willv28

Right, the KMS host gets activated with Microsoft online. The other servers will activate against that KMS host. Your KMS host will be server 1 and when you add other servers, THOSE won't activate until you have a total of 5. So you need the KMS host + 4 for the 4 to activate. But the KMS is always activated since it's the machine you authenticated with MS. Never use your KMS key unless you intend for the server to be a KMS host. You get limited number of activations with the code and then have to deal with microsoft if you run out. We use KMS here, everything activates at all sites, it's nice not having to enter a code more than once. We have a 2008 R2 DataCenter key used and anything and everything will activate against it. We too have KMS keys for 2008 R2 ENT and Win 7, etc. I assume it's just the school licensing agreement structure. Oh yes, and also note that ALL machines will reactivate every 180 days against the host. You can check the licensing status and the number of activated clients on the KMS host and status of other machines using the slmgr.exe command line. slmgr.exe /? will give the switched you can use. The most important are /dli and /dlv which is activation info.

Hyper-V works great, we use it. We have several VMs setup on it. We plan to use a second server for failover clustering. As for the DC issue. You can virtualize a DC. When virtualizing a DC you need to do it offline, we've done it a few times here without any problems.

With FOG's inventory feature, I don't use serial number in the name. The first time a new system comes in, I have it boot to the FOG boot image and go through the complete inventory and imaging feature. This allows me to image and name the machine one time only. The machine sends it's inventory information, which includes all kinds of useful data to the FOG server. I name my systems by where they are located and an identifying number. Example, if a machine is located in our middle school room 17, it will be names VC17-001 for the first one and so on. That way, I'm never confused at to which computer someone is referencing with a problem. After that, the FOG database has the computer name always.

Funny, I never have gotten the blue screen from P2V conversion. But I have after repairing or upgrading a VM. We are using the full System Center Virtual Machine Manager. It was very inexpensive and gives us a nice all in one console we can use to control these types of tasks as well as manage different Hyper-V hosts. As well as create P2V conversions.

The good news is installing a KMS is simple! It requires no work as well. When you install Server 2008 SP2/R2 and you activate the server using your code, when it looks to MS for validation and is successful it will automatically act as a KMS server. This is why you don't use your KMS volume key on every server you install. Just remember the 5 server minimum before the KMS will start activating servers. Remember, if you're using 2008 SP2 you must install the KMS update so you can install a KMS 2008 R2 license onto that machine. You should try to maintain only one KMS for everything.

I'm from a medium sized school district. How these things break up vary from state to state. Here, most towns are their own district. There's a few "regional" districts that combine a few rural towns into a singular school system. We have 5 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 1 high school. We have approx 1,200 computers district wide. We have 4 IT staff members. The IT Director, and 3 other staff members, including myself. We all do just about everything and help each other out. Currently my "HQ" is at the middle school. Each of the other 2 staff members primarily service a level (elementary, high school). Here we have 5 servers, DC, File, "Updating", Application and imaging. We are connected to the high school via a frame relay over a T-1. The high school is connected to an OC-3 line the town has. The elementary schools are all connected via DSL lines which are also relayed into our network. Internally here, the middle school is fairly well done in wireless. The whole building is covered, there are a few low signal spots (working on it). We use all procurve switches internally. Each floor segment connected by 1Gb fiber. I just finished replacing older Intel switches with ProCurve and upgrading all backbone connections to 1Gb. Here we service about 230 PCs/Laptops. That is where I love the FOG imaging server. "Here, image this PC/Lab". Though we infrequently re-image computers, mostly because software requirements change infrequently. Our high school is where all the action is at. Part of the reason I service the MS is so I can help out on the bigger tasks at the high school more often. There we're doing the same thing with ProCurve switches. Recently obtained a beefy server to consolidate servers into VMs. Of course most standard servers like the MS only including the Exchange server, library catalog/circulation server, student management database server (student data, grades, etc) among other things. Since I got there, things have improved a lot in terms of getting out of being outdated. Surprisingly, I wouldn't say we're extremely understaffed. Though, like above, praise happens, followed by, "why can't you do that right now?" looks. Support is only ONE of my responsibilities. They're used to the old way. Some of our bigger challenges aren't really time, it's politics and money. Many of our situations are not adequate for the tasks. Data center vented by duct work to the outside, electric, etc. Getting things you need requires ALL your cunning. Budget is small. Officially town wide our dept is still called "Data Processing". There sign on the door outside the MDF at the MS doesn't say "Data Center" or "Data Closet" or even "IT MDF", it just says "Server". Also it doubles as my office. Depending on where you go, technology is not overly important to the powers that be. It can be a lot of babysitting of users too. That's another reason we don't image much, change confuses people. Sometimes I'm jealous of the way it sounds over there.

Like many other people, I found it while searching for information on an issue. I said "Edugeek", that sounds about right.

We're not interested in updating yet. But are there similar issues in the MSI that there were in the 5.0 edition? Numerous people I know had to edit the MSI with a transform to make it work.

That's what we do in place. Only we only restrict C and desktop for students. Any enterprise level deployment should not really be using roaming profiles anyway. We're talking many users, but still, until I came and got rid of that, roaming profiles were nothing but problems for the IT staff.

Right, you still have the OPTION of getting MAK keys. But the KMS licensing has been improved and a traditional volume license no longer applies. Essentially you need one machine to serve as a KMS server. MS has divided licenses for 2008/Win 7 into groups A, B and C. Group A being bottom and C top. Server 2008 products are in tiers B and C depending on edition (Ent/Datacenter, etc). Any Server 2008 KMS key can activate anything in that group or lower. So, you can install a 2008 server use the KMS key to activate that server to MS and it will activate the Win 7 machines as well. But like above, Win 7 machines won't start activating until your KMS server detects that there's 25 of them. Just remember, do NOT use your KMS key to activate directly to MS unless that machine is intended to be a KMS server. You get only 6 online activations per key. Of course, you can "rearm" and/or talk to MS. Wow, I hope I made that make sense... I doubt it.

In the installation directory there should be a util folder. In there there's an sh in there called fogupdater.sh Run that and you should be ok. If using Ubuntu you have to sudo run it. At least that's how I do it. Of course back everything up first!

FOG is awesome. Absolutely love it. Don't know why more people don't use it. I can setup all the computers in a lab and image them all at once, just like Ghost. Only issue is the auto join to domain hasn't been working right for me. So I have to sit down after and join them to the domain manually. Still 1,000 times faster than how the other guys do it. In earlier releases of FOG, I found sometimes the easiest way to make changes/delete was to go directly to the database with Webmin or PHPMyAdmin and make the changes there.

Everyone has their own accounts. Of course domain administrator account separate, though most of us have enough rights not to need it. All students/stuff, etc have their own accounts as well. It's pretty simple, we have automated batch scripts that add account for us. We use GPOs made with different restrictions for staff/students.

We maintain our own Exchange server. People in our system have asked why students in middle/high school don't have email accounts. At least here, it's way too much liability (bullying, misuse, etc). Under no circumstances have we or will we create emails for students. If we did we would just add them to our existing mail system.

This was one of the reasons we eliminated the use of roaming profiles. We maintain clear agreements with everyone that they're responsible for their own backups. People don't move around a whole lot, but it's certainly not worth the added bandwidth, etc. As well they know we don't attempt to retrieve any lost data off the HDD. Basically we scare them into it. Never been a problem. With the KMS volume licensing system, it's very easy in terms of that. You just need 25 Win 7 machines they will activate by themselves to the root KMS "server". For our deployments I personally use FOG Project to create images for deployment from master machines builds I make. It's so easy now. The other schools under our control are still using the old pull the hard drive and clone method. So, personally I would use FOG. Especially with the multicast capabilities. Take care of any issues with profiles. Setup some tests to try to iron out the issues and have a plan of attack as far as domain controller stuff goes.