mattpayne

Hi Stephen, Im not going to add much useful, but The Unifi kit is a lot more user friendly than the HP/Aruba stuff ( I have both) but the Dream machine really doesn't live upto its name in a enterprise environment... I use Cloud key Gen2 controllers, which are great, but run really hot and dont fit my rack, so bought a Dream Machine Pro... Ive used one in a remote office and other than being a sod to upgrade to the latest firmware (going from v1.something to 3.something doesn't work, you have to upgrade incrementally about 4 times) it was a breeze. problem is with existing networks, you cant directly configure its IP address, it needs to have WAN access and act as a router, even if all you want to do is use it as a controller. I cant replace my router and I dont want to double NAT and reconfigure my whole network just to add a controller, so mine is sitting in a corner while i find a way to get round this... Apparently one bodge is to create a separate VLAN just for the WAN port of the DMP nothing will use it, but it will stop the DMP from having a wet... but then, as you cant directly configure the host IP, it will assign a X.X.X.1 address to its LAN port which, in my case is the same IP as my current gateway so that doesnt work! there is probably some SSH stuff one can do to get round this, but I dont have time or inclination to tackle this just yet, Im only pleased its just a few hundred quid, so not a colossal loss...

As pointed out by @DynabookDawn, there isnt a problem with these laptops... which means this is the quality of their product!!! like you, ive NEVER encountered a brand where you must so very carefully manage the storage and usage of a laptop or else the batteries swell up and could potentially explode... It is a massive shame as so much money was wasted by the DFE in buying these laptops... so, so fragile, ive never seen anything like it, even in cheap chinese crap that ive bought from alibaba over the years!

Alm ours were DOA too, much like Dr Cheese, we had better things to worry about, especially after we warranty replaced 2 (when dfe were managing the repairs) and had two replacement units with the same issues...

Hi Dawn, thanks for turning up and being a voice for dynabook. Not being charged is one thing, but I've had scores of laptops with lipo batteries that haven't been used for a long period of time, this week I have switched on a core2duo that hadn't seen the light of day for years, a surface pro that i can't remember seeing on since lockdown and an old xps that was last on in June... before the dfe allowance I pulled about a dozen old tosh laptops from the wee pile to reuse, other than the odd cost battery problem not one of these laptops had an issue with deep discharge, Dynabook laptops have a 100% failure rate if left lor a few months which means that I will avoid any products like the plague! I may have been lucky in that of my fleet of around 2000 laptops over the past 20 years, excluding dynabook products I've only had swollen batteries in probably 5 instances... the two actually remember being 2011 Macbook pros... I have at another school got a pile of dynabooks with exactly the same issue... is there a direct contact we can use at dynabook to get these batteries replaced, it wasn't hard work, but as the devices are all out of warranty, it also wasn't plain sailing. Would be interesting to see other people's experiences- are the batteries used by dynabook more fragile than those used by other manufacturers?? Can people with the issue share what percentage of devices were doa?

Well, if you dont test, you have more tests available, people dont have to isolate and the stats show less positives... its win, win, win!! (If your a prime minister trying to show control over spiralling numbers and hide a shortage of tests... )

We tried using harsh words - didnt work We tried using Encrypted sticks, but at a glance a stick is a stick and its impossible to tell if the staff are using the correct one. Finally used Netsupport DNA to disable USB access. this blocks all USB devices, but has the ability to allow specific sticks for specific people/machines, its a bit clunky and expensive, but ticked all the boxes for keeping our DPO relatively happy!

Im not sure a firmware update will make much of a difference, they need to be swapped out for new battery packs as they are a potential fire/explosion risk. the number of these machines must be quite high and with them residing in the possession of vulnerable kids someone needs to think of the children!!!

A little late to the party here, but Ive just been inside my 3 faulty A30s and in all of them the batteries had blown... ive seen in another school about 5 that were doa too. Like you lot, they were like that from the box. surely there are enough failures for this to be classed as a faulty batch and for a recall? how do we manage that? the laptops are far from amazing, but too good to just bin.

The standard Dell USB network adapters are only £20 and once UEFI network stack is selected PXE is fine from MDT

Hi, ive tried on 4 occasions to call tucasi support over the past week, each time ive become bored and hung up after between 15-30 minutes on hold - Im new to this provider - should I expect a wait time as long as this to hit first line support or am i just unlucky!

physical or virtual, there should be no question on this one! always virtual... makes backups and migrations and DR so much simpler...not much complexity in it and the server 2012 licence allows for 2 servers plus host so you win a free server! allows room to migrate MIS, run Direct Access, and just play with extra servers, workstations and stuff. again, DR is my main reason for never going physical again - with a site without any failover, like a primary, using Veeam I can repurpose any available hardware and have the network back in 30 minutes. my last new midsize primary (400) was last year so guideline spec... Dell T630 2 12core Xeon 64GB RAM the faster RAID card with more cache to make up for RAID5 HDD is flexible, but I've been going 4x600GB sas RDX Veeam for about £4k my bigger schools get less RAID6 and NLSAS for data storage

as above Id be tempted to use a scsii hba and a byte for byte image of the disk before plugging it into anything that may want to write a config to the drive... I used r-studio to recover data from a software parity storage pool which had lost 2 disks! it has the ability to guess RAID setups without the right controller, its cheap and the support I had was excellent, find it at r-studio.com I am not affiliated in any way with them, but I am a happy camper after using them!

Just to confirm, looks like its working here too - Microsoft Surface 3 tablets, upgraded from OEM win8.1 to win10 pro retail x64. all worked fine on the wired LAN, but wifi refused to install gpo software assignments. created a new GPO with the slow link detection and enabled the UNC hardening win10 ADMX template with requiteauthentication and integrity for sysvol & netlogon =0 all is now good in the world! Thanks guys! have a great Christmas!

Surface 2 or Dell Venue 11 (not the atom) will both have the grunt to run that, but also have the advantage of a real desktop dock for stationary work

I spoke too soon! Any idea on pricing/availability on the 600GB models?

Ive yet to see a hybrid with SAS connector and not sure if the limited flash on a DATA version will be enough to overcome the advantages of an SAS drive. I was looking at SSD RAID, but I had just come up against lots of mentions about TRIM/Garbage collection issues with the drive hiding behind a real controller.

The Cachecade is only available on the controller with 1GB NV RAM Ive not used it yet, but I should have a server arriving in the next few weeks to test this out myself... I'm looking at about a TB of SAS storage with a pair of mirrored 256GB decent consumer grade SSDs - my view being life expectancy of server ~5 years, enterprise SSD's are bankers money and if I have to replace my cheap drives once a year id still be onto a winner cost wise. I'm using my laptop as a benchmark - Samsung 840pro - 1 year old, ~10TB of transfers (40/60 split read/write) and its still at 95% health.

we migrated to 10.7 last year so its possible... Its not something I knew you could do. Playing with various MDM solutions, Profiles cops up more and more so training is something I think I might need to bend work into paying for, especially if it can replace WGM and or OD. Do you have any good links for the theory? and how robust is it?

have you had a look at the Dell VRTX servers? 4 blades (with 2 drivebays) + 25 2.5" drive bays in a 5U package the entry level blades are nicely priced and have 12 memory slots each - VRTX enclosure, 24 drive bays, redundant PSU's, 1GB raid card, 2blades (4 2.2GHz cpus) and 64GB ram comes to £7k without disks...

Dell VRTX with 2 blades, ESXi, RAID 01 SSD with ~500GB + many TB of raid 5 bin off the old server, electricity costs outweigh the usability...

save a few quid, Standard Intel cooler is more than adequate... had my i7 4770 doing some GPU mining for a few days to burn in, heat and noise wasn't an issue... infact a cut down version of my esxi rig would suit you... £194 i7 4770 £100 16GB (8GB x2)corsair DDr3 £95 ASROCK/Z87M/EXTREME4 (4 memory slots, 3x x16 PCIe slots) £120 Samsung 240evo Windows Experience was CPU 8.1, MEM 8.1, Desktop GFX 5.9, Gaming GFX 6.6 (CPU intelGFX) Disk 8.1 - when I added the 7750 the machine was fully built so couldn't install win 8 locally any more. As for GFX? someone else would suggest something better than I could.... but for a ton there's quite a bit of video grunt to be had my gear all went into an HTPC case and under full load stress testing including GPU (ATI 7750) LSi 2008 SAS card, 4x 3TB disks, 3 SSD's, managed NIC the loudest bit was the hard drives. Heat issues were GFX, Raid card, hard drives, cpu - in that order

Unfortunately there are no before pics, but like most primary schools the server room was a general purpose store... we were lucky enough to be able to rewire (Cat6 & Fibre) and this is what Steve and I managed to come up with... sorry for the 3 pics, but my phone looses too much detail with the whole rack... We have from top to bottom... Fibre patch panel Patches stacked switches with one POE switch for our Trapeze managed wireless Rack KVM HP 1u ESXi host running our helpdesk Intel 2u ESXi host running backup and FRDC's Qnap 10TB iSCSi array for disk to disk to tape & bulk storage for our Mac & multimedia warm data old hp laptop as esxi console for the KVM Apple Mac Mini server for Mac AD integration APC UPS It was nice having a fairly blank chequebook and I think we managed to burn the cash pretty well!

I picked up a sachet of the stuff at BETT too... First thoughts are - hmmm... thank goodness i didnt pay for it! It may disenfect the keyboard, but I have not the tools to back that claim up! and like the rest of you found it does work itsway between the keys, but then fails to collect enough crud and doesnt make the keys clean... but I have found a use for it... it is just about sticky enough to clean the dust from the shoulders between screen and keyboard of my little Vaio UX1 - an area generally uncleanable! its also good for the dust that collects in the angles on the front of a PS3! you know, where the power and eject buttons are... traditional dust magnets!

Cheers for the tool, I dont suppose you fancy creating another with gets rid of the Sparklebox KS2 toolbar as well?