Blue_Cookeh

If you have Enterprise or Education installed I'd definitely go down the DirectAccess route for a more seamless and robust experience, built into Windows Server. Failing that, I'd just use the RAS feature in Windows Server and deploy the VPN config, users would probably connect in a similar way to they do with your previous solution.

That's not really how it works - the switches will prioritise VoIP traffic because it's time sensitive (so long as the VLAN is tagged as voice, on HP and Juniper switches anyway - I suspect the same is true with Cisco).

I've tried Dell's USB3 one... perhaps you could get a dock and use a USB C to 3 adapter? Not ideal by any means

Yes, when it's 'uncontended' you're just pushing the contention further up the chain, at the end of the day people like SB, BT, Zen aren't going to give you uncontended interconnects with other providers

I'm very fond of the Ubiquiti UniFi cameras in our school. We manage and install them in house and have a storage server that they all record back to. Image quality is top notch, night time images look good, can go up to 1080p30 and relatively cheap. Obviously depends how hands on you want to get internally, though.

Is this using the Office365 Education Plus license? Because now you have me interested in doing this too... there must be some kind of catch here.

Do they realise they're just shifting the licenses over to Office365 as a subscription instead? Microsoft have fully supported methods for deploying and managing Office365 on the desktop: https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Deploy-Office-365-Enterprise-for-your-organization-ee73dafb-be54-492e-bcfd-0fbfb5f65e94

CCTV is another big one. We record at 1080p30 and with the amount of cameras we've got it doesn't quite saturate 1Gbps, but it's certainly in the 4-500Mbps range. I'm sure I could get that down with a lower resolution but heh, why not?!

Maybe this sounds completely unreasonable or pompous, but I can't imagine giving refurbished laptops to staff, particularly new members. I know that personally, I'd be pretty annoyed if I was given a used laptop before, and impressions count. If I give someone a new Lenovo X or T series (our standard for staff at the moment) with a 4 or 5 year warranty, generally I've found they've been looked after a lot better. Plus, if anything does go wrong, even if the teacher has pulled keys off themselves, Lenovo will generally send parts out under warranty with no quibbles. Of course, for temporary staff, replacement laptops and spares I don't mind holding back old stock or buying refurb.

It's less of a problem with Windows 10 if you have P2P LAN updates configured, though.

@SchoolsBroadband we could test a few lines out if you like? We can terminate SIP on our Avaya PBX.

Look at the HP Spectre X360 models if she wants shiny shiny.

Sounds stupid but I take it there's enough space on your server?

You ought to be able to cut a lot of those Windows Server VMs by half for RAM. Particularly printing and DCs. What disks are you running on? Storage is the primary reason for VM infrastructure to feel sluggish. EDIT: I started deploying Server Core with 2016, too. I now allocate 2GB RAM to roles like DC.

Why's it dodgy? They use the IP address to grant you access past their paywall. It's the Financial Times, not the Daily Mail!

No GUI on any Linux servers, no GUI on any Windows servers where I can. This means DCs, file servers, Hyper-V, and DA (even more so because they're Internet facing). I *do* have the UI turned on on our DPM and SCCM servers, though. I have a Hyper-V VM and an IT laptop that both have all the remote access tools up to date and setup with various other tools and utilities that are all documented... it negates the 'hit by a bus' factor a little more but still gives me the easy patching and reliability

This is it. We paid more than the £1.2k @AlanD mentioned but the service we get from SB also gives us another VPN entry point for remote work (essential since I'm part time), DfE approved filtering, hosted firewall, and a top notch service desk when we've needed it. Our head has called the SB service desk on occasion when I'm not available and they've been more than happy to go in and modify our Lightspeed filtering whilst still on the phone. When we were with our LA we were paying more for less features and a much slower and crappier service desk. I suppose it depends what you value most. I'm sure I could do the filtering etc our selves slightly cheaper but there's the CYA factor which is nice to have, too. It was also nice to have someone who knew what they were doing during setup, when it came to the switch over I was on the phone with one of their NOC engineers for maybe 20 minutes while we set the various routes up on each end with 0 problems. A while back SB were getting a little annoying with the filtering downtime, but since they solved those problems earlier this year I think we've had 100% uptime, so I would definitely recommend them nowadays.

Set your Task Sequence deployment up with a deadline in ~4 weeks time, and allow staff to keep deferring it up to the deadline. Send an e-mail out saying "blah blah your machine will be receiving an update in the next 4 weeks that will take up to one hour to install, you will be able to defer it up to X time on X date at which point you'll be forcefully upgraded blah blah"

IMO you guys are looking at it all wrong. IT is moving on and everything is becoming a service, Windows being no exception. If you properly manage your upgrades then you won't be reimaging machines to install new feature upgrades. Windows 10 will be set and forget in that you'll image a machine (using a continuously serviced image, which SCCM does in the background) and then it becomes part of your Windows 10 servicing plans. Yes, SCCM seems to be the only real product out there at the moment than can manage this lifecycle properly, but honestly if you embrace it I believe it'll be a lot less work in the long run for a lot of gain. In a certain part of the NHS we're moving onto Windows 10 CBB full steam ahead and are planning a 3,000 device roll out over the next year. Yes they do, but I'm using Compliance settings in SCCM to check for the apps, then remediate with another PowerShell script to remove them.

Hi All, Does anyone know if it's possible to mirror a port over a trunk to a port on another switch? I've got someone who needs to watch some traffic for a device we're having problems with but I've not got a way to get the Wireshark machine and the problematic device on one switch. They are all HPE/Aruba 2530/2920 switches. Thanks

Juniper are freakin' awesome. HPE pricing on better-than-Cisco hardware. They're consistently flaunted as having the best management interface of any network vendor (I agree, having moved from Cisco to HPE to Juniper in various jobs) and generally have enterprise level features in even their base models.

I opted to just push the 1703 update out via SCCM as a software (feature) upgrade. At the end of the day I'm not going to be going around and reimaging all our machines every time whatever build we're on leaves support, and really it makes my life easier since I can just build a machine and forget about the software side of it for the life of the hardware. I use GPOs and SCCM Compliance settings to pull the machines back into a state we like after the upgrade.

We took out all of our Casio XJ-A130 projectors a few years ago and replaced them with CleverTouch screens. Staff find them a lot easier to use since they're basically just televisions, and we make sure to get ones with built in systems so they don't even need to use their laptop if they wish. We've found that staff really like using the class sets of iPads to AirPlay across to them, too. It makes showing the kids' work off really quick and easy. We're getting a couple of new classrooms this summer and have opted for the SMART 6065 interactive displays with AM30 collaboration module and Intel NUCs. The staff absolutely love the new tech they're putting into these things and they're costing roughly the same we used to spend on IWBs 7-8 years ago. As others have said though, in larger spaces like our school halls we've kept large projectors + screens up, there's no way we'd ever get a CleverTouch/SMART product to compete with those image sizes. I should also say, we do provide standard whiteboards alongside the screens though, just in case. We wouldn't want OFSTED turning up on a day where a screen isn't working without one

For comparison's sake this is what I got the last time we ordered some staff laptops last year: Lenovo Yoga 460 convertible Ultrabook - £800 Intel Core i5 6200U 8GB RAM 256GB SSD 14" IPS FHD 10-point multitouch screen 4 year NBD on-site hardware warranty We generally go for the Lenovo X series (12") but a couple of staff wanted bigger screens so we ended up with the above. Our headteacher says touch screens are pretty much essential for all staff machines now.

I'd try and stick to whatever brand you currently have deployed in your environment for consistency. I hate Netgear. Their config is terrible. Personally? I like the HP 2530 or HP 2920 series (they go up to 48 ports with or without PoE+)