steveg

Previous image is 1809, this old image still deploys fine onto new machines so I'm fairly happy that my deployment server is working as it should I'll have a search for your previous thread. Nice to know i'm not the only one with problems I suppose!

I've had MDT / WDS working well for a couple of years deploying a fat image (primary school, lots of awkward software). Recently I have updated the image to windows 10 20H2 and re-captured a new wim. When i try and deploy this now it consistently fails, with the same error message. I have tried deploying to a physical machine and a test VM. The image seems ok, if I manually deploy it using DISM from a usb stick it works fine (just no drivers obviously) The error I'm getting is: ERROR - Unable to map a network drive to \\DEPLOY1\Deploymentshare Unable to connect to the deployment share \\DEPLOY1\Deploymentshare Connection OK. Possible cause: invalid credentials. FAILURE ( 5624 ): 5 Run DISMM: /Apply-Image /ImageFile:"\\DEPLOY1\CLientDeploymentShare$\Operating Systems\20h2customfat\newcap.wim" /index:1 /ApplyDir:D: Litetouch deployment failed, Return Code = -2147467259 0x80004005 FAILURE (5206 ): The Deployment Wizard was cancelled or did not complete successfully. The Deployment will not proceed. At this point I can open up a command prompt and check I have an ip and map a network drive to the paths mentioned above with no problems. I don't think it is a communications issue. I have installed the latest version of adk, adk PE and MDT. I have update the deployment shares and re-generated the boot images. When i import these into WDS they are showing as OS version 10.0.18362 I don't think this is the latest version. Other than just re-building the deployment server again from scratch i'm starting to run out of ideas.

One of my kids is on Smarty, the other on voxi, have been very happy with both. Smarty you get a bigger data bundle, voxi slightly smaller but whatsapp and social media doesn't come off of data allowance. Look out for offers when you sign up, the voxi one I got for extra data seems to last forever as long as i renew each month. I put £10 a month on each, if they run out of allowance then it's tough - they can't spend more than that. If you get her a phone set it up with family link or whatever the apple equivalent is. Can set times for it to turn off, all apps have to be approved etc.

We buy the 100 packs of over ear ones from here https://www.budgetheadphones.co.uk/ as our standard headphones now. Used to buy rugged ones, but they didn't last much longer. They do some really cheap in-ear ones.

We've got loads of trolleys from this company, all have been great, haven't tried the cabinets though https://www.zioxi.com/product/ipad-charging-cabinet-secure-storage/

Mine has just come, looks great thanks. Lost the coffee, tea and mug to the admin staff!

Finally done this, and actually seems to have gone quite smoothly. I followed the guide here https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2960505?lang=en_US created a new location, imported the vpp account, then uploaded the certificate to airwatch and all seems well!

We are leaving ours with the children for now, all homework is being set online as we didn't want books etc going back and fourth. We are actually giving a few more out now to the children that have been in school the whole time but now need to do homework online.

The layout of our school means we have laptops available to small groups of classrooms so they just sort it out themselves. I have used MRBS in the past which is pretty simple, or you could use a shared calendar for each trolley?

One with a VCR underneath in a locked metal box? :-)

Also worth checking if you are backing up vm's with it enabled, that the backup software can still do granular file restores - I only discovered ours couldn't when I needed to restore a file - bring a whole vhd back for 1 file was a pain!

Will that cope fine graphics processing wise though, all fine having 2 outputs that can do 4k, but if you play a video full screen and it doesn't run at full frame rate, then would be better off at hd. I guess integrated gpu's have come on a huge way in recent years

Our whiteboard computers are coming up to 7 years old - they we high spec when we brought them, but failures are now becoming more frequent so it's time to replace them. They were all in one pc's, but we want to go to separate computers and monitors now to save on upgrade costs next time. We are starting to replace our whiteboards with ones which are 4k resolution, so it makes sense to get 4k displays for the teachers desk too, to allow for cloned displays. (I know you can extend at different resolutions, but most prefer it cloned) We are a primary school so the teachers desk is also where they do most of their work, so a good monitor is a sensible investment. What I'm struggling with is sensibly priced small form factor (doesn't need to be usff) desktop that will cope comfortably with 2 4k displays. Will intel integrated graphics be ok with this? It looks like a Ryzen cpu with integrated graphics would cope fine, but I can't find a supplier that makes small form factor pc's with AMD cpus that have a display port and HDMI out - only one I've had quotes for has DVI and HDMI, no not 2 x 4k

We have a lot of 16 and 32 bay trolleys from here https://www.zioxi.com/product-category/ipad-and-tablet-charging/ Never had an issue with them. As has been mentioned above, it depends how you want to use them. We are a primary school and laid out in blocks of 2 or 4 classes, so a trolley between them works really well, doesn't need any booking system etc. 1 or 2 trolleys shared between a whole school can become trickier to manage.

We are a primary. In terms of actual costs cloud is more expensive for us, but when time factored in it is around neutral, may work out to be cheaper if it saves more time than we are expecting.

Value wise the Ryzen 5600x is pretty hard to beat at the moment, if a little tricky to get stock of.

Smart isn't supported on RDS so there isn't a lot you can do to make it much better. I did try contacting their support and they confirmed this.

When I was looking at laptops for the in-laws recently I liked the look of the new Dell Inspiron 15 5000 series with the Ryzen 5 4500u (or 7 4700u if you want to spend a bit more). Seems like a great mobile cpu, coming in around £700. This was a couple of weeks ago, so what is best value may have changed since then!!

Well you've really made my weekend! Certainly not going to be a small job then. Most annoying thing is in about a year when airwatch is up for renewal I want to move to something cheaper (and probably better!) and imagine that is going to be as bigger pain.

How did this go in the end? I need to do exactly the same thing, since the legacy vpp has been retired now.

Just been told by a teacher it's back up now. We had 4 classes meant to be doing it this eve, after covid prevented them last time

Slightly faster than the i7-4770 in my current work desktop, and about 5 times as fast as the cpu in the gov provided laptops!

Another vote for Libresoft here, from MLS - everyone prefers it.

We are moving to another cloud MIS system shortly. In direct comparison, the licence for SIMS is considerably cheaper than all of the cloud providers we looked at. What you need to take into account of though is the other costs, they aren't always as big as some of the providers try to suggest, but certainly when we looked at all the costs it made sense for us. Think of all the extra add-ons that you buy to be able to make SIMS do all you want, parents evenings, payments, communications etc, all often included in a cloud MIS. Then costs of running and maintaining a server, sql licencing etc. Staff time, backups, maintenance etc. Then we looked at time savings for the admin team, all the things that we've found work arounds for in sims that we will be able to do quickly and easily. Overall it worked out cost neutral for us when all was factored in, but would provide a better overall experience for everyone using it.

20gb ram, 16gb in use, 4 cores, ssd raid. 500 children primary school. performance is just about ok. We are optimising it much more in a couple of months by moving to another product :-)