shayes

Hi, I have inherited a very badly managed network. Basically I have a cabinet in my office that has Cat5 cables going into switches, and what is on the other end of those wires is anybody's guess. I could just about tell you which two cables connect to our primary servers but that is about it. We had a switch blow the other day, so I ended up having to pretty much plug everything into either the core switch or another switch in the cabinet that looks like it was put in when Noah used to work here before he went off sailing in his ark. I have a new 48 port switch that I am putting in so I'm trying to sort out this mess in the process. Basically I just want to put my servers and links to secondary switches into the core switch, and anything else into the new switch. The problem is, how do I know which is which, some of the cables are labelled, but some rooms have moved around here in the past 5 years or so, so I'm not even sure if the labels correspond to where they're actually going. What I think would be useful, is some software that can detect every device on the network, and then report if something gets disconnected. I can then deduce what is what by unplugging things one at a time from the switch. Does anyone know of such a thing that would do what I require? Unless there's an easier way to do this?

Schools could probably afford to pay that under a Labour government, and I think RM are going to get a big shock when they realise schools don't have money to burn anymore.

My boss is swaying back towards RM now, just because it's less hassel and less money. I'd rather go with Burconix as I think it would save us more money in the long run.

No, RM do not currently support Server 2008 in any capacity. You can have Windows 7 if you go to CC4, which we haven't got the funds to do. You can only have XP on CC3.

Exactly, and if we stay with RM we can't have Server 2008 or 7/Vista.

Thanks for that. I was very impressed with the Burconix chap that came out and had a chat to us (Andy Burgess), he seemed to know his stuff. However his quote has come back more than RM's, but to be fair he has future proofed for at least 4 years which is something RM haven't managed to do. The final decision doesn't rest with me unfortunately.

It is definately possible to add shared windows printers on ubuntu. It might be easiest to just add them individually on each netbook.

I've setup a load of netbooks with ubuntu netbook remix and it works pretty well, much better than the version of Linux they shipped with. You shouldn't need any drivers as Ubuntu is fairly savvy at detecting all your hardware and sorting out the drivers for itself. I don't know about the windows share shortcuts or the printers, as it wasn't required on ours (they only need to browse the internet), but it was fairly easy to restrict what the students could and couldn't see. I'm sure there will be a way to connect shares and printers though if you stick it in to google.

Neither myself or my network manager have ever supported a "DIY" network, so we're not trying to claim we are clever. This is why we want an "OTS" network.

What about peoples experiences with Burconix?

More like it, thankyou.

Which is why I'm asking for people who can provide these services. Jeez, this is hard work. Once again, we would prefer a managed solution to a vanilla setup.

I'm sure that is possible and I don't even see any reason why you wouldn't be able to use the management console. The computer I use is vanilla windows XP but connected to the school domain, and I manage to do everything I can do from a CC3 built station.

To be frank, the reason why we don't want to go vanilla, is because we wouldn't know where to start. I appreciate that there may be various tools that can deliver apps, and printers and such-like, but we'd prefer to have a whole managed solution where everything can be found all in the same place. The other issue is that the change over would require both myself and my network manager working pretty much flat out for the entirety of the summer holidays, which I am neither paid to do nor prepared to do. If there's someone who can do most of the dirty work for us then we'd be much happier.

Just to reiterate, we have considered going Vanilla and decided it's not for us. Just wondering what other options there are?

Hi, We're looking at alternatives to RM CC3 as they have quoted us an obscene amount for an upgrade to 2 of our servers. We originally wanted to move to CC4, but when the cost equated to nearly £40k we accepted that we might have to wait another year. However, just to upgrade our servers to tide us over for another year will be £25k. So we're looking at moving to another managed provider. We have considered vanilla windows, but we don't really fancy the extra time required to manage the network. We're currently considering Burconix and CSE who are both coming in to give us a demo. Are there any others we should consider? Any feedback would be appreciated, especially from Leicestershire or East Midlands schools. Simon