tmcd35

Does the veto still apply when voting on a matter concerning one of the 5 permanent members? How thought up that system, crazy. Doesn't that almost give those 5 the power to pretty much do as they like unopposed since they can automatically veto any sanctions? It's back to the cold war isn't it? I don't think it's over reliance on Russian resources we have to worry about. If that's all was at stake I'm sure something can be done (Iraq?). I think it's more the old threat of nuclear warheads that allows Russia to get away with bully-boy tactics. That and their closer ties to Beijing, WW3 would probably be both quicker and worse than either of the last two.

25th October this year will be the 160th anniversary of The Charge of the Light Brigade. It's good to see that preperations for it's re-enactment cerimony are preceeding on schedule...

The more threads there are on this topic, the more coversations I enter into both here and with SLT, the more I research the possible options, the more convinced I am that the 1 device, and even worse the 1:1, model is flawed. I think you need to strike a balance between traditional bookable ICT suites, trolleys of laptops or netbooks, and iMac's for media/art/music. I think just providing these properly would be a significant part of most schools budget, and then you'd probably want to add in a decent managed WiFi service. At which point it seems more sensible to me to allow students to bring in their own tablet style devices (cheaper for the school and less politics) for ad-hoc in lesson internet research, e-mail, etc. You could try and go down the mythical 1 device route but I'm yet to see anything that doesn't come with one hinerent problem or another. Even running Windows 8.1 on something like a Stone Classmate Netbook isn't as plain sailing as we'd like. (CPU/Ram power for media/music/cad/etc, last Classmates we got wouldn't install Windows 8, availability of mobile apps on Windows 8 vs using traditional Windows programs on a touchscreen, etc).

Very, very approximatly (talk to your VL provider for individual pricing) - £40 x number of staff.

Doesn't go as far as you might first imagine. £20k for broadband, £6k or so for SIMS and Microsoft licencing, £18k for printing. Soon adds up. We also have abour 3.5x the number of PC's (350 to your 100?) and a 5yr refresh rate rather than 10... Spend about £20k or so replacing PC's and teachers laptops each year. At the low end of the scale, that's the budget gone before we look at projectors, whiteboards, servers, switches, etc.

The £70k-£100k I mentioned above is for everything. Broadband, Software licencing (inc. MIS, etc), Consumables, Repairs, Equipment Upgrades, etc. For information we are a High School with around 800 pupils and 100 staff, give or take.

What's WiFi? Any signal you think you can pick up is officially unsupported. Got plenty of network cables though...

^This. It's my starting point with SLT as we work out where we are going over the next 5-6 years. What have we got? What do we need? What would we like? My crystal ball predicts a future of laptop trolleys and BYOD tablets...time will tell.

Current situation... No real "contingency fund" or development fund (all maintenance). About £2k is allocated for "repairs". Budget asked for £90k - £100k. Budget allocated £70k. Needless to say we usually come in over budget - oh hum. Currently starting the big coversation with senior leaders about completely rewriting the ICT budget from scratch. Re-examining everything we do with ICT and desiging a new based on the schools vision of the future. To me that means asking for £200k+ budget per year; on the other hand SLT are talking about falling pupil numbers and staffing implications. Interesting times.

Current primary storage (designed when Hyper-V was new. SanMelody was the only "cheap" (and still too expensive) SAN solution. And ESXi had not been announced (mere weeks in it!)): 2x450Gb 15k rpm SAS RAID-1 for OS. 14x450Gb 15k SAS RAID-50 for Data. 2xhot spare. 4 Nics; 2x1Gbps bonded for Hyper-V VHD access TOE and Jumbo Frames, 2x1Gbps bonded for all other data traffic. Windows Server 2008R2. SMB v2 shares. Needs replacing. Would prefer an iSCSI solution (now built into Server 2012). I think we've done the hardware RAID discussion to death. In a highly virtulised environement I think hardware RAID is becoming too restrictive in the way it functions (difficult to expand volumes, etc). I think thin provisioning and expaning VHD's (performance hit accepted) is a better use of limited space and provides more for future growth. I like the sound of ZFS, it seems very advanced. I have a few reservations that probably boil down to admin laziness more than anything else. It's not a Linux native file system (uses FUSE?) - is that a problem? Or Solaris, another *nix - how much command line configuration is there? Any good (lazy) GUI tools? Then I get to the question of whether or not I want/need my file server domain joined? If everything running off iSCSI, then no, but do I want to be able to use SMB shares or DFS folders with it? But if I do, then maybe they should be virtual machines offering the services rather than offering a direct connection to the storage? In enterprise you might take the view of never touching RAID-5, or only using ZFS. In schools, I'm not so sure it's that cut and dry. We tend to take a more creative view of the technology. It's the old Risk - Budget - Requirements triangle. We have to evaluate the risk of a technology against what our schools tell us is the budget and technical requirements. I can see, with a balanced view, how Storage Spaces might be the right answer for primary storage giving acceptable risk and the required outcomes at a SLT friendly budget. Like I say, seriously considering it as one of the possible options.

Mmmm, Can we have an Apple vs. Raspberry flame war?

Possibly not the neatest solution, but I added this to our logon.bat files that give us what we need: REM Log User Connection net use x: \\<[i]serverip[/i]>\logs$ echo COMPUTER %computername% TIME %time% DATE %date% >> X:\%username%.txt echo USER %username% TIME %time% DATE %date% >> X:\%computername%.txt X:\bgi\bginfo.exe x:\bgi\settings.bgi /timer:0 /accepteula net use x: /delete /yes

I don't know, the more I read up on them - the more I come to the view they can be a good fit. With features like SSD tiering and write-back cache added to 2012R2 and existing feature like thin provisioning, it seems on the face of it a better option than hardware RAID to me. The one thing it has over ZFS is that is is Windows based, which for a lot of sysadmins is important. I can run a FreeNAS ZFS NAS/SAN quiet easily, but as a Windows Server/Hyper-V user things are just a tad easier if I use MS's built in solutions (lazy?). Certainly taking 2012R2 Storage Pools seriously as something to consider when it's time (soon) to replace/supliment our existing storage array.

No dissing the original XBox - best console ever made!

Actually, I do still have a suite of similar aged P4's, due to be replaced this year. Most of them are Hyper-Threaded, which I suppose helps a little. Running Windows 7. We've actually had Solidworks (3D CAD) running on them! Admitedly we've upgraded to 4Gb Ram (3Gb usable) and 80Gb SSD's, but still...

Specs look fine to me for Office and Interweb use. The only one I'd turn my noise up at is the P4, presumably single core, 1Gb and 40Gb HD. Okay for a home PC for web browsing, running a light Linux distro, anything else and it's seen better days. Laptop looks usable with the right OS.

Not really. Looks like a pretty usual/sensible design to me for a larger primary/smaller secondary that perhaps only has 1 or 2 servers (I'm guessing). Certainly not out of the ordinary and the combination 2 drive RAID-1 for OS and 6 drive RIAD-6 for data seems like a good choice. I'm guessing from the date that the OP has resolved this problem by now (or his HT is pacing outside the OP's office?). I think he said 1 drive had failed and 3 where "looking dodgy". That being the case he hopefully got the RAID-1 drives swapped out before both failed completely thus not needing to reinstall his OS? The RAID-6 should survive both it's failed/failing drives going offline, thankfully.

Have to agree, Colin's post probably doesn't read the way he (hopefully) intended. I'll say this though - I've had very good dealings with VeryPC and have been very happy with their products. Couple of our feeder schools have just got some of their laptops and I must say they look very sexy. That said - I don't make it easy for Colin and the team. Always pushing as hard as I can on price and they are usually up against tough competition from Novatech and Stone - who I can also heartidly recommend. Last couple of deals VeryPC have edged out the compitetion though.

We used to do the same, our Council have a deal with Phoenixs. We switched to ordering direct from Phoenix but still using the councils account. Prices were the same regardless, just speeded up the process. If your council is running similar then there should be someone there responsible for purchasing the licensing and managing the VLSC account. You need to find out who that is and they should be able to give you download access to the VLSC.

https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/servicecenter/default.aspx ^ That's the site. If you've not got a login already then you'll need to talk to your volume license reseller about setting up an account.

I applied. They asked me to list 10 good reason to buy Windows 8. Needless to say I failed the interview

I love Internet Explorer. Brilliant web browser. Fast, modern, secure. Lots of really useful features. Bing as the default search engine. Ability to add a few really useful toolbars like Ask, Yahoo! and eBay. Constantly pops up and reminds me of security settings when I visit dangerous sites like Youtube or the BBC. Compatibility mode for website that aren't written properly. Stops me downloading really dangerous files like drivers from HP's website when certificates are not properly signed. I've no idea what you are all complaining about...

@zag, do you not have the same core issue as Replica though? As in you're only as good as the time interval from the last clone/backup? I think it was mentioned a few posts back, full HA requires SCVVM and SCOM and some form of shared storage.

Are the users being authenticated against the Smoothwall box? If they are then I believe the solution is to use Kerberos authentication instead of NTLM. We have the same problem here. Kerberos authentication did fix it, however I now have problems with Kerberos authenticating properly - grrr.

I gave up a couple of weeks back. Combination of bad mood (locked myself out of my house) and shin splins. Saw Beeb program dissecting the foot the other day that explained exactly why I was getting shin splins. Bad advice in the podcasts about trying to put your heel down first - not how your foot is designed to work! Bought a treadmill the other week and have started again barefoot - much, much better. Also picked up a rowing machine, very interesting exercise. Going out fir my first Bike ride this Saturday. Probably over doing it, but U'm determined to get rid of this mid section!