adent

Could not agree more. Speaking as someone who has been guilty of this in the past. It is a critical and intrinsic part of managing a complex network. When someone says 'I programmed this or I wrote that' my immediate thought is how exposed are we if you leave? Documentation goes a long way to answer this. At last! I know I have come into this discussion late but reading through the comments I can't help thinking that the main reason for being here has been missed. The END USERS! after all there is no point in any of this without them. Too often we get bogged down in the technical stuff and forget our purpose. I take the point about us unscrupulous commercial profiteers (yes I am one) just out to screw every penny out of the poor unsuspecting school but the reality is not like that. We are not in the Managed Service Providers framework and not talking to any provider of BSF about Managed Service, but I am confident that the overriding priority for most employees in a MSP will be the quality of service not the bottom line. After all if they don't perform the 'gravy train' will stop. The point about lack of investment is just frankly not going to happen. It is far cheaper to prevent things going wrong than it is to put them right in an emergency situation. What you are seeing in MSP is the true cost of ICT provision laid bare. As GrumbleDook pointed out, many schools have not got a clue how much they really spend on ICT annually. I agree there are misgivings about MSP. Not least is the freezing out of smaller local suppliers and support services. But look at the benefits. Being part of a larger organisation with training and career prospects. Being able to call on outside expertise. Having a sensible refresh plan. Cover for holidays and training. If you are good at what you do then I think the whole thing should be a positive experience. If you are not.... What is going to be far more interesting and challenging is how all of this investment can be made to impact on transformation. Opinions are like belly buttons - everyone has one and this is mine. (Lights the blue touch paper and stands well back)

This is a grey area and even MS Licensing experts get confused. I spent 20 mins on the phone with Microsoft over this and the answer changed after putting me on hold. Microsoft official response (Microsoft licensing helpline 08448002400 call reference 100305009166015) is that they can NOT be used in school as they are a home use license only. An education license on the other hand does not cover student use at home. The only license that covers both (according to MS) is a commercial license! Wow - this means that most of the schools I know with student laptop schemes are potentially unlicensed! Nice one Microsoft. How to win friends and influence people.

Depends what you want to do with them. Be VERY careful if planning to use SATA in a virtualisation project for example. We've seen a number of schools where the NAS or SAN unit collapse after about 8-12 months because the drives fail. SATA is very good for file storage and archiving. Very bad for vitual server images due to the high random io.

Try PapercutNG (Software for print quota and print control management. Your print accounting and monitoring solution - PaperCut). They have a trial version and I've heard good reports. Another one is Pcounter from Altman Technologies (Altman Technologies).

This is a little misleading. Windows XP SP3 is still going to be supported and the only version of Vista being dropped is the pre-SP1 version which IMHO anyone running that version wants their head examining anyhow. Beware of sales hype saying XP is not supported as I can see that coming.

My understanding is that the answer is no. We have a number of sites that for one reason or another still require RIS (usually because of equipment with low memory) and in those sites we have set up a seperate RIS server using the 'managed computer' setting in active directory to point the clients at that server. It's a pain but it works.

You are welcome You update the figures on renewal (in your case 3 years) - no need to worry until then. It depends. If you have a select agreement with Upgrade Assurance - then - absolutely nothing - you are paying for Microsoft Office - period - not the version. If it does not include Upgrade Assurance then you will be licensed for the product AND the version. Therefore it will catch up with you at some point. Two select agreements are pointless - in fact I am not sure you will be able to have two on the MS System - so you are probably talking about a mixture of full product and Select for that scenario to happen. I have seen this when people are moving from full purchase to select, but not the other way round.

You should be looking to reimage machines at least once a term to take into account software updates. Otherwise when you come to reimage individual machines they are vulnerable. This is the main reason for standardisation on hardware. The more standard your site - the more up to date your software images can be and the more stable the site.

Select agreements /School agreements are the same as Academic Open Licensing. Basically there are two ways of buying licenses. Outright purchase or rental With Select/School agreements you tell MS how many of each product you want and you get a volume license key. Throughout the term of the agreement you can use this to install new machines and replacement machines so your install base can grow without worrying about licenses. At renewal - you update the number of each product which sets the price for the next term and off you go again. With outright purchase - you buy the product and that is it. The main advantage in my opinion of select is that you do not have to worry about licensing on a day to day basis. The two licensing models work out to be about the same over a three year period, BUT, and here is the important bit.... With Select you can also have something called Software Assurance which means you AUTOMATICALLY are licensed for the latest version of the product. This means you can implement it when you are ready. With outright purchase you have to replace the existing license with the new version. This makes it more difficult to budget and you end up falling behind on licensing. From experience - it is better to make changes a little at a time rather than all at once. Select allows you to do this. With outright purchase it is not as easy because you are hitting senior management with a big bill so they are less likely to say yes.

My question is WHY? Why do you need to keep both? Is it the change of interface or because Office 2007 has a different file format? If it is the file format - it is possible to set Office 2007 to DEFAULT to saving in Office 2003 format. There is also a plug in for Office 2003 to allow it to read Office 2007 files. Generally speaking having two versions of the same product is problematical anyway unless you spend a lot of time 'making it work' - regardless of manufacturer.

Anything for a headline. Guess he's never heard of Becta then? They are pretty pro open source aren't they?

Who said otherwise? It is a genuine offer. Looking at just one sharepoint site gives you a narrow perspective of what is possible. Far better to see three or four. Easier to see them from the comfort of your own school than have to make four seperate journeys. Just trying to help.

I said 'virtually maintains' not 'totally maintains'

Hmmm - very interesting. Thanks Ric_. Looks like I will have to revise my opinion.

I agree - we've installed this in a number of schools - it does what it says on the tin first time - every time.

Be happy to walk you through a couple or three. The nearest we have to you is Bradford or we can arrange a demo over the Internet, or come to you. (My daughter lives in Morecambe so I'm happy to combine the trip) Each is different depending on the needs of the school so it may spark some ideas to se more than one.

My gut reaction would be to check for loopbacks on the network. They tend to trigger broadcast storms and are brutally easy to cause. (simply plug a patch lead into two sockets at the same time) Another possible cause is if you have port trunking enabled on one side of an uplink, but not on the other. HP in particular is a favorite for the broadcast storm scenario as they have spanning tree enabled by default. The broadcast storm is caused by spanning tree trying to reconfigure itsself to and getting all confused. Year 9 at one of our schools had a field day with this when they cottened on how easy it was to have the technicians running round like headless chickens playing find the patch lead. Solution was to disable spanning tree on all but the uplink ports.

In place upgrades are always a pain. Make sure your box has compatible hardware. I've come across RAID controllers for instance that don't upgrade. Also make sure you have plenty of spare capacity. TAKE A BACKUP W2k3 does not do a 'genuine' check on upgrade so a full copy will work provided everything else is in order. I agree with timbo343 though - If you can run on a test box - or better still in parallel it is better all round.

I agree with Ric If you can manage a vanilla network you can manage a CC3 network. It may be worth your while to spend some time on the documentation though as a well run CC3 network virtually maintains itsself - as long as you do things the RM way. Diverging from that requires both a knowledge of how to run a Vanilla system AND the impact of the change you are wanting to make on how the CC3 network works. It is possible for example to have both CC3 clients and non CC3 clients co-existing, but you need to understand the security and management constraints that will bring.

If I remember rightly this is to do with the default config, which is to bridge the virtual network rather than NAT. I would check the settings on the virtual server to make sure you have the virtual network card set to NAT or... if it has it... route, not sure as I haven't got a Virtual PC in front of me. Moved over to VMware a couple of weeks ago cause it seems a lot more responsive.

IMHO Using old PC's as thin clients is not worth it. You still have to spend the time maintaining them. Better to spend it on more general preventative maintenance than to try to eek out using old kit. I'll dig out the contact details I had for a free disposal service tomorrow. If you have a thin client solution in place already, then fair enough, but overall I've not come across one that is totally successful yet. Now if that isn't an invitation to be proved wrong I don't know what is......

Last time I saw this it was just after implementing WSUS. If you get the settings wrong it will reboot whenever... Just a thought.

Good point. Secondaries have more technical resources. Maybe it depends on the circumstances of the school?

Perhaps a survey of what you think is a 'fair' salary for a: Network Manager Senior Technician Technician ??

Word of caution. Before rolling these out, check application compatibility. I suspect you will come to grief with certain curriculum based software. Better to find out before you go live.