Butuz

Over the last 7 years - waaay too much to list! Can summarise though with "I have implemented a reliable, secure and fast network to enable our staff to teach and our pupils to learn".

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/other-stuff/7934-edugeekers-their-cars.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/other-stuff/4939-edugeekers-their-motorcycles.html

To be honest you need to revise your UPS strategy as an APC 1000 between two servers and a monitor is going to give you less than 10 mins of runtime, probably more like 5 minutes! Also you should have both your servers connected to the UPS by serial leads so that the UPS software will automatically shut the servers down.

Good to see another Nissan Twin Turbo owner!! What you going to do to your 300zx?

Thanks for signing up to the forums to advise! Welcome to Edugeek!

Just read it - very very good! Congrats. Look forward to the next one!

Is the Citrix one comparable to perfmon? I am not using Citrix you see, just vanilla Win2k3. So your saying running on Win2k3 Enterprise with 8GB of ram won't actually give TS sessions an extra 4GB? If so - thats an eye opener! In that case looks like VMWare could be the way to go - dump 16GB of ram in your server and then allocate as much ram to as many vitrual machines as you need!

No never lost my temper here. Tend to keep it all inside and slowly vent it off over the day

Wow tim! Team of 13 is pretty darn impressive!!! Thats one of the things I would love to do here is support feeder primaries etc - unfortuntly with just the two of us it is not possible.

Are you using 2003 Enterprise or Standard? Standard is limited to 4GB RAM, Enterprise would be able to utilise your 8GB RAM without having to go 64 bit? Ifnact you could even double it to 16GB for more headroom. In my experience (with several 4GB TS's) TS sessions tend to become ram limited before anything else. Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Woops!!! Sorry guys and gals!!! Fixed now I thought all BOFH's had a few widescreen's hooked up to keep an eye on the minions???

I've always paid around £25 for official Promethean replacements, which I suppose is a bit steep considering their spec and unreliability. Anyone finds an aftermarket one with the same connector and same power ratings let us know!

I am fiddling with this now, not on citrix but on Win2k3 Terminal Server. It seems when you set one of the thin clients up to mount a USB stick - the mounted drive will appear on the server for users at all times - but will be empty / unreadable until you insert a memory stick into the client and then hey presto the mount becomes viewable. Its a bit strange but it seems to work!

After seeing how good VmWare Converter is at converting machines - - I think ESXi is the way to go. Hoping to get a new server in April with ESXi embedded and can get rid virtualise some of our old low spec app / web servers. Would be a good start!

As Midget says - VMWare becomes the host operating system, you don't install it into Windows, you delete windows and install it directly onto the server's storage. As such if you use VMWare you will not have 4 free Windows 2003 virtual machine licences, as you only get the 4 free Windoes 2003 virtual machine licences if you are using Windows 2008 in Hyper-v mode. As for storage, it is better to use a SAN from the off though you can use indivital hard drives in the local server as long as they are SCSI and preferably all configured as one raid array.

If you have 4 new'ish DC's and only 450 Workstations and you say performance is poor I would suggest you have problems elsewhere (network, wireless?) or possibly the network has been neglected in the past with regard to general maintenance, performance updates and hotfixes? We have 2 DC's, one new'ish and one over 3 years old and 3 Terminal Servers, and performance is fine overall with 250 workstations (no wireless) and 100 thin clients. As for CC4 - don't go near it for at least 6 months, many schools are beta testing it (or should it be alpha?) for you at the moment and having severe troubles. A well set up, resourced, and looked after CC3 network should do you for several years to come to be honest.

Wow ladies and gentlemen we have actually found an ICT department that is overstaffed!!! There had to be one in the country!! I'll have a couple of your technies off you if you dont want them Just noticed that your "NM" is the business manager rather than a standalone NM - that is good for you because he should know it is his job to make sure everything runs businesslike which will make approaching him about the situation much easier compared to if he was a standalone NM and basically wasn't doing his job. Personally I think you need to set up a helpdesk system so you and the NM can track all support requests - this will make it easy to see who is pulling their weight and who is not. It sounds to me like you're ready to take on the role of NM - suggest this to the business manager in your meeting. Most large secondary schools/colleges have dedicated NM's.

How worrying! Does he appear normal to all intents and purposes?

Welcome Gareth!!!

Hey speccy - The SmartCache 2 runs on Linux so if you want to install XP your going to have to get your XP CD out and to a full install. As you say it has no CDROM drive, but you could either take the top off and plug a CDROM drive in temporarily, or use a USB CDROM drive if you ahve one (very handy!). Once you get into XP set up it should happily nuke the linux install for you and hey presto - XP. The only things you may need are the drivers for the Smartcache - eg video, lan, sound drivers. Either go to RM.com type your Smartcache serial in and download, or use google and the motherboard model number.

As far as I am aware only Office 2003 is fully supported in Sims. You may have problems if your trying to use Office 2000 or 2007.

I'd say 19" non widescreens are Ideal.

Nope all mine out of warranty but HP will sort it out as they class it as a manufacturing defect (which it is to be fair).

Hi guys just an update on this - I finally managed to get through to the right person at HP (once I'd battled my way through the first line "is there a paper jam, and have you turned it on and off"). Apparently it is a known issue with Early 4250's and I now have a nice man from HP coming tomrrow to fix all 5 of ours free of charge! Cant say fairer than that I suppose! Sirbendy - if I was you I would go have a look at your 4250. Remove the flip down paper holder thing, use your fingers on the two blue plastic tabs to unclip the fuser and pull it out - see if on the left hand side you have a load of gear dust all over the place. If so ring HP!

Anyone had problems with HP4250's becoming noisy /clunky and on removing the fuser the gears look to have worn away with little piles of plastic dust right under and around the gears? I've just checked all 5 of these and they are all doing it Andrew