farquea

We have the exact same problem, usually just unplug the power, push the power button a few times to flush it, give it about 15 secs, plug back in and usually fine. pain in the ass tho!

our Server 2003 R2 is x64 though and i found a MS articale saying you can do it. If i upgrade to 2008 R2 i will then be upgrading Exchange from 2007 to 2010.

would that allow me to use it as an upgrade though as what i dont want to do is have to install Windows from fresh and have to rebuild my Exchange the, thats what i'm trying to avoid here?

i have an Exchange Server running Server 2003 R2 which was purchased under a Schools Agreement which expired 2 years ago. I've been told by a Software reseller that in order to upgrade that server to 2008 R2 that i'd have to get another Schools Agreement and that i couldnt do it if i just bought a one off Server 2008 R2 license. Is this right and if i do need to get another SA in place can i have one JUST for Server products or would it need to include desktop licenses and Office etc because we do not need any of this re-licensed?

I was just thinking of having it there ready to take over in case of a hardware failure as i already have the hardware so its either that or it just gets turned off and used for spare parts. The option you are talking about, having Hyper-V Server with then 6 individual licenses for each VM, would you know if this is generally considred a cheaper alternative to going with Server 2008 datacentre x number of CPU's? as i've no idea the cost of datacentre or a standard single license.

this is what i got confused with and then had someone tell me differently. So if i buy Enterprise that will have me fully licensed for 1 piece of hardware running Server 2008 AND 4 VM's running Windows on that hardware, correct? And if i want to buy Datacentre for 1 piece of hardware, i am then licensed to run as many Windoiws VM's on that hardware. But i would need a copy of datacentre per cpu in the hardware, so would be 2 in my case? Ok thats makes things clearer thanks, you wouldnt happen to have some rough ball park figures for cost of Enterprise and Datacentre would you?

I want to propose a new server setup of; 2 standalone servers, 4 physical servers running Hyper-V hosting 6 Virtual Servers on 3 of these servers, the 4th being in place for failover. Just exactly how many licenses of Windows Server do i need to buy to license all of this? do i need a license for each VM? i want to have everything running Server 2008 R2 if i can afford it, if not just the 4 virtual hosts running it with the standalone and VM's runnning Server 2008 standard which i THINK we have license keys for from an agreement which expired in 2008. We also want Exchange upgrading to 2010 and the OS's its currently on upgrading from Server 2003 x64 to Server 2008 R2. I also want to upgrade from Backup Exec 11d to 12d so how many remote agents do i need to purchase? I'm just becoming confused with it all and not entirely confident that a company i have been in touch with are correct. They have tried to tell me that its cheaper for us to purchase VMWare ESXi Advanced over Hyper-V in this proposed server setup which i fail to see how that can be.

I took over the network manager role recently and I have a project on at the moment and being asked if i have a schools agreement for our MS licenses and to be honest, i have no idea. I know who all Microsoft licenses were bought through but i really want to untangle the mess and have a clear understanding of what we currently have and what i need to do if i want to buy new versions of Server or Office. Can anyone help me by suggesting where to start?

I am looking to virtualise most of our hardware and keep a few standalone servers. I just would like some suggestions of what is best practice when backing up virtual servers as we currently use Backup Exec 11d and to be honest i'm sick of it, so would like something simple, effective and affordable. I plan to have a backup server standalone which has a tape drive and external storage attached to it. I think i will be going with VMWare if that effects any choices. If someone can sugget something that would be great.

We have a shared drive which staff are free to create folders and save documents to. They was/is some basic folder structure but its a bit of a mess. I started moving anything i deemed obsolete into a hidden folder and then clear out this folder each year in case anyone comes asking for missing work. I want to know if there is a tool or an easy way to search say all files and folders not accessed in a set time frame, say 2 years, so that i can then move them to a hidden folder before deleting them. There is also the problem of duplicate files floating around which i'd like to delete as well. I've seen a few tools to find and delete them, but can anyone reccommend something they have used successfully?

Ive never really looked into VNC, ultra VNC and Real VNC extra and wondered is there a free version, ultra VNC?? I have a microsoft remote assistance method in place but it requires the user to "accept" me taking control, so i'd like to have a better solution in place but only if it is free or close to? Can anyone help me out and if it costs give me a rough price guide?

I am thinking of virtualising our servers and would like some outside advice and possibly evcen assistance in doing this. Does anyone have any companies they have either used to do this or know they offer this service and can reccommend them?

we have managed wireless and decent ups system in place. we also have decent servers but i want to look at virtualisation. with regard to projectors i was just going to stock up on a few more bulbs for the projectors we have as they are fairly modern and maybe buy in 1 new projector as a spare. toners is a good one though, anything left i'll put to those, provided i can find a big storage room to put them in!

incidentally we might actually be losing a technician this week with redunduncies that are being made here

the school is only a few years old so we have a fairly up to date and decent network infrastucture and phone system, thats why im struggling for ideas

i said above it is from a grant that if not spent, is lost. And its not that we dont have any projects, just that im trying to come up with a list of certains things i could do with it and things that can be completed fully.

I've been given £8k to be spent before April and at the moment im struggling for ideas on how to spend it apart from the usual, desktop, monitors, server hardware etc. I'm looking for a few "out of the box" ideas that anyone can suggest?

Thanks so far for the help, i should have said that we already have a fibre SAN. As for software, i know of them all but not really sure on what is regarded as the best. I was going to put server 2008 on all servers (currently on 2003) so was thinking of Hyper-V. At the moment we have 12 servers but some of them do very little in terms of usage so thats why im unsure of how many physical servers we would need. Im just a little unsure on taking on what appears to be a big job which both me and my other technician have no real experience with, so in short i dont wanna f#ck the whole network when doing it.

I've been given £8000 to spend before the end of April and im thinknig of using 3k for one project of new pc's and the remaining 5k on buying some new server equipment and looking into virtualisation. This will be the first time ive looked to buy any servers and looked into server virtualisation. Firstly what spec server should i be looking at in order to start running virtual servers? We have some Dell Poweredge 1955 Blade servers and was curious whether these were up to the job of virtualising and if not, i imagine a newer spec Blade server from Dell will slide in just fine, but would say a HP Blade server work too? Any help would be great as we have 12 servers currently so advice on how many physical servers we would need and best practice in undertaking a big job like this would be great.

had a very quick flick through and seems pretty good it while it remains free. often wondered why there was no education i.t magazine available.

ah now ive got it.

just tried to get it, got the email with the link to it and its takes you to http://jon_honeyball.pdf/ which doesnt work

ye i've told the teachers that if they store it on their usb stick then we really dont know/care about it but they still save them to their work area. but i was curios as to whether or not every school teaches the same material which ends up with audacity projects with pop music used in it.

Our I.T lessons use Audacity and use commercial music in their projects. I'm fully aware they should be and that no mp3's should be stored on our servers that we do'nt have the license to. However the I.T teachers have pleaded that there is no way around it so i've told them that if students have 1 or 2 in their work area for their I.T work, then i will turn a blind eye, but if they have a crap load, well then it gets deleted. As far as i can see i cant see an alternative solution without the sylabus changing in i.t lessons. Does anyone else have this problem and how do you get around it? It's also the same for Music lessons, needing to use top 40 music to play or sing to etc.

we had the same problem, on 2003 as above, its done alphabetically. we had a script to set default printer which would run on client when run from the local machine but couldnt get it to work over the network so in the end gave up and just changed the name of the printer as it was only 2 which were not not setting as default that we needed to, the other rooms we got lucky with in that they just happen to default to the ones we want due to the naming convention we use.