ayoward

I would be interested in attending the Leeds NM meeting if I could. I attend the one in East Riding and find it very useful. Always good to share ideas and such like.

Never let it be said that being members of YHGfL didn't have any benefits.... We have a 42U 19" rack that is surplus to requirements that is just taking up space in our store room. If you have a need for it, you can have it. The only stipulations are that you are able to collect it from our Scunthorpe office and of course that you are using it in one of our member schools. This will be on a first come first served basis, so get your request in to [email protected] Cheers, Andrew

Servers for Sale: One previous owner Full service history Taxed & Tested Selling due to no longer required (virtualisation) Further details can be found on our website here: Dell servers for sale - Support - YHGfL - YHGfL

We have a new vacancy at YHGfL. You can read a bit about it here: Development & Support Engineer - LAMP, HTML 4/5, Networking, Linux job - Scunthorpe - February-14-2013 (C5ZUW) Further details will be on our website soon here: Work with us - How do we do it? - About Us - YHGfL - YHGfL Cheers, Andrew

Absolutely, but you get the point? I guess on this forum, it's a bit like teaching Granny to suck eggs, because us technical types know all about contention and bandwidth etc. but when one of the major selling points any service provider makes when trying to win business is the fact that they're putting in a uncontended line, that might sound great to the uninformed and could skew a decision.

It seems our completely fictitious support fox Gloria has been blogging again. It is my contention that the post is interesting nonetheless. I would welcome your comments. eNews » Blog Archive » Bone of Contention Cheers, Andrew

Now then, We have a vacancy for a Systems Engineer in our Support Services team. You can find out more about it here: Systems Engineer vacancy - Work with us - How do we do it? - About Us - YHGfL - YHGfL Regards, Andrew

With the release of Windows 8 tomorrow, schools may be making purchasing decisions for 1:1/replacing school devices etc… We want to make sure that they understand the differences between RT and Windows 8 so that they can make an informed choice. Our friend at Microsoft Sean O'Shea has written a blog post about it which you can find here: Windows RT or Windows 8 devices for your school? - Microsoft UK Schools blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs I think you'll find it useful. Cheers, Andrew

Absolutely I can. Thanks very much for your appreciation.

Colleagues, As I'm sure you're aware, towards the end of last term we had some problems caused by our deployment of the new Smoothwall system. We have worked very hard with our partners at Smoothwall over the summer break to sort this issue out and, after some extensive testing, we believe we have implemented updates to our system which will resolve the problems we experienced. What we would really value, however, is some live testing within school environments. My plea therefore is this: I would ask that between now and the beginning of the new term you help us out by testing the system and letting us know how it is performing - the more users that you can have on the system the better. I am attaching a form that we have used to ensure we have some uniformity across the board. If you would like to use this to log any results, please feel free to do so. If you have any queries, please do let me know. Many Thanks, Andrew Yoward Head of Support Services YHGfL Foundation. Website testing August 2012.xls

Hi Chris, We have our pilot up and running in house now and it is running fine. We have a number of our staff using it now and it is proving to be quite useful. I steered away from trying to implement it myself, I.e build a box and install it and try to configure it when I learned it was included in the new offering in Office 365. Deploying Lync that way took out all the hassle and as an educational establishment you should get it for buttons if not buck shee!! Cheers Andrew

Hi Folks, As a bit of a knock on from the ridiculously good deal that we have managed to do with Microsoft for their EES licensing for schools that part of the Yorkshire & Humber Grid for Learning (that's right folks, no one else in the country has such a good deal, not even those southern softies in London Village), I have been playing with Lync. The primary aim of doing this is to see how it could be deployed and utilised in a school and what benefits could be driven from it. We have been looking at a way of hooking it up to existing school telephony systems and we will also be investigating how we could attach it to the school broadband links so we could converge voice and data and perhaps use the JANET links to save even more money. I would be interested therefore to hear from any of you who have deployed Lync already, your experiences in doing so and your reasons behind deployment and any of you who are thinking about it but don't know what you would get out of it/need to justify it etc. I intend at some stage to maybe collate some best practice/case studies/benefits/business cases etc. so I would really appreciate any input you cared to offer. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about in terms of the MS EES offer that we have brokered, you can read all about it here: Save money on discounted Microsoft licences - YHGfL - YHGfL Cheers, Andrew

The Grid is configured to only allow SMTP outbound through smtp.yhgfl.net. This enables us to make sure it goes through our sendmail servers running mailscanner and our Sophos Mail appliances which should prevent accidental spam or virus spread from within the grid outbound. We would be very quickly blacklisted (has happened before) by the mail relays of the major ISPs were we to inadvertently start sending out malicious mail traffic which would kill outbound e-mail for the whole Grid and its connected schools. There should be more detail here: SMTP relay / Support guides / Support / YHGfL - YHGfL

Get it logged with Thales and we'll look into it for you. I note that it isn't one of the topics on our support page FAQ and I think it probably should be, so I'll have that rectified as well.

Yes, you are quite correct. I don't know how we would solve that. Maybe in the future, if everyone had a decent broadband connection at home then we could just have them in virtual classrooms. I guess some inner city schools get more because they are in deprived areas as well? Maybe communism is the answer, but true communism, not all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

That's fair enough then I suppose. Only there is a finite pot of money, so say for example school A had to request budget increase of £20K to keep their broadband provision at a decent speed, schools B, C & D would have to swallow a £7K budget cut to accommodate that wouldn't they? So however you look at it, no one can (or perhaps should) live in isolation. We all chip into the pot as taxpayers, forget about who we work for or our vested interests. As a taxpayer, I expect the government to use my contribution in the most efficient way possible. It's the reason I buy tins of beans in a four pack when I go shopping, because it's cheaper than buying four individual tins. Maybe I'm an idealist. But of course I do understand your point about getting your pupils the best they can get at your school, I have children in school and I expect them to be given the best, but I don't want my daughter in her secondary school to be given the best at the expense of my son in his primary school. Aren't they the founding principles of the welfare state? Why should one child be better provisioned than any other just because of circumstance beyond their control? Doesn't every child matter? Crikey am I starting to become a bit political? I think I'd better stop now. May I just clarify that these are my own views and not those of my organisation, the current or last government or anyone else. Maybe I am delusional. I know I need a holiday.

Speaking as I do from an RBC perspective, I can see and have experience from all sides really. If I give you an example, we have had a number of schools in our region wanting to come directly to us for their provision (which is perfectly fine, we would rather they stayed in the fold somewhat than have some profiteering company promise the world and deliver the Outer Hebrides). One of these is a primary school which is probably on the border between two LAs, i.e. as far as you can probably get from the nearest major city either way. They were very disgruntled with their LA provision and wanted to get away from them. When we provided them with connectivity costs, because it was a one off line (and as we are not-for-profit we put absolutely no margin on top of what we were quoted by the telcos) and not part of a bulk buy, it was more than double what they were paying to the LA because they were miles away from the city. If schools go it alone, there will be winners and losers dependent on circumstances of geography, which is fine if you have an "I'm alright jack" attitude which because of the squeeze on budgets will become all the more prevalent, but is that ALL you want to focus on? The bottom line? Is that ALL that is important or is it somehow important to think about the wider education community? We have just come through another process of procuring a regional grid. We have increased the grid's speed tenfold (links are now gigabit into LAs when they were 100mbit) and made it more resilient offering two gigabit links into the grid uncontended (whereas before it was more like a ring) and all for pretty much the same price as before. We have had a couple fewer LAs taking connectivity than we did previously, but we have still managed it. The costs for our services is clearly displayed on our website (non-consortium pricing, so if you are part of the LA they are obviously cheaper still) and we try to be as transparent as we possibly can. The issue in my experience as has been mentioned in previous posts is that LAs have not traditionally broken down what the sum you pay to them actually pays for. Which bit is for connectivity, which bit is for filtering, which bit is for support etc. and it has also been difficult for them to say you can cherry pick which bits you want, for example I want filtering, but I don't want that VLE that you have procured for us. It has been an all or nothing approach and I can understand that from a bulk purchase point of view. The loss of the Harnessing Technology grant has been a massive blow for a lot of authorities as have the cuts to other areas of finance that meant they were able to subsidise a lot of what they used to and are now left trying to divvy up a bill between fewer and fewer schools which eventually will become a house of cards. It will then become an everyone for themselves exercise and for some primary schools and even some secondary schools in the far reaches of Yorkshire, they will have to spend an awful lot of money trying to get decent connection speeds or dust off the old text books and encyclopaedias.

As you are no doubt aware, we are experiencing some speed issues on the new filtering service that we built for the new capacity available now on our new grid. This appears ( after we have ruled out the core firewalls and switches) to be an issue with the load balancers. We have gone from an average of around 10,000 connections to 300,000 and the load balancers are not coping too well. To give a more up to the minute status feed, we have created a Twitter account @YHGfL_Technical that we will use to post any updates that we have when they become available. Obviously, we are working flat out to resolve the issues we are facing as we know the importance of good working links, especially at this time of year. Best Regards, Andrew Yoward Head of Support Services YHGfL Foundation

Climo, Please log it as soon as you can with your LA. In our experience, most RP sites are up that go through Apache, we did though have an issue with the WebDAV sites as they are hosted on an MS box at Scunthorpe and our link was one of the last to swing over to the new grid. We're expecting to be busy in terms of call volumes on Tuesday as the migrated systems bed in and we experience any teething problems, but please do bear with us. Regards Andrew

Folks, It appears that Doncaster Schools have been cut off from us as from around 16:00 today sadly . May I just take this opportunity to thank all those in Doncaster schools that we have been in contact with and worked with over the years and wish you all the best for the future in your provision of ICT to your students. In the meantime, we have made no changes to our infrastructure and will not be doing so until we migrate to our new Grid over the Easter period when we move to dual one gigabit links for all connected authorities and a new data centre. Please do keep in touch, you will be missed. Best Regards, Andrew

Thanks for this. It's always really useful to get feedback. A lot of the things that you're after we are working on at the moment, bringing them up to date for the new grid, AUPs etc. While that update is taking place, there is some stuff that you will be able to find at WebHome < Main < TWiki in the YHPublic area. Even though some of it is out of date, I'm sure you will find something useful. There is even an area that you can only access with a username and password called YHSpecialist. I can't remember what is in there, but I will check and if I think it would be of use to you, I'll set you up with credentials. The Support area of the website is being developed as we speak, so hopefully soon we should have more of what you want.

Colleagues, * We have been offered late availability on an ITIL v3 Foundation course (SMEV3) which is being run by Global Knowledge in their new Leeds training centre.* The course is being run between the 21st and 23rd of March.* Because of the late availability, we are able to offer this three day course including exam for £550 ex VAT which is a saving of £375.* There are very limited places, so first come first served.* If you have anyone within your organisation, or within your schools that would benefit from this highly rated course at this unbelievable price, please let me know as soon as possible. * Details about the course can be found here: * http://globalknowledge.co.uk/Default.aspx?page=461&coursecode=SMEV3 * with a full course description here: * http://www.globalknowledge.co.uk/pdf/SMEV3.pdf * Best Regards, * Andrew -- * Andrew Leadley-Yoward Head of Support Services YHGfL Foundation

Have you ever approached your RBC directly?

We've now finished all the config changes we have been making tonight. We hope you will see a vast improvement. Please make sure your LAs are aware if you are experiencing difficulties. If it isn't reported, we can't do anything about it in individual cases. If you want certain sites prioritised over others, please log that with us and we will endeavour to do as much as we can. Obviously, from your posts and location details in Edugeek, I have no idea which schools you represent and which websites you're talking about specifically. We do understand the gravitas this has at this particular time with the weather being like it is and we're working day and as you can see night as well to try to sort the problems out. We are currently undertaking a review of all of our services as we prepare for the new grid to make sure they are optimal for moving forward. RP is no exception and we plan to ensure that it is meeting the needs moving forward from April. The RP service is there principally to protect schools and the grid from outside attack by not exposing each school web server to the wider internet. Be assured we're doing what we can to take the pain away that we have all been suffering over the past days. Now, where's my bed? I have to be up early to monitor websites.

Colleagues, Several schools have reported issues with access to their websites through our reverse proxy service, which you will no doubt be aware of. We of course offer our apologies for the service not being optimum at this crucial time for schools but we have found several contributing factors. As you know, earlier in the year we had an issue with RP. At the time, we had the server go down and was unavailable. Earlier this year, we made the service resilient in terms of hardware i.e. we added another box, so that if the server went down, the secondary box would serve the traffic. The issues we are experiencing at the moment have been partly down to traffic volumes. We have had a much larger amount of traffic trying to get to school websites as you would expect in the inclement weather. This has caused the service to run slowly as it has had to serve many requests at the same time. Added to this has been the steady increase of sites now using the RP service, particularly OWA traffic. We have found an issue with the Microsoft’s IIS service using HTTP 1.1 and the amount of keep alive traffic that it generates. It is a broken implementation. This basically clogs up the RP when it’s trying to serve normal traffic, especially when devices are polling for mail, contrary to popular belief, ActiveSync doesn't actually PUSH it uses keep alive. In this instance, the RP service has actually prevented school IIS servers failing. We have seen a large amount of requests from the RP servers get no response from school servers. This means that the RP continues to try to connect to the server until the request times out. This adds to the amount of sockets, processing and traffic within the box which adds to the clog. It is also confounded by DNS lookups for each request. To reduce the impact of all of these issues we are taking the following measures: 1. Instead of having a resilient pair of RP servers, to get us through this difficult time, we are moving all SSL based reverse proxies to one of the servers and keeping the non SSL on the other server. This will reduce the amount of traffic going to each server and will reduce the amount of clogging. 2. We are going to force all servers to use HTTP/1.0 This will eradicate the issue with the faulty MS implementation of HTTP/1.1 keep alive traffic 3. We are implementing a wider scope of DNS caching actually on the RP servers themselves. This will reduce the amount of traffic going between the RP servers and the DNS servers and also reduce the amount of latency waiting for those requests. 4. As a temporary measure, we have also increased the maximum amount of connections on the RP servers. While this does leave us more at risk of a Denial of Service attack, we are taking the calculated risk while we’re experiencing higher than normal volumes of legitimate traffic. We are very confident that these changes will alleviate the issues that we have been experiencing, but there is little we can do if a back end server will not respond to our requests. We ask that you monitor your school sites as we will be over the next 24 hours and let us now immediately by e-mailing your LA service desk if you experience any difficulties. Best Regards, Andrew -- Andrew Leadley-Yoward Head of Support Services YHGfL Foundation