I'm on the scrounge for some help... Our entire network was upgraded a year or two ago. New servers put in, hybrid Phys and Virtual environment with a SAN, together with a migration from CC3. Everything is working *great* (touches wood that I haven't tempted fate), but I'm trying to understand how some things were put together (a company did the migration and commissioning of the network - too big a job for me). OK. I've attached a diagram of our SAN / SERVER setup. As you can see, the SAN it's self and the Hyper-V host both have two physical NIC's - 1 x 10G for Trusted LAN / Management functions, and 1 x 10G of iSCSI Traffic. The SAN is a Netgear ReadyDATA 5200 series. the Host server is Windows Server 2012 based, and the switch is a NetGear XSM7224S. Both SAN and host are connected through the same switch, with each function VLAN'd. What I can;t get my head round is, if each switch port is configured to use a specific VLAN, how would the initiator, or the target know to use a specific interface for accessing one another? For example, how does our iSCSI initiator host server know to use the interface connected to the iSCSI VLAN for accessing the SAN? I hope that makes sense, and any comments or responses would be greatly appreciated. Jay

When installing Kodu, are you getting errors post install? For the purposes diagnostics, have you tried installing XNA manually on a workstation, then using ConfigMgr to punt Kodu in? Here, I use a transform during the Kodu install (can't remember why though?), I also have XNA set up as a dependency that ill auto install it if, for whatever reason, XNA deployment was missed.

Yeah, PRTG is good. Easy to set up (dependent on the hardware you want to monitor). Not the cheapest, but it keeps us a head of the curve in terms of monitoring server performance (one specific example is keeping an eye on our SCCM server load - disk space, network traffic, cpu, memory, etc). We also use it to monitor our network infrastructure too. PM me if you'd like to discuss in greater detail.

PRTG here.

Hey folks, Looking for some filtering/edge network advice and ideas. At our edge, we use two firewalls. One firewall, a Netgear SRX5308, handles infrastructure systems connectivity (servers, etc) and inbound services. The other firewall, a Smoothwall, handles all client connectivity and web content filtering for workstations and devices on the trusted network and the BYOD network. Each firewall has its own independent internet connectivity, essentially meaning that the SRX and Smoothwall sit side by side at the edge. This set up has worked well for many years, however, with the introduction of BYOD, of found that I've had to create a lot more rules to allow certain apps and services to work, which is fine, but I fine the networking configuration interface on Smoothwall inelegant and frustrating. The SRX is showing it's performance limitations now, and is going to be replaced with a Ubiquity Networks EdgeRouter. This has prompted me to consider modifying the edge network to a single firewall, hopefully resulting in a single point of ingress / egress, and a single place for my inbound / outbound ruleset. Taking this further, it would involve bringing the Smoothwall behind the new router, and it becoming a web filter only. That's the notion that's confusing me at the minute, Smoothwall only being a web filter. I'm aware that moving the SW behind another router, means I may lose my transparent filtering ability (as all of my trusted network workstations would no longer have their gateway set as the SW - not such a big deal for the trusted network, with GP), but I'm having trouble rationalising (in my head) how the Smoothwall would be configured purely as a web filter. To put this in context, the SW has three physical interfaces, Trusted Network, BYOD (Also separate VLAN, with DHCP server) and External (internet). Trusted network is fairly straight forward, GP will handle browser config for non-transparent connections, WPAD could also take care of non-GP devices. On the BYOD network, nothing need change, clients can have the SW as their gateway (set by DHCP) and continue to have transparent filtering. It's the external connection that's confusing me I suppose. The idea in my head is to connect the external interface on the SW to an interface on the new edgerouter, effectively making it (the edgerouter) an upstream gateway of the SW(?).... but there is something about that idea that doesn't sit well with me, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Does anyone have any thoughts on this idea? Perhaps point out any blind spots, or will it even work (in theory) or is it a recipe for disaster? Thanks for reading folks.

Hey guys, Been a while since I've posted. Lots of changes (social, political and technical) here since this time last year, barely kept my head above water. I was wondering is anyone is using any flavour of Ubiquiti Networks EdgeRouter? We currently use a Netgear SRX5308 for our main edge firewall router. It's a good, well priced piece of hardware, but it does have some limitations, one of which is the speed of the administration interface - which really winds me up. The Edgerouter, also seems a good piece of kit, and if the systems responds better and some better features, I might move over. Anyone using one?

False alarm! It must just take a while to take effect. Still slow moving software! Jay

Hey folks, I've got a conundrum with ConfigMgr. In the default client settings, I've disabled software metering, and I've got some custom client settings for workstations which enables metering. With the custom settings deployed to a top level collection (and after client policy push) , the workstations there have their software metering component disabled. When I enable it on the default settings, it comes back on. Have I missed something somewhere? Any suggestions? Jay

On second thoughts, I suppose using GPP to update or replace the file once (using the "Apply Once and do not reapply" setting) , and once only might do the trick. As all that has to be done is set the file with the snippet above. Once that's done, it should stick and the file can be continued to be updated elsewhere by Chrome. More testing needed.

OK, So I've had a look at the preferences file in greater detail. My proposed solution using GPP would really be a short term fix. This is because the preference file is more dynamic that first thought. It contains information relating to blacklists and auto-update information, which would stay static, probably resulting Chrome not auto updating, and maybe leaving some security holes. if only there was some way to merge and overwrite that snippet of code above in to an existing preferences file. Any scripters or devmins got any ideas?

We have an almost identical set up with Chrome, with an identical problem. I've been working on this all day. So far, working locally, disabling the Pepperflash dll via chrome:\\plugins seems to survive log off and restarts and is the most consistent workaround. However, there does not appear to be a way to disable individual plug in components via the ADM extensions for Chrome. The closest implementation to a widespread solution I have found thus far will still involve GP, but in a different way. As you have your chrome user data directory set via GP, Chrome will save it's user prefs in a subdirectory of that called "default", in a file named "preferences". This is a human readable file without a file extension and can safely be opened in notepad. Assuming to you have the plugin based flash player from adobe installed on an affected machine, when the pepperflash dll is disabled in chrome://plugins, it saves that state in the preferences file, here is what the entry looks like.... "plugins_list": [ { "enabled": false, "name": "Shockwave Flash", "path": "N:\\AppData\\Roaming\\Chrome\\Profile\\PepperFlash\\11.9.900.117\\pepflashplayer.dll", "version": "11.9.900.117" }, { Notice how the state is changed 'false'? Again, assuming you have the adobe plugin-based version of flash installed on an affected machine, Chrome will default to this is the pepperflash component is disabled. OK, so with this "preferences" file, it would simply be a cased of putting it in a publicly accessible, read only share (perhaps netlogon) and using GP prefs to REPLACE the file in the same directory for any given user at the next logon. At the moment I am still testing this, but assuming many of the preferences for chrome are enforced by GP, and that any unique data can be stripped from the file without screwing Chrome, I believe that this could be an effective solution until Google (hopefully) realise this is a problem and rectify in the next update. Thoughts anyone?

No takers? :'(

Hey folks, been a while since I've posted at Edugeek. been keeping my head down following some big projects here at teh school. Long story short... We've moved from CC3 to a vanilla network, with Server 2012 running our AD and DNS. Bar the usual migration niggles, I've got one problem which eludes me... None of our workstations can playback any content on Channel 4OD (When the Flash player window appears after clicking play, and message appears - Error. An error has occurred trying to play the chosen item). BBC Iplayer, STV Player (up here in Scotland) and ITV player all work without issue. At first, following some tech emails with Channel 4OD support, it was suspected that it was a flash player issue, C4OD mentioned that a recent update to Flash affected DRM. However, following many beta installs and downgrades of Flash players, testing on different internet connections and configurations, I've finally established that our internal DNS may be causing a problem. How I came to this was when I first thought that maybe C4OD content delivery servers were maybe blocking connections or traffic from our Ip addresses, and I was generating diagnostics info for this purpose. It wasn't until I was playing about with some DNS setting on the workstations where I realise there may be a problem there. So, in our set up here, DHCP sets the Pri and Sec DNS as the PDC and BDC. Our DNS servers are set up as forwarders (which I have tried public google servers and our ISP assigned, I've even tried entering our routers (which are DNS proxies)without success). What leads me to believe that our internal DNS is at fault is that, on any station, if I set the DNS server manually (say to one of our internal routers) C4OD works perfectly. But when it's pointed at our internal DNS, I get the error aforementioned. The really strange thing is that, as far as I am aware, it only affects the Channel 4 OD site. I mean, the site loads find with no dramas, just teh streaming media won;t play. This is a real head-scratcher for me. Has anyone encountered anything similar, or can point me in the right direction to diagnose this issue. As always folks, any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated. KR Jay

Hmm not so sure about what version of SMB it supports. Datasheet doesn't help much. As a storage system for our school, it has been on my radar for some time. Our environment (I believe, in terms of server footprint) is too small for a full scale SAN system, but our storage needs are growing too. Also, with us having a 10GB backbone, I feel that it is a good middle-of-the-road solution for us. I am trying to get a 30day eval unit from a preferred supplier, so I'll run some tests with Windows backup, as you suggest SYNACK

Thanks for your response TeeJay. I had thought about that. However, one of the reasons I wanted to use iSCSI was to work with the data using NTFS permissions / ACLs. I think that the CIFS / SMB shares that you create will only support AD authentication done via the NAS. And even at that, I'm not so sure about support for security principle objects (like CREATOR/OWNER) etc and permission inheritance. Do you have / use a ReadyDATA system? What are your experiences of it?

Thanks DMcCoy, Exceptionally helpful Jay

Hey folks, I've got a question... I considering obtaining a Netgear ReadyDATA system to consolidate our storage needs, as pat of our domain upgrade scheduled this summer. I've done a bit of reading about mounting volumes as iSCSI targets, but I am not sure of the performance impact of my proposed configuration ... Our physical network was upgraded to 10GB last summer, as part of a three year project to rejuvinate and futureproof the system. The ReadyDATA system comes with an option to plug straight in to a 10GB core. However, let's say I have a server on a 1GB connection, with an iSCSI target connection back to the ReadyDATA system. I suppose this might be a stupid and redundant question, but what would the throughput be from a client system accessing data on the iSCSI target (user data, or a profile perhaps) via a SMB connection (\\1gbserver\10gbiscidata\userdata)? My gut says that the throughput would be down at 1GB, but i was wondering if the ISCSI initiatior hands off connection information to in-coming connections, allowing the connection throughput at 10GB? Thoughts anyone? Jay More info on the ReadyDATA... http://www.netgear.co.uk/business/products/storage/ReadyDATA-family/default.aspx

Just some stuff about this floating about in my head, perhaps someone could validate, or it might give you ideas where to start. -put another nic in your smoothie, configure it on a separate subnet or vlan. enable dhcp and transparent proxy on this interface. -configure your ruckus system to point your guests at the selected subnet or vlan. smoothie should pick em up on dhcp. -configure your policies for transparent proxy to logging mode, perhaps with some default stuff blocked.

Check your PM buddy.

Works just fine on my Win 7 rig on CC3 Network. Have you checked your SSL/TLS settings?