earlyriser

Can't for the life of me remember how I found myself in this part of Edugeek, but now I'm here..... I drive a 2004 Landrover Defender 110, 2.5 TD5. 9 Seats, (I don't even know 9 people...) Wanted one all my life, and after owning a long list of sensible Japanese estates/station wagons, that were all practical and efficient, but quite boring, I bought the Defender a few years ago. Every morning when I go outside it makes me smile and despite the usual "it's a land rover and bound to fall apart" comments, it so far has been the most reliable vehicle I've ever owned. My wife hates driving it round town as it has the turning circle of the Ark Royal, and yes, it does drive like a brick, but as they say, it is "the best 4x4 by far"....

Thanks Douglas. I haven't called yet, but I will now. Personally my problem is that as part of a new job of Network Manager at Otago Girls' in Dunedin, I have inherited an ageing server and network infrastructure. The board have found money for server upgrades that I am putting in place now, but as always this is only part of the issue. We are despatately short of cabling and decent switching gear, and the school is relying heavily on wireless, which in turn is adding to issues with Musac and network problems in general. We need upgrades to our internal infrastructure equally, or more so than any upgrades to high speed fibre broadband. Good to see you on here anyway.

I'd be keen to find out more about this in future Synack. We have an existing Terminal Services setup on a 2003 server, and for a while some of the teachers were using the SecureConnect VPN client (we use SchoolZone and as far as I am aware are forced to use this as our client?), but one of the big issues because we are in SchoolZone was that teachers had to change their home router IPs out of the 10.* range. Fine for some, but imagine trying to explain this to all of your teaching staff! What feature is it in server 2008 that you use to avoid VPN? Thanks Update on main thread. Am putting a proposal to the board tonight, basically revolving around 3 new servers, switching and cabling upgrades, and longer term, a SAN. As mentioned, we are looking at virtualising the system servers (AV, WSUS, Backup etc.), but having done some research am now looking at VMWare instead of HyperV on Server 2008 (have read time and time again about disk I/O speed issues with Hyper V). Having decided to move to Server 2008 though, I've now got to find some software to backup to my new LTO4 as server 2008 backuoe doesn't support backup to tape.....

Thanks SYNACK. I know a little about the funding for small schools as a rural school I used to support managed to get basically a brand new network excluding servers, for not very much money as part of that scheme. I was kind of hoping that this was a completely new round of funding but having read what you have said, and talked to some others, it would seem to be, like you said a contiuation of the feeding of the small, poor or lazy schools first. I'm going to ring Douglas Harre tomorrow so will let you know what I find out, if anything...

Hi all. Just a question/discussion on government funding for ICT in NZ Schools. Reading 'Interface' magazine today (Issue 16, term 2), I see the front page article on bulk buying for school's ICT. In the article, Anne Tolley talks about $150 Million being available over the next 3 years for "Upgrading ICT Infrastructure" and further down the article Douglas Harre is quoted as saying that $34 Million is available for "Network upgrades", available as of the 1st July. Does anyone know what this really means? How do we get access to this funding? What are the pre-requisites of a school to get funding? Or am I jumping the gun and it hasn't been officially decided yet?

Hi all. Just thought I'd throw this out there for your opinions. Have inherited an aging network as part of a new systems manager job. Girls school, 800 students, 100 or so staff, 300 workstations. 10 existing servers, all but 1 is over 8 years old, as follows: 1. PDC. 8 Year old Dell Poweredge. AD, DHCP, DNS and currently hosting Musac SMS data 2. FILE SERVER. 9 year old Proliant P3 3. ITM 8 Year old Dell Poweredge, hosting eTrust and Sibelius S/W 4. PRINT 9 year old Dell Poweredge. Printer, PapertCut NG and superVisor.net\ 5. MONITOR. PC Box, running management software for swipe card print boxes 6. BACKUP. 8 Year old Proliant P3. Failed Exabyte Tape system 7. DCBACKUP. PC Box, P3, 512mb. Backup Domain Controller 8. WEB Proliant DL140. 3 Years old. Intranet and Moodle server 9. WEB TEST Dell PowerEdge 10 Years old. Internal student websites 10. TECH. Proilant ML350, 6 Years old. Tech (installers, WSUS etc.) Gigabit from servers to main switching, 100Mb copper within buildings, 100Mb Fibre between buildings. Variety of 100Mb Switches around school. Fairly typical Replacement plan is: 1. New 'Systems' server to host Antivirus, Print and Monitor, Ghost and backup with new LTO4 backup drive. Virtual servers for AV, Print and Monitor. Retire existing ITM, PRINT, MONITOR, BACKUP and TECH Servers 2. New server for Domain Controller. Retire existing PDC 3. New 'Apps' server to host SMS and any other network based apps 4. New File server or SAN/NAS for file storage. Retire existing FILE SERVER 5. Keep existing web server, migrate test web server to virtual server on this box Hope this makes sense. Basically I want to consolidate the important, but non critical roles (AV, PRINT, GHOST, BACKUP etc.) onto one box, put a new PDC in, move file storage to 1 box and continue to use existing Web Server. Any thoughts on this? I can provide more info if necessary

Ordered 28 R1s from Insite on Friday, so that's the workstation issue sorted for now. Was very impressed with the trial unit, and got a good deal (19" Screens, 2Gb RAM) for a cost comaprable to workstations from HP or Lenovo. Insite have been good to deal with so far and are obviously used to schools. Might start a spearate thread to let everyone know how they work out

Good work SYNACK. I was wondering about this and was going to post something on here. I'd already started thinking about the cost of licensing allof our servers, clients and Office, at full cost and was beginning to get scared!..... Hopefully the deal will come through one way or another

>> Wouldn't go down the self build route would get brand machines with 3yr warranty HP maybe Just out of interest Mark, why not the self-build route? Other than the 3 year warranty, which I agree is a big bonus, I can't see any other reason to go with the likes of HP, lenovo etc. Particularly when they don't really exist in NZ, it's all done through Australia anyway. I have always used major suppliers myself, but am beginning to question it a bit these days. Still looking for gear that will suit our needs. Have been in touch with Insite and am trialing an R1 All-In-One unit which has been made purposefully for the education market. Great idea, and it looks excellent and reasonably priced. Having got the unit here and got everyone interested though, Insite are now telling me they might not be able to supply them any more! GGrrrrrrrrr

Have just taken over as Network manager at Otago Girls after 4 years in the 'real world'. Prior that that 4 years as tech in a school in Christchurch and network manager at a Uni in the UK. Finding it incredibly frustrating to spend my money! Part of my role is to provide a development plan for our ageing network, and to implement it over the next year or so. That's all going OK so far, but man I am having a hard time finding suppliers who seem interested in taking our money. I have always dealt with ascent www.ascent.co.nz who I can't recommend highly enough, but are very much a "you tell us what you want and we will sell it to you" supplier. Have been looking for advice as well as supply on Servers, Workstations and Thin Clients but none of the major manufaturers (have tried Lenovo, HP, Dell etc) seem to have any real prescence here in NZ, especially not for education. Have an immediate need to buy 30 new workstations and the local suppliers have been a waste of time. Have come to the conclusion at the moment that we will just buy parts and build our own workstations. No problem, but a bit of work that we could do without. Anyway, just wanted to share and get others experience on suppliers in NZ. By the way, have dealt with New Era IT when I was contracting to some local primary schools a few years ago, what a bunch of w.....s. Sell a solution to a school, install a server, don't train anyone or even explain anything to anyone (literallly), leave, then charge a fortune even for a short phone call. The antithesis of a good support company. Avoid like the plague....

Update: Am now Network Manager for a fairly big high school in Dunedin. Made the move back into full time working in a school earlier this month and enjoying the 'challenge' so far. Am really keen to be part of a really strong forum for NZ SysAdmins/Technicians/Co-ordinators on here so hope that we can grow our regional forum into a serious NZ group

Hello edugeeks, just thought I'd introduce myself as a new member Been working with technology in education for 12 years. First as tech at a uni in the uk (expat), mainly macs. Next managed the network at St Andrews in Christchurch (Novell/Windows). Now got my own business in Te Anau, contract support to the local high school and primary schools. Might be on the move soon though......