localzuk

Love a good homity pie here for savoury. Or apple pie for sweet.

KCSIE sends you to the Safer Internet site, who handle that part of the guidance. Its linked in the KCSIE guidance but the latest version is here - https://saferinternet.org.uk/blog/2023-appropriate-filtering-and-monitoring-definitions-published-for-public-consultation The specific bit is in the linked "Appropriate Filtering for Education Settings" document.

So, we only use it with clients. There's not a lot of management involved. You set up a policy saying what update cycle you want to follow etc, and that's it. Everything else is automatic. You don't approve individual updates etc. Microsoft's article on it is here - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-configure-wufb

Agree with this. We swapped from WSUS to WUfB recently, and it works SO much more reliably.

We had a request for a Ring camera in one of our schools and ran it past our DPO. The answer was a solid no as there's far too many data protection risks - and the same thing can be done without those risks.

One thing to consider is that the KCSIE guidelines expect "network level" filtering. The way we have handled this here is to buy Smoothwalll and their hybrid cloud solution. So, we have 2 appliances onsite that handle all the filtering for our Trust, and also have the Smoothwall Chrome extension installed on all our Chromebooks for devices that go offsite. There are also options for other operating systems as well. Honestly, I would be looking at building a proper internet solution with a single ISP. That way, you can link your schools to a single filter, either one they provide or one they host for you etc... It would potentially mean a single ISP hosted firewall as well.

For critical services, RAID10 is a good option. For backup servers, I don't mind RAID 6 these days. I don't use RAID 5 any more at all due to the issue @msi_school mentions. Though, for our network, we're doing away with RAID entirely, and have moved to a HCI setup with Storage Spaces Direct. But that needs more than 1 host.

Announcing the next EduGeek Modded Minecraft server All The Mods 8 Server address: mc.edugeek.net Current pack version: 1.0.15 The overworld has been pre-generated out 200 chunks from spawn, and the nether/end 50 chunks from spawn. If you find you are experiencing world-gen lag, please let me know so I can do more pre-gen. This is a 1.19.2 Forge modded minecraft pack. You can download it via the CurseForge App or the FTB App As always, to be whitelisted on the server, please visit your Profile on the site and add you Minecraft username to the field there. The server updates the whitelist every 5 minutes. Up to date information is always available via the Discord channel.

All contracts for phone companies these days explicitly state they can increase the price by inflation + a small percentage, usually 3.9%. So, in most cases you will not be able to exit your contract early.

We use Greymatter as our reseller. I think there's only a couple of distributors in the UK for it.

Depends on your contract. If your contract says they can increase by inflation + 3.9% then such an increase is not unreasonable. So you can't exit the contract early.

I'm fairly sure the 3.9% was something the govt said they were allowed to do at some point in the past, but I cannot find a definitive source saying it. The idea was the 3.9% was to allow them to invest in the company. If you are mid-term in your contract, you can't switch providers...

The intel one has a registry key I think - https://kb.stonegroup.co.uk/index.php?View=entry&EntryID=354

PSF, Bromcom Finance, Civica Finance, Access Finance. There's quite a few these days. We use PSF here. It works but has its foibles, like any system.

I would really caution against "lift and shift". Simply grabbing existing servers and putting them in the cloud will be an expensive task. IaaS, which is what you're discussing, is honestly not all its cracked up to be. SaaS - where you buy specific services in the cloud? That's where the real change happens. Moving from an onsite MIS to a cloud MIS, for example. We are now effectively "hybrid" here. We use a number of cloud services - our MIS, finance system, HR system, single central record, Office 365/Google Workspace etc... But, there's certain things that simply don't lend themselves to cloud hosting yet, so we have maintained a central cluster of servers to run these things, and all our schools utilise these via our WAN. To put that into numbers - to host what we do on our cluster in Azure, we'd pay more every 6 months than we did for the entire capital cost of the cluster of servers.

The amount is entirely dependent on the school layout and networking needs. There's no fixed figure - you get companies to quote based on the DfE spec, and then submit the chosen company's pricing to the DfE in a cost matrix, and they approve it (or get the company to adjust).

Yes. You can choose to not get support from ESS, and can take up support from a third party unit instead. We did when we used it. We used Somerset County Council's MIS team for support instead. At the time, I believe the third party units got a bit of the yearly maintenance cost as a rebate as well. You report it to your support unit, and they report it to ESS. You're still paying for maintenance. If you're paying neither, then you don't report anything and don't get any fixes.

There is training for this available - you can access it via https://docs.bromcom.com. There's a pre-recorded video of the reporting stuff, which includes Quick Reports and the merge stuff for letters. Or you can book into one the scheduled webinars. In terms of concerns, I would say speak to your customer success manager, or contact customer support.

An MIS isn't like buying, say, Call of Duty. You are not paying for a specific product that will remain the same (except bug fixes). You are paying for ongoing provision of an MIS that complies with all the needs of your organisation - legal, data protection, safeguarding etc... Which means it is a constantly changing service. So, what you're paying for is that service - which is delivered to you in the form of software, updates and support. They are all one thing though really - the service.

If you only need 8 PoE ports, why not an 8 port PoE switch? Unifi 8 port PoE switches are about £120. HPE Aruba equivalent is about £245. The device in your first post doesn't seem to list any PoE standards, but is "passive", which make me think it doesn't follow normal standards.

Another happy Zoho Desk customer here. Works very well for us across our MAT.

The worry is not about data safety. It is about geopolitics, and potential costs and time down the road. The govt has already ordered ISPs to remove Huawei kit from phone networks, and banned the Chinese manufactured CCTV from "sensitive sites". I don't particularly want to do some work, then be ordered to rip it all out in 12 months, when tensions increase further. Sure, the govt would probably reimburse us for the kit, but its extra work as well.

One thing to take into account is that the LA may be happy to be bought out with the equipment you already have in place. So you just end up with exactly the same as you have now, just in your control. This would be the most likely outcome I'd guess as well, as a bunch of old server kit is not likely to be any use to the LA.

See, this is what I mean about current tensions. The language in that is now looking at the moral side of it - which, realistically, should be down to foreign policy, not individual public sector bodies. So, until such language stops being used, I won't be considering these companies for our usage here - too high risk that the language gets transferred into legislation.

Isn't it part of https://endpoint.microsoft.com/?