hermiod

Thanks for all your replies guys. We opted for a HP DL160 G6 in the end, not the greatest build quality in the world, but it wasn't too expensive and we can use it as a UAT server once the new Blade-powered environment comes in, so it won't be completely wasted hardware in a few year's time.

Thanks for the tip John, I will look in to it. While I wouldn't normally go for refurbed servers, it might be worth it in this case...

We are currently in the process of planning for a new network environment (new domain, beefed up WAN, VMs, Thin Clients, the works). We have a single blade chassis currently which is ringfenced from the rest of the network as it contains the new prototype domain. It is currently populated with 5 blades. We are in the situation where the new environment isn't going to be ready in time for September and we are desperately in need of some new hardware for one of our systems. The system in question is Celcat and is currently running on an ML370 with Windows 2000/SQLS2000 and is creaking. We will be starting to use Celcat Attendance next year, and we fear the server just won't handle the additional work. Even though the chassis is ringfenced from the rest of the domain (using ACLs on the switches I believe), is it possible to have a single blade in the chassis hooked up to the network via the front I/O port. Can this port be used for ethernet? If this doesn't work, we may be in the situation where we have to buy a much more expensive rack-mounted server which will be surplus to requirements in a few years - not something we are eager to do! Would be interested in hearing any ideas that the Pros on Edugeek might have.

Hi We have an ESX Virtual Machine host which is sitting on domain A which hosts a Windows Server 2003 virtual server on domain B. There is one way trust between the domains B -> A. The virtual server is experiencing some major authentication issues. It is a web based application (QLS V4Web) which uses QuickAddress through accessing a share on the same machine. The users are on the same domain B. Our users are experiencing intermittent and unpredictable network prompts requesting that they log in to the virtual server rather than the domain. This happens mostly when accessing via http:\\servername\qlsv4live but also happens when accessing via http:\\servername.B.local\qlsv4live. The location of the QuickAddress share is set in the web.config and QuickAddress can only post information back to the web page if the user has accessed the web application with the same name as that which is set in the web.config. So QuickAddress will work if server is accessed as http:\\servername.b.local if the QuickAddress share is defined as http:\\servername.staff.local\QAddress in the web.config, but not if one is servername.b.local and the other is servername. This issue has only just arisen even though the server has been in this configuration for over a year since the original hardware on which the application was hosted died a horrible death. We are gearing up to replace our current domain setup with a single domain (we have a total of 4 at the moment, all with varying and unknown degress of trust) so we are starting to find all sorts of issues with the network, mainly to do with switches/firewalls as well as some DNS routing issues, and servers seem to be dying at an astonishing rate! Does anyone have any idea what could have changed to make this setup all of a sudden not work, or got any ideas on what the source of the problem could be and how we could track it down?

I've been asked by a member of our management team to get a comparison between SQL Server Reporting Services and Crystal Reports. I have several years experience with Crystal so I know exactly what it is and isn't capable of, but I have next to no experience with SSRS beyond watching one or two videos. I believe that SSRS is cheaper, as in you shell out for SQL Server Enterprise and you have infinite users, where as SAP charge you practically 1k per user, but how does it stack up against Crystal in regards to what you can do in it? Are there any major things that it can't do that Crystal can, or vice versa? More specifically, has anyone from moved from Crystal to SSRS and did they find that it had any major shortfalls? Would be greatly interested in the opinions and experience of the EduGeek community on this one.