Sephiroth

Predominantly left-handed, but I tend to do single-handed things with my right hand and two-handed things left-handed.

I use a Powershell startup script: $Username=[environment]::UserName $sh=New-Object -com Shell.Application $sh.NameSpace('H:').Self.Name = "(Home) - $Username" Obviously set the last bit to whatever you want to display. I put the home bit at the front as I don't show drive letters (drives me mad that people refer to the 'K' Drive - that means nothing to me on the server!) and the ordering goes by first letter of the name and sends them all over the place.

Awsome, Thanks!

Just a short list this year... Take over a second site Migrate to VMWare from Citrix Install a SAN Set up student emails Bond the Apple network to AD Install 40 new iMacs Setup 2 new Mac Servers Sort through all the hardware from the middle schools in our pyramid Replace dead/dying hardware with the above Configre 3 new VLANs for printing, wireless and telephony Configure Smoothwall to allow traffic across the 1Gb link

No, you only need one, though you can use 2 if you configure it properly (don't ask me how though ) I believe that each stacking kit is 12Gb/s throughput, so 2 together would be 24Gb/s

I have a site full of M5300s. I've not tried stacking with another model, but I do know that they have to have exactly the same firmware version. Also, if you have PoE on one of them, make sure that it is the primary switch otehrwise you won't get the PoE management options

All of my user accounts are created in powershell. If you want some pointers or examples, just ask. That applies to anyone who wants it

I would be very wary of having a single dc that is virtual. I had that for a while when I was setting my network up. The VMs don't keep time very well, so a server that relies on perfect timing for authentication is not advisable as a VM. If you can get another server for a primary DC (anything that runs the server OS will do... an oldish laptop?) then I'd say go for it.

I completely agree with this, hence sort out WDS first, then look at MDT, not necessarily right now! Sorry for confusion.

MDT all the way. Get WDS under your belt then start on MDT as it will save you heaps of time in the future. the learning curve is quite shallow for the basic deployment, but particularly with the latest versions, there are some very powerful settings in there.

I've had something similar before, though with aging hardware. What we did to resolve it was to disconnect 1 cab at a time and leave it to see what happend. when we found the cab that was faulty, disconnect each switch in turn, then each port. You will likely find either a dead port spraying rubbish into the network, a dead switch or a broadcast storm. First thing I would do is check that Spanning Tree is enabled, if your switches have it.

This is the reason that I went with Netgear for my full infrastructure. I use an M7300 (the fiber version of the one that you've linked) as my core switch with 2 10Gb fiber links to each cab, running the M5300s in stacks. I can't fault it. Personally, if your budget allows, I would get 2 M5300 switches with dual 10 input (one toeach switch) aggregated to 1 link for resilliance. I don't know if HP now offer this but Netgear allow you to aggregate ports over 2 switches in a stack. I have this setup with my 3 VM Hosts each with 8 Gb Ethernet ports, 4 on each switch, for example. (hope the ramble makes sense to someone out there!)

Not that one in particular, but I have used Buffalo Terastations before, and can't recommend them. Absolute pain to configure and constantly giving errors, particularly after having to be restarted. That said, I don't know what the latest ones are like...

I would recommend Netgear. their M5*** and M7*** switches are flawless. Either layer 2+ or 3 (if you go 2+ you can just buy the upgrade licence later) and come with 3 year Pro Support, 3 year onsite hardware replacement and lifetime warranty. I've had thm in place for about 5 months now and I've had no problems whatsoever.

+1 for 'Run these programs at user logon'. I tried scripting Papercut to run at logon. Turns out that GP is much more reliable. I would also look to move everything else to GP as most things needed at logon are not options in GP. Since rolling out 2012 R2 I have decommissioned my logon script in favour of GP options with group level targeting.

At risk of sounding facetious, Powershell... I've written powershell scripts to take a csv export created by sims, and do everything for me: Create the user set group membership set and create profile path an permissions set and create home direcotory path and permissions set quota limits for both profile and quota create e-Mail mailbox assign photocopier PIN Dump all information (password, PIN, etc) into a text file A few other things that I can't quite remember at the moment! I have yet to get it to check against the list and disable any account that no longer exists, but I know how to. If anyone wants any more information or code for that then let me know, I'll be happy to help. We did use a 3rd party tool to manage AD but it made a hell of a mess, didn't work properly and lacked a lot of things that I've since put in with simple PS calls. Personally I would never use one again, but that's me.

For me the FX series chips are brilliant for the cost. Intel equivalents generally have more technology in them to make them better, but cost more because of that. I'm not trying to start a flame war, it's all personal prefference, but don't discount AMD as IME they are very reliable.

Personally I would go AMD route as they're considerably cheaper at the moment. I recently got some money for a decent spec pc; AMD FX 8320 (8 core 8 thread, 3.5 GHz, 16MB cache) Basic motherboard to go with it (full ATX with 2 PCIe slots) 4 320GB Standard hard drives 7200RPM ATI FirePro W600 graphics for 6 screens (6 x mini display port - Extremely useful and a good price) 16GB RAM (Crucial DDR3) 2 PCI NICs 500W PSU (XFX Full cabled) Cheap and cheerful case The lot came in at less than £1000. the graphics card was nearly £400, so you shold be able to get a very good machine for your budget. Of course that involves actually building the thing!

That's useful to know, especially as I intend to put it in service in our second site during the summer. thanks.

I have just completely rebuilt my domain from scratch onto 2012R2 and our file server is using deduplication. It is flawless and we have savings of almost 900GB over about 4TB of data (which includes 3 VHDs for our exchange databases).

27. Not bad. I was expecting hight to be honest. I thought I was quite good at reading people.

@njc235: Fair enough. I din't realise this limitation, though I have 2 x 4 port 10G modules. Is the limitation only present when using a single 8 port module or is it over the whole chassis? I'll be iritated if it's the chassis, as the previous NM here had HP design our previous network infrastructure themselves.

That code encompasses both the M7300 and the M7100. At £4k it'll be the fiber one I assume? Yes, you'll need a licence to upgrade from L2+ to L3, though I've seen no reason to upgrade yet. the good thing is that if you need to in the future, you can just buy that licence.

I'm trying to move everything to AMD at the moment, as their pricing is so much cheaper. My 3 VM Hosts are running dual 16 core opterons at 3GHz. Intel's answer to that is to make each core run 2 threads, which seems silly to me (I know that they have chips that report that they have 24 cores, but they're just hyperthreaded 12 core). Personally, for the current price difference, I can't warrant the extra cost to go Intel.

I wouldn't say that it's quiet, but it's certainly quieter than any other switch that we have, with the exception of the M5300 series switches that we are using as edge switching. As for the ethernet... It's a Fiber switch, not copper. If you want a 10G Copper switch, look at the M7100 which has 24 x 10G ethernet ports + 4 combi SFP+. Bear in mind that you would need the equivalent 10 capable cards in the back of your servers (without meaning to sound patronising... sorry). I don't know what your setup is, but I would recommend having your core ONLY serving your cabinets (in our case the core rack is completely seperate from the server rack, but I would at least have a dedicated server switch stack). I like the latest versions of them because when you stack them, you get 1 IP address and 1 interface for the stack, not 1 for each switch. Also means that you can have aggrigation over several switches. I have 1 x 10G fiber to 2 seperate switches in a stack set to a single 20 link. Edit - if you don't like the sound in your office from the switches, I recommend one of these... APC NetShelter CX I have the 38U version, and it's phenominal!