glennda

I have done work for these chaps in the past - they are pretty good and know what they are doing. With regards to the camera's I haven't got a clue tho!

Which Hypervisor? ESXI Hyper-V or Xen?

VMware Essentials plus is what most of my small clients work with is yes around 1.5/2k (cheaper for edu) which gives you the majority of required features. My Larger client use VMware Standard and Enterprise. Most of my clients are not schools though now

320 physical CPUs per host (160 in ESXi 5.1) 4 TB of Memory (2 TB in ESXi 5.1) 16 NUMA Nodes (8 in ESXi 5.1) 4096 vCPUs can be allocated to VMs (2048 in ESXi 5.1) EDIT: The free limit is 8VCPU per vm You obviously don't get any clustering features - or the ability to live migrate (as you need VCenter) Also with Free ESXI you cannot use Veeam.

Yes - but only for the very latest versions - lots of companies still have legacy systems which Hyper-V doesn't play ball with well.

The support for linux machines in Hyper-V is awful as far as I am away. @SHimmer45 - If you go with the newer versions of Hyper-V I don't think you need a San to do clustering. Hyper-V is simple and ok but i would still go VMware all the way.

Virtulisation provides many benefits in various ways (backup being the main) You don't always need 2 servers - I have lots of clients who have 1 primary ESXI host (normally Small Businesses under 10/15 users) then the server is replicated to an I5/I7 workstation with a couple 1TB HDD's in it (no raid). If the main server has a critical failure we can power on the second machine. This works well and normally saves 1/2k off the cost - yes they don't get the performance while failed over but it performs. I have actually had to action this as a server had a raid failure meaning it needed to be bought online.

I'll give you a shout - I have a few devices which might do what you want - plus they also provide Full DR capabilities both onsite and off.

Is this for a school or your external company?

We did this a Couple of years ago. I have setup an Edugeek League if people would like to join. the Pin is - 66440 http://Http://espnscrum.fantasyleague.com

I don't see why not - its not as if a webserver takes much looking after or space. I would say an externally hosted system would take longer to configure than an internal one

I setup the following: Ubuntu Server joined to domain FTP Installed Apache etc installed. When a student logged in Via ftp they where given /home/domain/username/ as a directory Apache was configured with /home/domain/ as the root directory so all a student had to do was go to domain.com/Username/ and that was there website

My aim for 2014 is to complete this at the end of the year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QRasrpSK5dM

I have put in a request for one to my boss - The reason.... I want one

When I went to IP expo there was companies showing off tape units that could cope with Petabytes of data on tape - Its quite amusing the shift back to tape for long term archiving.

Yes!! Get 1 x this - HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 E5-2690v2 2P 32GB-R P420i/2GB FBWC 750W RPS Server(709943-421) add another 32GB ram into it. Then stick 8 x 450 or 600gb drives in it. If you are going local storage ensure you get a 2gb FBWC raid card. also don't install ESXI to USB stick if going the VMware root, install to a Good Quality SD Card (these servers have a slot directly on Mobo) i would also recommend if you are going to get a machine at the other end of the building (like current) then I would Custom build a powerful desktop with SATA drives to replicate using Veeam to. Note: a replication is not a backup, you need to ensure you backup also to Nas or similar.

If you contact Meraki Direct they will put you in touch with a Partner up north.

The problem is the limited functionality of the spanning tree on these devices, This is half of the problem you have with these low end switches I'm afraid.

The problem I have with these type is they fall out all the time while doing weights!

If you have any questions on Meraki you can always PM me or tweet me and I will aim to help

But how often do you manage the AP's? In my experience very rarely once the initial setup is done. and the odds on the internet being chopped and a wireless fault is very unlikely.

They Continue to work when the internet is down (or not depending on what you choose) - once the internet is back up the device reconnects to the cloud controller and away you go you can manage them again. I have used the majority of the Meraki kit and can say it is brilliant and works very well even in high density (with the right AP's)

I don't tend to run much! I mainly do cycling/rowing and swimming for Cardio. They aren't too cauliflowered they are just a strange shape! But the hook around ones don't sit well.

I use offsite appliances with my customers, you have onsite storage of anything between 500gb to 40TB which then has the ability to sync itself up to the cloud. This provides the ability to boot VM's locally on the appliance and also in the cloud. Very clever little boxes

Cool I'll have a look at those