Butuz

The big difference is: 1) it's fairly easy to have 1000 kids connected to your moodle webserver - the server wouldnt need to be particularly special, infact you could do it with one server. 2) Moodle is licence free - each pupil or each pupil PC does not require a client licence. If you wanted 1000 kids to connect via TS you would need: 16 x Dual Quad Core 8GB RAM Terminal Servers (£32,000) 1000 x TS Client Licences (£8,000) 1000 x licences for every application that they intend to run, e.g 1000 x Office 2003 licences, 1000 x Photoshop licences. Butuz

Yes - I'm trying some Open Source Linux distro's to, I've got Ubuntu and Sun OpenSolaris installed under Sun Virtualbox on my XP PC just to have a fiddle around with - both are quite similar. Both are really easy to install - which was the main stumbling block for older versions of linux (I seem to remember giving up trying to get RedHat to install 10+ years ago!!) I think I am going to have take the plunge, and install OpenSolaris as my main desktop OS because at the moment if something seems to be a bit difficult to get working I tend to just do it on XP to save time - losing XP will make me learn much faster. In at the deep end's the best way! I don't really think there are any apps that I will really miss on XP - all I really use my home system for is browing the web, email, MSN, MS Office (will move to Open Office!), Photoshop (will move to GIMP), iTunes (not sure about that one!). I suppose I could always set up an XP virtual machine for any little bits and bobs I REALLY miss!. The real reason I have not pushed further with this so far is because when I get home I just want an easy life with XP! No nonsense. I think though that learning about Open Source software at home will help in school as I can see us moving towards that direction over the next 10 years. Butuz

Clustering is cool, I've always wanted to give it a go but since I gave up on SETI etc years ago - I've had nothing to run on it! To be honest though in this day and age you would probably get more "cluster Processing power" out of one or two modern Dual Quad Core servers than you would out of 30 or 40 old Celeron 1Ghz's that you've been given. I guess the question is - Over the next three years of running your cluuster - will the initial investment savings of your 40 free celerons actually be overtaken by the cost of the electricity bill and increased technical support it requires? Butuz

Thing is - there may be only two people connecting now - but what if in 6 months the school decides to put SIMS on every teacher PC for lesson registration etc. This happened here - went from 10 SIMS users to 100 and I am only now able to replace the poor server that's been working it's littloe boots off. Never spec a server for now, spec it for what you will probbly have in 3 years time. SUN do make excellent servers! Hoping to have several SUN servers and a SUN SAN here soon. Butuz

I am having a right 'mare here trying to get HP Device Manager to pick up our HP T5135 Linux and HP T5530 Win CE 5 thin clients. I've set up an IP Range so the software can go for a walk - but it doesnt pick any clients up at all even though they are within the range I specified. All the docs I've read suggest my clients are supported by Altiris. "From easy to enterprise" ????? Butuz

Doesn't sound very sensible advice to me. I'll ask my mate - he's a Citrix Architect and uses 4.5 on thousands of clients. He'll know! Butuz

Great stuff signed up to that it looks great! Butuz

Any 38/42u rack cabinets available? Butuz

Have exactly the same problem as you (new core switch going in to main network cab which is next door to server room). I will be having a company in to run a 24 port patch pannel full of short links from the server room cab, into the core switch cab. It sholdn't cost more than £1000, infact hoping for it to be quite a bit less than that. Butuz

Ok - I am going through exactly the same thing as you - lobbying SMT to spend not insignificant amounts of money upgrading an infrustructure that has been underinvested in for years (yet has remained reliable down to my efforts). The main difference to me and you - is that I have decided to keep CC3 - as it is already paid for, and therefore I am going to spend the next 2-3 years maximising our investment in what is a secure, reliable, and mostly fast CC3 system, rather than ripping it all out and starting from scratch. How are you spending 10k a year on RM support? Here we are spending about £5k a year on RM support contracts for the network, terminal servers, and smarcache. I am not including server warranty costs in this, as whatever network you have you will still need to spend on extending your server warrantys. Personally I think it's £5k a year well spent as I can escalate any severe problems I can't solve myself, and if me and my tech get run over by a bus, the school can call on RM support for help. As for your £55k figure - we need to know exactly what that entails in order to be of any help. If it is pureley for hardware and licencing cost, and you are doing the upgrade yourself then I would suggest you could save significant amounts of money on that - if however it is for consultants / another company to come in an install /set up your new network then £55k could be the price you need to pay. Your right to question your logic and decisions - I question mine when I handed in a plan to spend £20k on infrastructure this year. But at the end of the day my upgrade will provide a faster, more reliable and far more fault tolerant CC3 network, and if this is what the school wants - good on them, of this is not what they want, and they want to spend the 20k on interactive boards - then that is up to them. Justifying your plan as best you can is all you can do - if they choose to ignore your reccomendations then it will come back to bite them in the rear at some stage. Luckily for us - we had a severe server faliure in 2007 which cost alot to put right and entailed over a week of total downtime - so the school are aware of the effect poor infrastructre can have on teching and learning. Butuz

This occurs when you you have a HTTPS website that contains some data / images that are not HTTPS enabled. For example your website is HTTPS but your main image is actually linked via a HTTP link. Internet explorer picks this up as being insecure (rightly so) as on a HTTPS site, all site data and images should be HTTPS. I agree with IE doing this - but it is annoying when you get HTTPS sites that contain normal images such as SUN's website. Find the HTTP linked image/data and HTTPS it! If you click "No" on the security dialogue you will be able to find the data/image that is not HTTPS enabled as it will show up as a red x. Butuz

Hey Ric did you get my PM? Cheers Butuz

Busy!!!! Butuz

RM/HP/IBM/DELL in the process of being dumped in favour of SUN here. Butuz

I don't do cabling - simply don't have the time. Would like to do it though based on past experience of several suppliers. What's the old saying - if you want a job done properly do it yourself? Bringing it in house would make things alot more flexible! Butuz

Excellent stuff!!! I'd be particularly intersted in the Virtualisation and Telephone systems. Look forward to attending! Butuz

I hope your UPS does not fail then! I have two APC 3000's at the mo and will have 3 this year - all our servers will remain up if any 1 UPS fails. Butuz

Was going to be going VMWare but after Citrix XEN was made free - its impossible to ignore. So going XEN here - will describe in more detail for you after I've finished the housework Butuz

Been running shweet for the last 4 years. Bit far from you though! TBH, in my humble oppinion the only way you could possibly ruin CC3 is either through bad managment of it (i.e not keeping up to date with patches etc), or from consistant tinkering with the active directory. - but then evern Connect 2 ran like clockwork for me (and lots of people moaned about that) so maybe I'm just blessed by the RM gods Butuz

From what google maps tells me - I'm staying a couple of hundred meters away from the Amber Rooms so will try and pop in say hello! Butuz

Not sure if you can buy direct - 2x stuff was reccomended to me by The Cutter Project (Cutter - a better way to deliver computing) so that's who I'm buying off! Butuz

Guess some establishments actually take ICT as seriously as they should! I guess the college turns over something like £5 - 10 million a year. What's £24k when it underpins everything the college does, in teaching, learning and administration? Butuz

Hard wired desktop teacher PC in every classroom on the network and with SIMS access. It's worked an absolout treat for the last 4 years. Reliable and fast with a low cost of ownership and little support required. I would never consider laptops - we only have a handful here (about 25), non networked (no wireless) and already several have been broken and generally the technical workload is far higher. As far as I am concerned - laptops and wireless cost too much to buy and replace, underperform, take more technician time to keep running, and attract theft, vandalism, and accidental damage. Butuz

Thanks torledo - you prompted me to, instead of going to bed, log on to the sun website and do an initial comparison based on the SUN Blade 6000 chassis, and actually - you've really suprised me as, at list price, even when only using 4 of the 10 blade slots, the sun blade system works out considerably cheaper than what I was originally intending to buy (though it does take up more room, and use more power though). Unfortunatly for me - the sun Blade 6000 is not on the matching grant - so when talking matching grant prices into account - the blade system works out more expensive again Very interesting though, and thanks for bringing it to my attention as it looks like when you take into account future expansion the blade server could work out consierably cheaper on the long run, especially by the time you fill all 10 slots - by then it is using 2u less rack space, and half the power of 1u servers....... Butuz

Hmm was warned off blades years ago by the LEA after they upgraded their datacentre and ended up being forced to spend a fortune on upgrading their electricity supply as the blades were so power hungry. They seem to be very power hungry, very complicated, and very expensive for the number of cores they provide, especially compared ot modern sun servers that give 8 cores in 1u, 24 cores in 2u and 36 cores in 4u in single servers? Can I turn it around on you Toledo and ask - what are the advantages of blades in schools? Butuz