matte53

I had a demo of it last week following on from seeing it at BETT. Full release I believe is due to be around May time, it looked to have the potential to be a decent product. The classroom management element of it though appeared much more basic than the full version of Impero Pro, so whilst would likely be fine for teachers to see what students were up to in lessons, it lacked the more full feature set that possible an IT team might like. From what I've seen this is similar with a lot of the products now, as they try to tick all the boxes of filtering, safeguarding, monitoring, altering and classroom management.

I had a look at BETT and thought it looked reasonable, certainly a big step up from the old Impero cloud offering. However it’s not likely to be ready for release until May time so you’d imagine it’ll be another 6 months at least until any bugs and issues are properly ironed out. We’re currently looking into all our filtering & monitoring options but there doesn’t seem to be one standout platform & reading the numerous threads here there’s some real tales of woe from people for just about all options which makes the decision even more difficult!

I've not been in position long at my current role but the teacher was frustrated with how things previously worked and found things too restrictive and couldn't run a large amount of the software he wanted to. We've put a lot of this right for him but I'm now being asked to provide access to command prompt, control panel among others, all things that normally wouldn't be allowed in the environment, and open the computers up further than I would like to. The thinking behind the cloud based lab was rather than just saying a flat no to his requests, was to provide an environment completely restriction free, possibly running some form of Linux rather than Windows that will never be able to get onto our network. We only have A Level classes of 9 or 10 so it may be a relatively cheap solution. I've never been asked to provide access at this level in any of my previous schools for Computer Science courses and they have always run fine with the staff happy. @AliG - How do you find Cloud 9 works? Do you use if for a similar purpose as described?

Hi All, Has anyone had any experience in setting up a cloud based environment for Computer Science or any other purpose? Our Computer Science teacher is wanting student restrictions to be relaxed which I'm not keen to deploy so I'm looking into the possibility of creating him cloud based VMs that are totally isolated and can be run without worrying about restrictions etc. I've been looking at Google Cloud Platform or AWS as possibilities, does anyone have any experience of doing something similar? Any advice would be great, Thanks.

Job Description Person Spec Closing Date - Friday 10th August

Out of interest what models/specs/numbers did you go for?

@FN-GM, Have you made any decisions yet? I'm quite interested in something similar to replace an ageing SAN & two host VM Ware setup.

https://www.teachinherts.com/find-a-job/view,network-manager_46672.htm

https://www.teachinherts.com/find-a-job/view,network-manager_46201.htm

I've been using this for a month or so and am very impressed. I'm having issues though getting it to work through a Proxy PAC file, it works fine with the manual proxy settings but throws a proxy error up when I try to use the PAC file. Anyone had similar issues?

Has anyone used the Ubiquiti own SFP+ modules? They are quite a bit cheaper than the Mikrotik ones.

Thanks all. Out of interest which SFP+ modules have you been using? I've currently been quoted MiktroTik.

Thanks for all your responses, very helpful. I'm going to look at ordering some in to test them. @whitte what sort of issues have you experienced using DAC cables?

Would be looking at the EdgeSwitch - a mixture of the PoE & non PoE Edge/Lite switches & potentially a couple of the 16 port 10GB Aggregation switches.

After a conversation with @mrbios I'm now seriously considering moving to Ubiquiti Switches & was just after any feedback from others using them & if anyone had any major issues with failures etc? We are looking at implementing a whole new infrastructure with new fibres & expanding to a 10G backbone, replacing some extremely old HP kit. The prices I've been quoted are on a different level to anything else I've received and would really free up some money for other projects. Is anyone using these switches as their core or just for edge purposes? Thanks

I've had quotes from a number of suppliers. Schools Broadband, Exa, RM directly, I'm still waiting on a price from Zen & one other. I've probably been most impressed with Exa so far.

I went to the meeting yesterday & RM spent a couple of hours demonstrating what will be available. Benefits on the current contract include: * User/Group based web filtering through RM SafetyNet. The system has an AD sync tool to update users/groups. User based reporting was much better than the current system * Remote/VPN Access through RM SSL Connect - Again can be managed for users/groups & the ability to auto load an RDP session, drive maps (among other things) on logon. * Greater flexibility & management of Firewall, DNS entries etc * Ability to have management of your own virtual firewall rather than through the central HICS firewall * User based filtering via Transparent Proxy should also be available Having never been much of a fan of RM I was skeptical but they did speak well & the product looked an improvement on anything that has been offered recently. The issue for me is the price, it does seem more expensive than what we could potentially get elsewhere. It all seems very last minute with HICS requesting a decision as to whether you wish to renew by Friday, having only released the actual details of the provider & their offering at the meeting yesterday.... They won't turn anyone away if you don't decide by Friday but if they don't have the numbers they hope for they may not be able to negotiate a cheaper pricing tier with RM. Any thoughts from others as to what direction they may head in?

https://www.teachinherts.com/find-a-job/view,assistant-network-manager_36852.htm The Assistant Network Manager will join this friendly and dynamic team, providing excellent ICT support to the whole school community. The successful candidate will have a good understanding/knowledge of ICT equipment, software, systems and networking. The school is committed to continued professional development and will support the successful applicant with appropriate training and qualifications where required. School days are busy and the position requires excellent, all round, organisational and administrative skills including attention to detail and forward planning. The successful candidate will be required to deliver excellent customer service via the schools IT helpdesk, resolving issues/problems where possible or escalating to the Network Manager. If you are attracted by the challenge and opportunity to work in a vibrant, forward looking educational environment and would like to visit the school or would like an application pack, please contact Sarah Millhouse, Headteacher’s P.A. [email protected] or telephone 01707 280946. Information can also be accessed through our website. The academy is an equal opportunities employer and we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. Applicants must be willing to undergo child protection screening appropriate to the post, including checks with the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Hi, We currently have a single Server 2008R2 that is running both our ADFS & Dir Sync for our O365, not the ideal setup I know but all I had available a couple of years ago. I'm now in the position to be able to migrate this to a more 'ideal' setup as we can virtualise everything & create multiple servers for different roles. Has anybody successfully attempted a similar migration? There appears to be conflicting views on the best way of achieving this, so if anybody has first had experience of this it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Matt

Hi Nick, Thanks - it seems to be pulling the correct groups for the user & I've tried pasting in the role names into the xml file but still seem to be having the same problems. Any other ideas? Having tried adding a standard users into the Domain Admins group to see if it work it still doesn't & it doesn't seem to have updated the roles either. It all works for a user that was previously in the Domain Admin group but it's as if it isn't able to pull down any new updates from the AD. Thanks

Hi, We've been using HAP successfully for a while now but some staff members have noticed that they cannot upload to our Shared Drive (Home drives work fine). I've run some of the JSON Debugging steps & it shows that all permissions are set to 'False' for all users other than Domain Admins. Currently our Staff AD group has Modify permissions on the folder in question, as a test I've added a test user with Full Control permissions to the folder & it appears to now allow file uploads. Does HAP require Full Control permissions in order for it to work properly? I have the drives Mapped as 'Read' - All & 'Write' All & tried both 'Drive Space' & 'Quota' options & have also tried using specific AD groups as well but none of these combinations seem to have made any difference. Has anyone experienced similar & managed to sort or got any ideas to try? Many thanks, Matt

Thanks - I've recreated a default local profile that has halved in size, initial logon is a little slow but all subsequent logons are around the 10-20 second mark, but this obviously leaves the local profile in situ on the machine. Also having issues with SSDs & GPOs not loading, the SSD appears too quick & isn't able to then pull the policy down, it's not consistent either in it's behaviour, some PCs are fine, others never work unless left for a good couple of minutes prior to logon, all very frustrating!

Just out of interest robjduk - how big are your local profiles? Do you delete them on just let them build up? Thanks

Ah ok - it's actually the 'Local' folder (& more specifically the 'webcachev01.dat' file) of the AppData that seems to be my issue, the Roaming folder only takes up a few KBs & I prefer not to redirect this as it has caused me problems in the past with some applications. Proving a little frustrating as all the potential profile setups seem to have something that's not quite right!

Thanks - excuse my ignorance, how do you mean aim the data at users account?