Butuz

Ouch. The DL320G5 if it is the same model I am thinking of, is NOT NOT NOT suited to serving 40 clients. With only a single dual core cpu and only 2 x hard drives there are going to be big bottlenecks when trying to serve 40 clients. Infact in all honesty my quad core RM desktop I am typing this on would probably do a better job!! I would be willing to wager the main bottleneck you will run into will be the CPU. With only 2 x cores available theyre probably spending most of their time on 100%. Have you sat and watched task manager on the server?? The next bottleneck will be hard drive speed (I assume your running Raid 1 with the on board low end raid card?). Your basically only reading data off one hard drive, and your having to write data twice. Sloooooow. I doubt RAM will be your bottleneck as 8GB over 40 clients is adequate. Basically - I can't honey coat it. You need to buy a new server. And until you get one, there is very little you can do to help IMHO. Butuz

Fantastic post and thread. I've got more to say on the matter but have not got time!! Butuz

Sorry cant help as have never used VMWare Workstation Agree with that. Why use VMWare workstation to test things when you won't (I hope) be using it in production?? Grab a bog standard PC, chuck 8/16GB RAM in it put in the bootable ESXi CD and go for it!! Butuz

That's great specky. Would love one of these here might have to get on to the energy company!!! Butuz

Realistically the only way you are going to save considerable sums of money is if you take all support in house using existing staff. If you just change the company you are using you'll still end up paying thousands per year, just to another company. OK some may be a bit cheaper than others but then some are worse than others so I guess the key question is - what level of support do you actually need over and above the existing ICT support staffing you have? Butuz

3 foot of snow!!!!!! I wish we had 3 foot of snow!!! I love snow sooo much /jealous Butuz

Spiceworks / Lansweeper can do this for free. Butuz

D-Link SmartConsole Utility ?? Butuz

Yep have 3 initiators here on a 7110 iscsi. I'd take a close look at the 3rd xen box before you reset your 7110. Butuz

Have fun! Make sure you have all your documentation straight - you'll probably be interviewed (if your the NM)!! Butuz

Have many promethean boards over 5 years old now. I'd be very unimpressed if a board did not last 5+ years as they have no moving parts. Butuz

What thin client machines are they?? Butuz

Yes you appear to be after the holy grail! This is fine, but I hope you realise holy grails are very expensive!!! Client virtualisation is already expensive - if you want to do that and then also run the virtualised clients on high end hardware then you are looking at a doubly expensive solution. You will have the best of both worlds but then you will also have the worst of both worlds too (excessive purchase and replacement cost, excessive running costs). We are sticking with full fat clients in intensive parts of the school and thin clients in less intensive areas to hopefully deliver as good a compromise as possible in terms of the best of both worlds. Butuz

My position is simple. I won't do anything illegal. If someone else wants to do it be it a trainee teacher or the head - they can carry right on but they can do it themselves if neccasary at home, I won't have anything to do with it. Simples! Butuz

VMWare Backup Exec iSCSI

Hitatchi (used to be IBM) deskstar PATA/SATA drives earned the name "deathstar" over a 10 year period of constant faliures. Buy a hitatchi san at your peril IMHO. Butuz

I have just run a few tests. Pulsar.exe on SIMS workstations is single threaded. It doesn't appear to be able to make use of multiple CPU's. On Dual core workstations Pulsar.exe never uses more than 50% CPU (1 core) On Quad core workstations Pulsar.exe never uses more than 25% cpu (1 core) Butuz

Yep - I don't follow either. Butuz

Not 100% sure what you mean matt. On my SQL server I can get sqlserver.exe to use 90+ % CPU of 4 cores if i run several big SIMS reports on several workstations at the same time. I wouldnt imagine SQL 2008 actually loads individual database files to individual cores - it simply would not scale at all if it did that. And it does scale - much further than most Single SIMS server secondary schools???? Cheers Butuz

Sounds like an interesting idea as long as they don't carry a big price premium. (I just use cable ties) Butuz

Not true matt. If your using SQL 2008 express then your SQL server can only use 1 core. If your using the full version then your SQL server can take advantage of multiple cores (up to 32 cores I think). I have 4 x 3.16Ghz cores allocated to my SQL server and it flies. As far as pulsar on the actual sims workstation goes - it wouldn't surpise me if it was single threaded - it is pretty archaic. I'll do some testing on my quad core sims workstation and see what pulsar uses for me. Butuz

Another BIG fan of Sun / Oracle here. Have 2 x 7110's and they are great. At the time I bought them with the Sun Matching Grant program they were 1/8th of the price of dell or 1/4 of the price of hitatchi so it was a no brainer for me. Even if you don't take into consideration the price their arguably better than dell / hitatchi anyway. Unfortunatly not sure if Oracle will be doing matching grant like Sun did. We can live in hope. Butuz

Hi Titch. Ok good work. they are very efficient laptops!! If you just look at 0.18 amp rating it means each laptop adaptor is going to use a maximum of 0.18amps. Now a bog standard plug is rated to 13 amps. If you take 13 and divide by 0.18 you get 72.2. This means you could potentially plug in / charge up to 72 laptops from a standard 13 amp plug. So basically - this says that for your charging cabinet you won't need to do any advanced / costly electrical work - you can just daisy chain a couple of 8 way adaptors. Be sure to check the rating of the 6/8 way adaptor before you daisy chain though as many are not rated to 13 amps some will be less. Again take the number of amps the extension is rated at e.g 5 amps and divide by 0.18 to get the maximum number of laptops you can plug in. I think you'll be fine. Butuz

Good work. Your school are lucky you are taking the time and effort to work this out. Most schools are oblivious to the fact they could save enough money each year so as not to have to sack several support asistants. Butuz

Some engines are more succeptible than others. For E.g. I used to run my old Mazda 323 with the oil level barely touching the dipstick. The oil light used to only come on if you cornered to hard!! The mazda could take it (and more) but I wouldn't do that to a rover or vauxhall. Butuz