Tricky_Dicky

The implementation that we were shown by Link2ICt purely showed a web based file storage system. I've no doubt it can do a lot more but that isn't how it's been setup here.

Is that the one provided through RM? I can't really see the point of 1 single massive single sign on solution when each part can be made to work together anyway if you have a decent AD setup. I have Moodle pointing to our LDAP happily and with the new Office 365 it is just a case of setting up dirSync and a couple of other things and that will work. SSO can be purchased directly from Serco for CMIS and after that I can't think of anything else you would need.

Open hive is a different product all together. It is basically an online storage area to share resources around the school in a very basic file type structure. From what I recall the original intention was that schools would start sharing resources with each other but it is a pig to use and pretty pointless from what I can remember.

Totally with you on Live@edu. I was thinking of waiting till office 365 arrived just because of the easier dir sync but will probably just move with it now. Will see how much Moodle is to see if we bring it in house and already talking to Virgin Media and Serco about going direct. Anyone fancy forming a soft partnership to improve prices?

Hi all, Have been told that the charges for Link2ICT should be available by the end of next week (w/e 11/2/2011). Just thinking it might be worth having a good look at these because with the Harnessing Technology grant ending the price will probably increase quite dramatically. Let me know how bad it gets... Rich

Have you asked Guy Thomas? Chances are they have already started working on it, I have spoken to a few of the small suppliers of programs like this who have all said they are working on it.

Can I have your network please.....

Have you spoken to Zentek about this? I've often found that if you have a good relationship with a supplier they can help and guide you. Even though they might not be the cheapest, having the support and backup for a large project can be worth a lot. Dell also supply SANs and are offering some very impressive pricing at the moment. Regards the switch, ideally you would want 2 so you have no single point of failure but it can depend on budget and also 1 high quality switch may well be a lot better. I believe as well that you can push 10gb with iSCSI over the correct switch. Rich

Lol, it's one of the very handy little tips that macs are full of but are a nightmare to find. It will normally retain the one you last left it on. Is everything else working now?

The green light: Can you see above the username and password boxes you probably have the machine name? If you click on it it will scroll through various pieces of information such as time and date, IP address and then network account status.

I found this to be a permission problem on the home folders. I'm presuming your home folders on on your normal Windows box in a format that looks something like \\server\users\students\bananas \\server\users\teachers\bananas_teachers Then they need to be able to read the student level folder, not just bananas to allow it to mount it at login. I don't know why, or if this is the best way of doing it, but it seems to work. Using the managed preferences, just remove the Other and have only username and password showing. Then when the light goes green you are good to go. Our Macs work well now, but it does take some tweaking to get right.

Getting a bit lost here. Which bit have you solved and which bit is still not working?

Hi, I am no fan of Link2ICT but on the Moodle front I think they have done a decent job. We implemented it last year and the take up has been really good. It is a lot more stable than Zimbra has been and when Link2ICT make your site they normally pull a load of photos and colour scheme from your website to make it look better. A lot boils down to how much and what was it is going to be used. To set up the kids I just do a CSV upload which includes which courses they are enrolled in and things like that and it works really well. Adding one or two extra kids is pretty quick. At the moment it is also free which is pretty good, however how long that will last I'm not sure. Downsides are the lack of LDAP, I have asked for this feature and got a very cool response from it but would be great if they could. Also, you don't have true root access and as such can't install additional features. You have to request it and then it gets done if it's possible. If you want to have a look at ours and see how it all fits together just let me know. Rich

Can't you just set a blank enrolment key? So the children can browse to what ever course they need to join and then enrol. We have navigation on the front page that allows them to this and works really well.

Bluetooth will only support up to about 10 metres, so then it looks like using RF. I presume you are using interactive Whiteboards? Because it might be simpler to get the slates that both Promethean and Smart do. Will work a lot better and can also do things like draw directly on them.

Is it just 1 mouse per classroom or a while IT suit per room? I'd say go bluetooth due to it being easier a little better at staying attached to the host machine.

Looks great. Couldn't see a mention of salary though.

GShaw, that's a great analysis and after spending some time reading everyones response is the way I am swaying as well. Thank you to everyone who replied to this thread, it certainly opened my eyes to some of the additional features out there. Rich

When you say it is virtually non-existant, do you mean it just won't work? So for example, I was going to put a simple CentOS based Webserver on there, is it possible? I'll be honest with you, most of the things you list look great (those that I understand) but I'm not sure just how much I would use them. Would it be worth paying the extra for it do you think? Thank you to everyone for the quick and fantastic replies, really interesting to see the different scenarios every one is in.

What happens if you need to go beyond 3 physical hosts? I thought it would be a lot more than though. What sort of features are cut for the essentials version?

What features were missing? I've heard of the ability for VMware to be able to constantly keep a mirror SAN in another location which sounds amazing, but I just don't think I could stretch to the cost of two complete SANs for the sake of stepping back an hour in time using the snapshots.

I didn't know you could do that. Is it just a matter of downloading and installing it from Microsoft? This is all part of upgrading the entire network to Server 2008r2 and Windows 7 so I was going to just install a full version of 2008r2 on the servers. Is this not the way you would recommend? Fear and misunderstanding I suppose. I presume you are using it? How easy/difficult is it to install, configure and use?

Hi all, I'm just putting together the hardware for virtualising our servers and was wondering what software people would recommend? I was going to work with Hyper-V because of the cheaper licensing costs, but was wondering if people had any real world examples or an opinion either way. Cheers Rich

Working fine here.

Nice to hear from Serco directly. Which Database technology is this being built on? Will we be able to access all resources from the web interface or will some sort of local program be required? That was a beautifully written side swipe by the way