Midget

BSFMadeEasy.com and .co.uk are available as is WhatisthisBSf.com

SAN is basically in its simplest form a scsi or fibreoptic cable attached hard drive array.

i thought there were problems with DCs on VM due to time variences or some such. I actually want to virtualise if i can so that I can get a seperation of some of my server tasks and utilise more than 4gb RAM

so databases, DCs, and TS cant be virtualised, what else is there?

Quad Core is the only thing worth even considering now. With oodles of RAM

I'm looking at backup options and was looking for opinions on these progs as they seem to be the best (used BE10 previously) Currently I have 1 2003 server with Exchange and SQL on it but will be changing to 3 servers to split the load. I want a backup software that I can purchase now, which is scaleable for when I migrate the tasks. arcServe is supposed to be able to be centrally controllable so that I can have all the data saved to one backup media instead of having to have 3 seperate backups (was going to use eSATA and some SATA drives instead of tapes) has anyone tried this? is the same applicable to SBE12?

What I have done in the past with 2000+ HDDs is get an intern to sit and drill through the lid into the platters of all the drives with a Black and Decker Power Drill. Noone will recover from that. with desktop drives you'll just drill a hole, but with laptop drives the platters will shatter

/me looks for an excuse to buy one .... ..... .... AH HA! webserver! wait i have a mini-itx for that. BALLS! ... ... ... webserver that doesnt require as much space as it can go into the media centre's 5 1/4 bay. WIN! *orders*

joke cookie's head

Nonsense. GMT is simply the correct time, at all times. Even the Zulus used it, apparently.

we get few of the Buffalo boxes, but they arent too bad as they use known filesystems (either XFS or Ext3). what ever you get make sure its got a file system that will allow you to just plug it into your PC and recover off it.

avoid ALL netgear ones, and buy 2 and make a copy of your data on both. seriously, most are totally useless

Heeeellllloooooo joanne sorry, Jake* didn't do it so someone had to! (*the new padlock on his cage must be working)

I get no end of those bl**dy things coming in that we cant do anything with because they are tied to that one SC101 and if it fails (which they do, alot, esp when updates fail) then there is no way of getting the data back in a useful format. If you get a NAS, make sure it uses a filesystem you can access without it, be it FAT, NTFS, Ext3 or whatever, but if it has NFS, ZetraFS (as in the SC101) or any other useless filesystem, then avoid. I'd go the route of a cheap PC (or a miniITX if size is paramount) + FreeNAS myself

DO NOT GET THAT NETGEAR! and i would stay away from any other NAS units that have their own filesystem

ahhh good, any ideas if this'll be one of the easy to upgrade to ones or will i require a reinstall?

beta ey? is this one of those googlesk perpetual betas or is there a RC due in a few months?

having never used a mac in anything other than full superuser mode in work, can you actually lock them down sufficiently for a school situation?

I really hate having to remove HDDs from a pre-intel apple laptop. You have to remove all the screws around the case and in the battery compartment, undo the clips, take off the back, then take off the front, then remove all the shielding then remove some of the components and then remote teh HDD, there aer about 16 different screw types and at least 50screws in total. intel macs ftw. take out battery, undo 3 screws, take off shield, slide out HDD. oh and for the people who think apple se high qual parts, there was a 2-3year period where their laptops (g4 ibook and powerbooks) had rubbish cheapest possibly made, chinese, seagate momentus drives which have a tendancy to eat themselves (heads rip off the metal from the platters)

i wasn't fanning flame war or supporting MSO over OOo, I use linux and FLOSS myself, but I can see things from both sides. we've already answered your question of "is it technically possible" however now we are trying to show ou reasons against it and showing compromises 1 compromise that myself and others have suggested is to just have the portable version and use that (although i understand you were told to remove it from the network share). Saves the NM having to install OOo on your machines and as we have pointed out several times, you can still open the files by opening the prog first. incidently, you can get 3 memorysticks for <£10, and just load OOo off them when need be (unless the GPO restricts this) Does your NM have images to easily fix/roll out machines? If so, it means that when your machines need reimaging, instead of it just being able to have the base image, additional software and settings will have to be applied to them which if he's a sole NM in a busy large school he may not have time to do straight away. Personnally I have nothing against OOo and I had it on my old network, but you have to understand the NM has to think of and setup the school as a whole. If you constantly push and push and backed them into a wall I'm not supprised that they've dug in their heels, you have to pick your battles. Althought there is still a chance your NM is just old fashioned and doesn't like FLOSS because he's used MS all his life and is set in his ways, but questioning his professionalism is one VERY easy way to get someone's back up and stop them from giving you any more help than they are contracted to do.

Considering the few number of people that'll be using the programs (people you insist already use them, so should know what is what) I can't see there being a problem with them doing as I said previously and opening say, OOo Writer and then opening the document just like a lot of low IT literacy people do with MSOffice Word files. If however its because you are doing your lesson notes in OOo and then forcing your students to have it installed on their machines if they want to actually read your notes, then this is a completely different subject and nothing to do with the technical questions or T&L and more to do with politics.

then use the same method I use for getting people to use firefox. rename the shortcut writer shortcut name = OpenWord math shortcut name = OpenExcel etc that way they know which one is equiv. and the people i know who open the prog first then the files are all people who don't have a full grasp of computers.

rubbish. Open OOo with shortcut. file--> open--> choose document. Alot of people i know use this method for opening MSOffice docs despite the fact they could just double click on the .doc

I had OOo installed on all my machines in the image, and the CDT dept used it as preference, apart from making sure it didnt steal controls over filetypes or ran the quicklaunch, it was straight forward.

8port SAS/SATA RAID controller anyone? If you need speed get SAS (sata attached scsi)