ArchersIT

I agree with you (at least I agree with what I think you are saying) in that upgrades have to be done because technology is moving on and there are ofteb features that you wish to use. I also agree in that it is best to keep up to date if possible. My point is that Capita are being inconsistent. 1. They want us to upgrade but will not support new platforms (i.e. SQL 2008) for a year after launch. ISTR that vista support also took a long time - does anyone have any information on the support for Windows 7? 2. They want to move us to SQL 2008 and are using Microsoft's support cycle as justification. However, they are not mentioning Server 2003 -2008 which has the same support cycle and justifications. As to funding - you are correct in that the schools get money per student with a certain percentage earmarked for ICT - but it is not ringfenced which means it is down to the head/governing body how much is actually allocated to ICT. Jonathan

I dont think I am forgetting anything. SQL 2005 will not stop working in April 2011. Microsoft will still support it if you ring them - however they will not make any more changes to it. If Capita have found a problem in SQL 2005 that required Microsoft to make changes I would be very surprised. We are still running applications with the database hosted on SQL 2000 and when I ring Microsoft for support they are still happy that the database is hosted on SQL 2000 and will provide me with support - so I would not expect Capita to have any problems with an application hosted on SQL 2005. If they are wanting us to migrate to SQL 2008 for other reasons (features etc) then that is fine - just dont blame Microsoft. I also think it is a bit of a cheek to wait for a year after SQL 2008 is release to start supporting it and yet insist that everyone else jumps at the same time. However, my point was also that they are focussing on SQL 2005-2008 when they will have exactly the same support scenario with Server 2003-2008 and are not mentioning this. On a separate note, while I agree with the "great discounts" part of your paragraph we do not all get guaranteed money each year and so we do not all have a rolling replacment cycle. Jonathan

While mainstream support for SQL 2005 will end in April 2011 (Please Verify your Location), Microsoft will continue to support it for security updates until April 2016. Presumably if this is going to be Capita's policy then they will be dropping support for Server 2003 before then as this will end mainstream support in July 2010 (Please Verify your Location). Jonathan

Hmm - the quote on my desk for Windows 2008 enterprise is less than £200 (one-off rather than per year pricing). I had informal pricing on standard at approx 1/3 of this. I rang Civica - home - they would only deal with me through the County - but were giving this kind of pricing. I also tried ramesys - but I know some on here do not like them. The key thing is not to buy retail (even OEM retail) but to contact an approved education supplier (the URL to find them is on another thread that I have lost for the moment) and buy an education licence. HTH Cheers Jonathan

The ISA setup has a test rule of allow all from internal to external for all ports for all users. This is working fine for all ports except web browsing. When monitoring you can see the traffic for those other ports but there is no success or failure messages when trying to web browse through it. My personal hunch with those symptoms eas that the configuration of the web browser was not even directing it at the ISA server - but when we checked this there did not seem to be any problems. All thoughts welcome! Jonathan

I have had a chat with DSapseid and unfortunately all his settings look fine. We did find the following: 1. Pop3 and other ports going through fine 2. Web browsing from the ISA box works fine 3. Web browsing from his local machine does not work and does not report any traffic into the logging tab on ISA (the pop3 traffic does). We have tried double checking the proxy connection settings on his local browser but these all seem fine. At the moment (as it is a replacment box) he is planning to re-install ISA back to default (he had imported all the rules etc from his other box) but if anyone else has any ideas I am sure they would be gratefully received. Jonathan

I am sending you a PM - give me a ring and we will compare setups. Jonathan

You need to put it in the webchaning area. Go to Configuration/Networks/Web Chaning. This will probably show you a default rule -right click and select properties. On the action tab select the radio button labelled "Redirecting them to a specified upstream server" and then set the settings as appropriate. Hope this helps Cheers Jonathan

We do this at our school - I have attached an image of the page in the Exchange Version of Users and Computers that allows you to change it. As you will see, we have restricted access to send to that distribution list to another distribution list (Heads and Deputies) so we dont have to name people. People who try to send to it get a system message back saying they do not have permission to send to the list. It does not seem possible to amend the text in this message. HTH Cheers Jonathan

I have been using player as none of my current hardware is supported on ESXi Jonathan

Spot on - many thanks. I knew it must have been something obvious like this because everything else has been really easy! Cheers Jonathan

Okay - on the 7110 simulator the settings are slightly different, and when I look at the protocols for the new filesystem (lun) it does not list iSCSI, this is only listed at the project level - I wonder if I am doing something wrong here - I will have a read of the helpfile. Cheers Jonathan

Hi folks, I have been busy playing with Sun 7110 Virtual Simulator and have hit what is probably a complete newbie problem. I have Cifs working fine so I decided to try connecting to it via iSCSI. Please note that as this was just a play, I was using the normal TCP/IP infrastructure which meant that the two devices were not on the same switch. I have setup the 7110 to take iSCSI on a project and I have setup an initiator. My Initiator was planned to be one of our test Windows Server 2008 servers so I setup iSCSI initiator. This gave me the IQN for the initiator. The problems come with the next steps. I set up the IP address of the 7110 as a Target Portal - I presume this is ok as if I put in the wrong IP address it tells me there is a connection problem. However, if I try to refresh the Target, it gets nothing. I am not sure what to do next and how to debug - could anyone give me some starting pointers? I am not using CHAP names or secrets anywhere. Many thanks for any help anyone can point at. Cheers Jonathan

I am not 100% certain what the effect of the "matching grant" would be on price, but we are very pleased to hear that the 4TB version was coming out as we felt that the 2TB was going to be too small for us. The 4TB versionn at the right price will be a very difficult offer to refuse. Jonathan

This will not cause a problem as all our staff are domain users as well. Cheers Jonathan

Hi there - I seem to recall that you need to specify the screen saver name as well - have you tried that? Failing that you can try the Group Policy management console which allows you to run tests to double check that the setting is enforced for the people you are testing with. For ours we have the password lock enabled in the default domain policy and just change the timeout per OU. This works fine on XP SP3 and worked fine on XP SP2. Jonathan

This is one of most people's key worries about the BSF process. You seem to be indicating that you have the choice between Thin Client/Open Source and Thick Client/Microsoft. For a start the choice is nowhere near as simple as that, you can have Thick Client Open Source and Thin Client Microsoft. It is also not true to say that one choice will fit all uses within a single school, let alone an authority. The "best" option is to retain the flexibility to have all the options you could need. This allows you to use Thin Client where this is appropriate and Thick Clients where this is appropriate. It allows you to use Open Source where appropriate and Microsoft/Adobe etc where appropriate. Unfortuately this is the most difficult to manage and cost up which is why I suspect the consultants are trying to force you down one route or other. The TCO is in important factor to consider when trying to choose between the different technologies, but one has to consider that TCO is not just about desktops. For example, thin clients may have a lower desktop TCO than thick clients but the network and server infrastructure needs to be scaled up to pick up the load that would be done from the thin clients. You also indicate that the school will be paying at least £200 per student per year for 5 years. The frustration that most of us techies have is that with that kind of budget we could easily introduce the revolutionary changes in education that are being sought, whilst retaining the flexibility of having it managed locally. Currently our budget for the last 3-4 years has been between £10 and £20 per student. Ok this does not include staff costs, but even so the dramatic improvements that are being promoted as part of BSF are being purchased by a dramatic increase in costs. I hope this helps clarify some of the questions you have posed - was there anything more specific you were after? Jonathan

Thanks for the comments - I will continue to post how I get on. As to the informing/consulting the county support desk - this would be fine if we used them for any support. As we don't I am not sure of the value of them having any input or potentially a veto on whether or not we do anything with the business objects layer. Cheers Jonathan

I had good response on getting the third party documentation, but I have been less successful with the business object layer documentation. The final response I have had (today!) is that I need to request this through the licence holder. This transalates to my needing to ring up our county support desk and try to convince someone there that even though we do not pay them for support, they need to ring Capita up on our behalf. I think that it is unlikely that this will be successful, but I will give it a go. I really dont understand why this needs to go through the licence holder. If there is no licencing cost for schools (as was said earlier) then this just seems an unnecessary step. I could understand needing to go through the county support desk if we got our support from county, but we go direct to Capita for support. Is this the correct process? Cheers Jonathan

At the county level there are filters in place for the different age groups and for staff. However, we point all staff at the student one for the same reason that others discuss, which is that it makes it easier for staff to know which sites students will be able to access when they provide links etc. The only exception to this is youtube, which similar to others, has been opened up to staff to allow access to "educational" clips on it but is still blocked for students. Cheers Jonathan

We have had this problem and when I looked into it I found that the youtube URLs had changed. As well as *.youtube.com we needed to open access to *.ytimg.com (which sorted the css and javascript problem) and *.cache.googlevideo.com (which actually allowed us to play the video). Hope that helps Jonathan

If the ORK does not have the option, then setting the font for the default paragraph style in the normal.dot template should do the trick. This would then need to be copied in place and would unfortunately apply to all users. Cheers Jonathan

Ok - thanks for this (was off yesterday so did not try it yesterday). In case you are interested, the first line person had never heard of it so asked a colleague. This resulted in a case being raised and escalated to second level who will give me a ring back. You were correct in that they were Chelmsford. While the commandline reporter will probably do what I need to do right now, I would be interested in finding out more about the business objects layer for reading (and possibly writing) more directly. Could you clarify the correct way of getting hold of this documentation as well? Many thanks for your help. Cheers Jonathan

Hi there, Could you help me in knowing how to get access to start using the Business Objects Layer (or even the command line reporter tool)? Reading the rest of the thread, I have contact capita support, who passed me on to professional services (which sounded like I was going to get charged). They say I have to speak to a particular person - who is unfortunately not available until next week. If I am understanding it correctly the tools are already present, it is just getting access to the documentation so that one knows what to call and how. You description makes it sound as if getting access to these should be easy and straightforward, but either I am not using the right terminology or the people I have spoken to are not familiar with them. I would really appreciate it if you were able to give me a hint on exactly what I should be asking for. Many thanks Jonathan

Thanks for this - I have worked with SANs prior to working in schools so am aware of them and their setup. I meant a directly attached Raid Array. The frustrating part of this whole process is trying to get real world examples of what works in schools. For example, some people will use multiple smaller blades servers while some people will go down the one big server route. Each may well have it's place and without understanding the setup and configuration of the school involved it is difficult to compare this to the setup and configuration here. This is why I asked to be able to chat to people that have had successes/failures with this kind of technology. I have found that reading the threads most people recommend their own setup (fairly naturally!) but without explaining necessarily what one is doing and why. For example, some people are creating lots and lots of virtual servers on their setup, but at the moment I dont feel the need to be doing this. Does this mean that their setup is optimised for a configuration I dont need, or does it mean that once you have a setup you start to think differently about your configuration. Personally I find these kind of questions easier to sort out in a phone call rather than in an open forum, but YMMV. Cheers Jonathan