jamesfed

Hi all, Thanks for the pointers have got a cost for TMG web protection service (only came to £1.55) - we are hoping that our LA will allow us to use TMG if not it maybe a quick call to Smoothwall! James

I can't say I've ever had any issues with it - we moved from 2000 to 2008 (and over the summer will move all the DCs over to R2 (member servers are all on 2008)). 64bit should be high on your agenda if you are looking to move as should Virtulisation.

Hi all, We've been looking at internet filtering options for the past few weeks and have been mainly looking at Forefront TMG (our MS licensing makes it the most cost efficient for the features we need and we can run it on hardware that we select (always something I am keen on)). However....we are still waiting on our LA to see if they will consider TMG as something suitable, as such we are looking at the other options including Smoothwall. Currently almost all our servers run inside VMs on Hyper-V R2 and I was wondering if there was a definitive answer as to if Smoothwall Web Filter would run inside Hyper-V with no big issues. I have seen a few other posts about it on the site however I have not as yet found a specific answer. VMWare is out of the options simply on the way I don’t like it and while Citrix Xen Server is fine by me (our current VDI setup runs on Xen) I would prefer to keep all the server OSes on Hyper-V. Thanks, James

Could it have been just a mahoosive build up of condinsation?

Microsoft SE on all my PCs with the normal Windows Firewall - 9 times outa 10 in my experiance virisus and so on get on a PC because of user neglect not because of lack of software (although lack of software could be counted as neglect as well I gues....).

We migrated over 3 2K8 servers from Intel processors to a AMD 8 core using Hyper-V/System Centre Virtual Machine manager with no troubles, while Hyper-V server may not be your best option (as its a bit of a pain to setup) but it runs fine using local storage.

You are probably thinking of the HP Pro Liant Micro Server - small little thing with a Athlon Neo II processor (will run hardware VMs on it well). Certinly not the most powerful thing on the planet but runs 2k8R2 well enough. Last month HP were doing a £100 cashback on it and it might even be still running now.

Hi all, In an earlier post I asked how it was possible to setup web monitoring in Forefront TMG 2010. With this we have decided that at least in principal that TMG is the best option for our school. However I’m having a hard time with the Licencing…. We would need access to the URL Filtering feature and filter lists and I’m trying to figure out is this an additional cost for us? We already pay out Schools Agreement and get with that Forefront TMG Enterprise so does this cover the URL lists or do we need the extra CAL mentioned on the Microsoft website? Thanks, James

To right on the SSD front - our current VDI server uses 15,000rpm drives but for any future ones we are more than happy to go with SSDs to get that extra oomph that HDDs could never provide.

Oh it works fine gaming (can play Crysis/COD MW2 on it at a resonable level) just gets a little hot.

My HP dv2 is the same - think we are both running the Athlon Neo processors, running it with Aero off keeps it cool though

DDR3 RAM and a sutibly fast hard drive - avoid 4200rpm, 5400rpm is good for most tasks but if you want fast go 7200rpm (it will chew through battery a bit faster) or get a SSD. Personaly I'd say once you get your PC get ahold of a SSD (if storage capacity isn't a worry) - it will make it fly along.

95:1 here (two full time techs) not to bad to manage now that we are moving to a thin client setup.

We use 10zig thin clients here - we do use them with a VDI setup (simlar to VM View but diff company) - only using Linux ones at the moment and you would need the Windows ones instead to run TS with all the fancy bits but they work great here.

I knew the first Microsoft Surface one was good - but WOWW how I do love the CES

In the past we have bought a number of SFF PCs like these from Pars - PARS Technology Product Description They run fine with both Windows XP and 7 for admin work (SIMS/Word/Emails ect) but keep in mind that modern PCs main bottle necks are at the speed at which they can access data (very rarely at the processor it's self) so keep an eye out for 4200rpm and 5400rpms hard drives (try to stick to 7200) and expecily 667mhz RAM (yes these Pars ones have 667 but I wasn't the one making the decisions on them). Personaly I wouldn't use any kind of PC like this in a Classroom enviroment with students though - aditional applications loading in the background and running larger programs will only bring down such PCs. If you do for whatever reason want to move to SFF devices then maybe consider thin clients and VDI instead.

Have a look at the HP ProLiant Micro Server - Athlon Neo Dual Core, space for 4 HDD bays and 1Gb of RAM pre installed - can buy for around £200 and HP are doing it with a £100 rebate at the moment.

Sorry am I wrong here or is it not £70? At least thats the way I read google finance- The Game Group PLC: LON:GMG quotes & news - Google Finance

I ended up being in a similar situation - got head hunted to a job in corp IT support (out of Education), they were very enthusiastic about me and I got offered the job on the same day as the interview. Pay was significantly higher than my educational job and like you said the world is getting tough for us on low income so I said yes. Two weeks later I called up my old school and asked if my job was still going and if so could I have it back – out of extreme kindness they said yes. My reason for leaving the high pay, fancy suits and 100s of servers – Educational IT is more fun, working in a small team means you get more of your own projects to manage and while the pay is bad it keeps me living at a reasonable standard.

By chance are you logged into the PC remotely? (RDP/VNC)

Is that for a Primary School (if there is any differance)?

Try SUPER - works a treat in most situations

Usaly a better approch is to implment WPA2-Enterprise and authenticate the computers onto your wireless network with a RADIUS server - it sounds complicated but once its setup your machines get a GPO that says use your Active Directory account to aunticate onto a single SSID. This way you don't leave your wireless key open for someone to steal out of a unprotected GPO/Script file in SYSVOL.

Hi all, Could someone give me a quick idea as to how much a 2k8R2 Standard and Enterprise edition would cost for a primary school? I'd be interested in a one off payment but if there are any Microsoft programs that makes it insanely cheap that'd be great. Thanks! James

You can do the same in Virtual Box - just sysprep your PC, create some snapshots and attach new VMs to the diffferancing disks created by the snapshots.