jamesfed

Nickbro certainly does need a lot of thanks for all the work he does on HAP+ - without him we would just be stuck with our staff VPN and nothing for the students (for remote document access). So thanks to him from us as well!

In worst case you could always break your RAID array - install Windows on one of the disks and then use Eraser to obliterate the others. Then install Windows on one of the disks you just wiped and again use eraser to destroy the data on the first disk (if that makes sense ).

Boot and Nuke works well enough for me - Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing Haven't found an array that it couldn't bust yet

Log me in would be the simplest + free. In the long run maybe look at setting up a VPN connection (SSTP if at all possible) - as said already most LEAs provide one however if not all your need is an external IP address and the software to run the VPN (built right into Windows Server or you could look at something like Forefront TMG). This way you could also enable remote access to your shared drives/internal resources to the staff as well.

BBC News - Product placement ban on British TV lifted Yep all legal but not on the BBC according to this article.

Yep - I thought Spooks was bad enough! Yes ok Apple is the 'latest cool thing' but that dosn't mean they have to end up everywhere.

Hence me saying about mahoosive databases Either way pre caching the whole SIMS database in RAM would still hammer your HDDs while it actually reads the data - SSD you have the massive ability to read lots and lots of data very fast (just look in the hardware forum for the DL165 G7 and REVO drive thread).

The big benifit of SSDs is their ablity to write random data - so your database sits in RAM but thats read only as if your server were to loose power you would loose the data in RAM. As such writes need to be made asap and no RAID0 array of 15k disks will ever match a single SSD for random writes. Naturaly at this state we are talking about mahooisve databases (far beyond that of a primary...).

Just following on from above - if you really want to make SIMS work fast then put it on a solid state drive. We are playing around with a OCZ Revo drive at the moment and every virtual machine we put on it gets an instant boost (especially things that deal with databases) only thing is you would be looking at least another £450 on top and this would OTT for any primary anyways.

On the left is a 4x500GB 7200rpm SATA RAID5 array, on the right is the REVO Drive

The Micro Server isn't designed to be much more than a storage box for a small/medium business. Certainly not hosting decent sized active directory’s and most defiantly not databases (like SIMS and its MS SQL database). If you look at it as- Micro Server - 2-10 employees (HP sells them cheap to get a foot hold in the market) HP ML Tower Server - 10 - 100 employees (ideal for a primary - more expensive but with many good features like 'real' RAID controllers) HP DL Rack Server - 100+ employees (ideal for most secondary’s - extremely flexible servers with all the bells and whistles) My suggestion for your (apparent) need would be a HP ML110 G7 server, push it up to a Quad Core Xeon, 8GB RAM, 2x250GB HDDs for OS/SIMS/ect and then 2x1TB HDDs for your storage. Use something like the HP P212 RAID controller and you will be cooking on gas. Make sure you put on a 3 year warranty (even if its just parts) and as you are a school Windows Server 2008 R2 would be cheap as chips (you could even make a virtual machine of your existing viglen server until you are ready to move everything over to Server 2008 R2). That kind of server should cost about £1,250 (yes I’m sorry but you are going to have to spend some real money).

Yep thats where the sting is - all the same the intergration between the phone and the PC is amazing. USB (no dial pad) can be picked up for about £90 a go and are still very high qulity. At the moment we are looking at a bit of a hybryd with all desk tied staff getting a USB phone and then IP phones in 'common areas'.

Just out of intrest (may help the OP) do Private schools get Microsoft EES?

As you are a school Microsoft Lync 2010 with Enterprise voice is dirt cheap - the only sting is the cost of the handsets but if your staff can be convinced to use USB ones with no dial pad (just use the software client) then things can turn out quite nicely. Were currently in the process of putting together our own proposal for Lync Enterprise Voice after deploying presense/IM and are planning on making a saving within year 2.

The people who leave the world of Government funded IT will only move to the private sector...from which point they will just charge higher prices for their services and be fully able to get away from it.

Biggest thing to remember is that IT in schools have come a long way - no longer is it the RM store box that sat in the corner and made a buzz its now all about rack mount servers each with 8 HDDs, dual processors and more RAM sticks that I have fingers and toes (well maybe a slight over exaggeration). Either way times have changed and your working environment needs to reflect that change. If the noise is getting too much point it out to your HandS guys - make the point that over the past few years there has been a significant amount of new kit installed and that it has risen the noise level (if possible get someone to meter it).

Not to show off or anything but just in case anyone ever wondered yes a OCZ Revodrive 3 X2 SSD does indeed fit in the X16 PCIe card slot in a HP DL165 G7 server. Currently running our new Lync and App-V servers will be moving over a DC to it over the weekend - easy to say I have every monitoring tool directed at it and have backups running on it twice daily but so far it has taken everything we have thrown at it in its stride. Will post some performance specs tomorrow morning when I'm back in.

Should see the number of staff we've had connected to the VPN today it beats what we get over a weekend! how very odd....

Are you running and online or offline conversion? Also by Hyper-V agent are you using the Disk2VHD tool or the one included as part of System Centre Virtual Machine Manager?

Don't worry about using a SSD - modern ones can get 7+ years now. Others may say otherwise but by the sounds of it you need something compact and reliable - maybe a ITX Atom/AMD E350 system would be in store? These guys have pretty much everything you need to build a ITX system - mini-itx.com - store - home and even have ruggedized cases as well.

SMT get the same notebooks as everyone else about £450 a go for the HPs we get. Some of our staff have elected to buy their own which we happily provide as many network services to as we can. The only exception to the rule is the HT - after all what is the point in being the head if you cant be a little diffrent so in that case he got a £450 Lenovo with a Solid State upgrade. Now in your case.....most screens now adays are 15.6" widescreen - ramp that down to 1024x768 pixles and it will be more than viewable for anyone.

Maybe you are looking more at Forefront TMG/UAG - it allows single sign on to mulitple services. I don't know how you expect to tie this into Lync though as it uses a software client with its own authentication built in.

I don't know how much you have looked into this but what are you trying to accomplish in the first place? A VPN will allow remote access to the school (file shares/internal websites/ect) and the Terminal Server will allow remote access to a Windows like desktop with applications ect. Is this something for both the staff and students or just the one?

I can see this being a good thing for digital signage - no more Windows Embedded (although yes many run of Linux these days) but in that small a form factor with such a small power draw its the perfect application.

Cheers I do enjoy designing things just wish I had the funds to build them!