jrubinstein

We're investing in a new SAN as part of a virtualisation project. We've been offered a massive range of SAN hardware with varying expansion capabilities and costs. What I want to know is how much should I expect our current data storage to increase in the next 5 years? Obviously as part of the total cost of ownership calculation we need to be clear about when we'd need to grow beyond our current allowance. Most of the proposals have specified (at my request) approximately double our current backup data size. I am assuming that beyond a certain point (say 8 years) there is no reason to expect that any current device would be the ideal way to expand capacity. I'd be very grateful for any advice. Jay

I'm hoping that some of you can help with advice on server virtualisation. We are about to embark on this and while I'm moderately familiar with Vmware (at least on a workstation), I'd like to know about alternative possibilities. Has anyone used Citrix or Hyper V if so how have you found them and what, if any, are the pitfalls? I'd also be grateful if anyone has any horror stories, or a good list of gotchas in starting down the route. Thanks Jay

We have a considerable number of students studying A level and KS4 music and using Cubase. All students are denied access to local drives, and indeed can't even see them. However Cubase's terrible performance in saving files across a network is causing problems. We are considering opening up an area of the local hard drive for students to use while working, they would then have to save their folders back to a network location at the end of a lesson. The obvious problems with this would be that forgetting to transfer work would result in lost work and clogging up the hard drive over time. An alternative would be to use USB sticks, either provided by the school or by the students themselves. The need to save work back to the network for backup would still be important but at least there would be some control over the space etc. Has anyone got any better solutions? I know some people use a dedicated NAS box but, so far as I can see this doesn't get round the issue of network saving speed. Thanks for any help.

A domain of geeks?

I recently saw these being demonstrated at BETT and wondered whether anyone has any experience of their use. They appear to offer considerable savings on an IWB install with the added advantage that they can be shared between classrooms. We are looking at a possible purchase of over 10 IWBs. Thanks in advance for any advice.

We have 3 2008 terminal servers - in a session broker farm. Following a power outage one of the three is not allowing connections from non-domain machines. Domain machines can connect to all servers as normal. The problem doesn't lie with the network, I've connected one of the windows 7 clients to our standard network and it can ping the relevant server. The problem does not lie with dns - I can ping by domain name or by ip address. The port 3389 is shown as listening on the server and has exactly the same binding as the other machines. Group policy is the same on all servers.

Any help would be welcomed. We have two ms terminal servers 2003 and mix of clients, mostly Sunrays but some converted old machines that use MsRdp connections (no Citrix). Up until recently nobody bothered with the high end graphics programs but they are installed on the Ts machines. Now we've got a (rightly) keen ICT teacher who has the kids using Macromedia Fireworks and Flash. You will not be astonished to hear that this slows the performance of the Ts machines right down. Does anyone know of any way to improve the performance, or of a graphics program which will operates within Ts efficiently. From what I can see each use of Fireworks is taking it's own bit of the processor. Thanks in advance. Jay

We have run delprof at shutdown for a while now (if it misses once or twice it'll catch them next time). But we have found that there is still an issue with some profiles which cause it to error out no matter what switches I use it stops when it gets to one of these. Java appears to save a file to which the administrator doesn't have permissions. When we go in manually we have to take ownership, then grant ourselves permissions, then delete the profile. Pain.

If you are thinking of redirecting folders take a look at the page below featuring free downloads from Login Consultants - Downloads | Tools There are two parts to this. True control templates expand the elements of a users profile which can be redirected. Flex framework is essentially a flexible vbs script arrangement to allow a combination of mandatory profiles with preserved user settings. For us the most important feature is that it marks the local profile as roaming which enables us to carry on using Class server and other programs which need this. I've used this for the past 9 months, gradually moving all our staff over to a shared mandatory profile. Among other advantages is the fact that we can delete portions of the profile easily and safely so that if corruption occurs it can be corrected without too much trouble. The only downside is that the user needs to wait for the script to finish before launching programs which need individuation (such as Outlook). I run a batch file which runs the script first, then pops up a "Settings Loaded" message so that the user knows everything is ready.

We use a print server which runs pcounter in our domain. Any printers attached to other machines register themselves properly and automatically in AD - not these though! If I go to the printers on the print server and the sharing tab I can click to register in AD and apply it. 2 seconds later I can check and the tick is still there but there is no sign of the printer in an AD search and a couple of minutes later the tick is gone. I've searched the event logs on both the print server and on the domain controllers and there is nothing about the process at all. Any ideas very welcome.

Hope this is useful to someone. We keep the psshutdown exe in the same folder as this. I limit the size of each text file to 25 machines and the script automatically starts the shutdown process on each file as it finishes building it. ' VBScript File Option Explicit Dim OdbcDSN Dim objFSO, objFolder, objShell, objFile,objFSO1 Dim strDirectory, strFile dim g dim strIP 'This section sets up the text files and their folder Dim connect, sql, resultSet Set objFSO1 = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") strDirectory = "c:\adminscripts" If objFSO.FolderExists(strDirectory) Then Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(strDirectory) Else Set objFolder = objFSO.CreateFolder(strDirectory) End If 'next the variables dim machinecount machinecount = 0 dim overcount overcount = 0 dim filecount filecount = 0 'this section builds the list from the sms database - it relies on the computer 'having a system dsn connection named sms-connection. 'if you are using a text file or some other list you'd have to put your own 'listbuilding section in here. OdbcDSN = "DSN=sms_connection" Set connect = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") connect.Open OdbcDSN sql="SELECT * from jr_machine_details" Set resultSet = connect.Execute(sql) 'next go through the result set. On Error Resume Next resultSet.MoveFirst Do While Not resultSet.eof 'the next four lines check variables in the list 'we have a series of different scripts for different times of day if len(resultset("machine_name")) > 1 then if left(resultset("Server_workstation"),11) = "workstation" then if resultset("shutdown_6_30") = "True" then if ucase(left(resultset("machine_name"),3)) = ucase("ila") then 'now we begin to build the text file strfile = "5_30_" & filecount & ".txt" 'if we haven't got a file then we need to create one. if machinecount = 0 then ' first check if file exists, if not create it If objFSO.FileExists(strFile) Then Else Set objFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strFile) objFile.Close set g = objFSO1.OpenTextFile (strfile,2) End If else set g = objFSO1.OpenTextFile (strfile,2) end if dim ipaddress ipaddress = resultset("IP_Address") 'given the ip address we will use the pingreply function to check that 'the computer is on line currently PingReply(ipaddress) if strIP = "Yes" then g.writeline resultset("machine_name") machinecount = machinecount + 1 overcount = overcount + 1 else end if 'at this point I set the script to start the psshutdown process on the file 'if the no of machines in the file has reached 25 if machinecount = 25 then machinecount = 0 'the closeit function uses the file to close the machines listed closeit (filecount) filecount = filecount + 1 end if End if end if end if end if resultSet.MoveNext Loop 'we need a final closeit to deal with the final text file which 'has not reached 25 machines. closeit (filecount) resultSet.Close connect.Close set g = nothing wscript.echo ("Done " & overcount & " records dealt with") Function Closeit(limit) Dim oShell Set oShell = CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" ) oShell.Run "psshutdown /accepteula -s -f -n 180 @5_30_" & limit & ".txt" Set oShell = Nothing end function 'This is a straight copy of a function taken from the internet - I can't remember 'exactly where - sorry Function PingReply(strPingIT) dim wshShell Set wshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Dim oWshExec, strPingResults Dim oRegEx, match, matches 'RegEx pattern from Bill Stewart Set oRegEx = New RegExp oRegEx.Pattern = " [0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}: " 'Nod to Steve Cathersalc 'ping twice with 1 second timeout. Set oWshExec= wshShell.Exec("ping -n 2 -w 20 " & strPingIT) 'No need to loop or sleep or use oWshExec.status 'becuase can't proceed until StdOut completes Set Matches = oRegEx.Execute(oWshExec.StdOut.Readall) ' Execute search. If Matches.count = 1 Then 'couuld use oWshExec.ExitCode PingReply = True For Each Match in Matches ' Iterate Matches collection. 'strIP = trim(replace(Match.Value,":","")) 'Cleanup string located strIP = "Yes" Next Else strIP = "No" PingReply = False End If set oWshExec = Nothing set oRegEx = Nothing End Function

I've run psshutdown for a while at our school (roughly 550 computers). Initially I built a list of all computers out of the SMS database and run shutdown on that list. The problem was that psshutdown keeps trying for quite a while to connect to a machine which may already be shut down. To get round 550 machines therefore took too long, some were still waiting for the shutdown command the next morning. Instead I ran a short ping on each machine (2 pings not 4) and depending on successful connection wrote the machine name into a text file. Then ran psshutdown on that file. Unfortunately I can't reach the school at the moment (problems at an intermediate server) but I'll try to post the script itself tomorrow.

I don't want to be a moaner, I realise that SIMS is a vast and complex system which is trying to do an awful lot of different jobs from one database, but does anyone else think that recently we have seen updates sent out without full pretesting? May - the update prevents people printing out student timetables because someone failed to put a quote marks around a string variable. The system comes up with an error message about reading "C:\documents". The workaround we are told is to delete the temp entries in the system control panel. I don't know which programs on our system use these variables but schools in general run some of the most heterogeneous collections of software and I'm reluctant to risk finding out which ones break for this the hard way. May - again - our profiles system crashes for some, not all, classes. This means that we have had to delay reports until we can install the June update. FMS - The invoice screen demands a different resolution from the rest of the system so our finance staff need new monitors and still complain that they have to fix the settings every time they move in and out of the system. Now I find myself wondering if some of these updates are being rushed out to meet deadlines of various kinds and as a result there is no full testing regimen in place. When you consider that in order to use SIMs we have had to invest in a new server and upgrade the SQL install, I am having to fight some of our senior team not to switch MIS systems. One or two more such errors and I'll begin to wonder if I'm right to do so.

The answer to Phil's question is given further up the forum. Those of us with over 300 machines to run will probably be using one of a number of network management systems. We use config manager, but I note other methods are mentioned elsewhere. These systems allow an update to be scheduled to happen and the machines to be booted using wake on lan so that the entire upgrade can take place out of school hours and considerably diminish the impact on staff. We have put sims on all workstations but denied student access so the initial install is no longer an issue for us, but we could be more secure and better controlled if an msi was available so that only staff machines had the system installed.

This was before massive pen drive use, and as previously stated we wouldn't let anyone run an application from a pen drive now, but the same problem can occur from cd's or the student's area. We put a security key on all workstations, and on the servers we set them up with a separate password as well. Net support is a fabulous application but students can download the exe from the internet and once in they're away. By the way at the time we got a lot of worried reports from teachers who said someone was taking over their desktop because their mouse had a hair in the sensor!

I had previously tried to get adobe players in a redistributable form, but at that time the links just gave up. I'll try again now. - The number of times I've had to build my own msi to get the things installed!

Anyody got a good solution for installing adobe flashplayer or shockwave or even acrobat reader over a network. Seems to me that every few weeks we get a new version of these programs that pretty much everyone has to install but which are not prepared for network installs. How does everyone else manage? Jay

We have a bunch of network drives - legacy from Viglen and CD servers. Actually these are quite useful because they prevent students being able to get to drives unless specifically configured. XP doles out drive letters without dealing with network drives. Now though we're going to put endpoint security into place. Anybody got a perfect solution for getting XP to recognise network drives when picking up new storage devices? Thanks in advance. Jay When faced with a choice between less to be angry about and a course in anger management I know which one I'd choose.

We are currently using Class server - in which I've built an automatic translation of sims classes to class server classes. The reason for this is that we use it for all the school's cover so even though some classes will only be used occasionally the cover staff have to be able to pick the students through their classes rather than finding them within the year group. I've got this covered now - I think. the SLK works well except that most of our cover material is in the form of word documents with a word/powerpoint response required so I'm now looking to see how to make this work. Any suggestions? Best wishes Jay

Hi all I'm hoping for suggestions. I am setting up a Sharepoint 2007 installation to replace our class server setup. I'm hoping to script automatic teacher/student mappings from SIMS because that's what we've got at present. I have a number of issues/problems/routes. 1. I could automatically create sites for every SIMS class. This would use the Sharepoint's Learning Kit as intended. The teachers would get links to their class sites and could assign work from those sites to those students. Student membership of the site would be automatically updated every night. The first problem with this is that we would need to delete sites on a regular basis, when this happens the resources are deleted with them. 2. I could set up a single site with groups for each class within the site so that the teacher can assign learning resources by group for all sites. However the list of classes is likely to be so long that it will become unwieldy. Even if I reset the permissions so that each teacher can only see their own classes the list of learners will include all the students in the school. 3. I could set up separate sites for each year group and the classes as groups within that, the problem here is that we have vertical tutor groups and the post 16 groups are complex too. Any ideas?

As far as I can see the SIP address is not an ldap attribute by default in Active Directory. However there is nothing to stop you mapping the SIPAddress in Sharepoint to the email address in AD. If they aren't always the same you could use another attribute within AD and map it to the SIP address. To modify existing users I haven't found a better tool than admodify. For new users I'm using a script which imports them from SIMS so I put the attributes I want in there, but I think you can script admodify as well so you could run this as a scheduled task.

Yep, we used Ethereal, the broadcasts come from regular machines, but the originating message is a single netbios host announcement which is sent to the IP broadcast address, rather than the MAC one. That's why I'm wondering if the switch configuration is right.

I am frankly quite disgusted. We have been told that a roadmap to sql2005 would be published. I've heard nothing from our local dotict team apart from being told that there was a tool for estimating the server specification. The tool wouldn't run, I reported the issue but have heard nothing since. Over two months now. If I'm going to need to build a new server I need a budget and plenty of time. I'll be delighted to move to sql 2005, but the time allowance is atrocious. I have defended Capita and SIMS to our head in the past and had a fair amount of flack about it. I'm afraid I'm beginning to think that they have a captive customer base and they don't have to worry about disruption. Our school is in the middle of timetabling issues, I've got a number of major projects to oversee, there have been no announcements from our local dotict team about the August upgrade, let alone that this will require an SQL 2005 move.

Hi all, We have four hp 2650 switches serving one of our areas, whenever our computers are switched on we see broadcast storms, of course we have broadcast-limits in place so the network doesn't stop but I want to get rid of them. We've checked the physical bit and gone through all the computers and I'm now convinced that the storms coincide with messages sent to the IP broadcast (xxx.xxx.xxx.255). But the computer only sends one such message. Looked at the configuration on these switches and I think I'm seeing something weird but maybe not. For each switch when I ask for the spanning tree configuration I'm seeing some ports which forward to the switch's own mac address. Are we normal?? Thanks in advance.

I've just spent some time on this because we are moving into Terminal Services. We NEED roaming profiles because we are using Microsoft Class Server for which the Teacher Client does not work with a mandatory profile. We also had the slow login issues. Try http://www.loginconsultants.nl. They produce (and give away for free!) two fantastic products. 1. TCT (True Control Template). This is a group policy adm which extends the standard folder redirection possibilities. 2. FPK (Flexible Profile Kit). This is essentially a combination of vb script and and an extended version of the ms proflwix tool. It saves a users settings for any software to a specified folder when they log off and then reloads them as they log on. Even better, it marks the profile as roaming locally while the user is logged on. Both products are free but you do need to spend a little while getting your head around them before overall deployment.