seawolf

Watchguard XTM810

Yes, good advice. We did the same thing here. Applies to Xen, VMware, Oracle VM, or Hyper-V. Or, you can also use a physical DC as the NTP master.

Yes, I am in Australia and I certainly understand most schools won't manage to convince management to triple their budget in 5 years. However, it is likely that most IT deparements in most schools will be able to increase their budget if they go about it properly. Doing your homework and then actually asking for more money with good reasons why surprisingly often results in - getting more money. It does little good to do this after the budgets have all been decided for the year, but until they are... If a school is faced with no choice due to budgetary constraints that's one thing, but a risky infrastructure build is still a risky infrastructure build. As I said originally, virtualisation is not always the answer, budget constraints or not.

That all depends on how you make your case. Solid research, detailed costings and a (business) requirements vs IT expenditures study goes along way. I have been able to triple the IT budget here in the past 5 years. The result - taking a school from a barely functioning IT network that was an incredible burden and detriment on the school's ability to make any use of technology in the classroom - to one that is taking a leading role in the region in the use of IT in the classroom by both teachers and students. And, if you read my comments, I'm actually recommending a small physical environment due to the cost and resource constraints small schools may have. This is a far more reliable and cost-effective solution for a school that can't afford a proper virtualised environment (at least two adequately spec'd hosts with local storage).

This method is not going to show you your peak CPU, RAM, or network usage on your servers. This is why it is necessary to use a performance monitoring system (perfmon or many of the 3rd party tools available) for a period of time that includes peak usage on your network to determine both the average and peak usage. It is necessary to cater for peak usage in your configurations, not average usage (unless the peak usage is due to a bug or error condition, in which case resolve that first).

No, I don't understand every situation. However, I do understand what can happen with a single server virtualised environment. It's fine until it all ends in tears. Now, if you say that you have no choice because of financial resources available and you couldn't afford even multiple cheap servers for a physical environment, that is one thing. You're in a tight situation and no choice is very good. Living on the edge is out of necessity. However, if you are saying that what you are doing is good advice for a virtualised environment - then I can state with 100% certainty it is not. If Jollity is in the first set of circumstances then so be it. Risky, but possibly with little choice. If that's not the case, then I want to save Jollity from making a very bad mistake.

Yes, I do realise it is a 100 seat environment - today. However, in 12-24 months time, the school may throw 100 iPads into the mix or decide to roll out a fleet or laptops. And if that happens it is going to be difficult to go back to management and say "we need to buy new servers" when you've just put new ones in a few months ago. You always have to think about potential growth and not just the current environment. As far as my recommendations on RAM, it does depend on your environment, but RAM is cheap. Are you really telling me that the average server should be configured with less RAM than the average laptop or desktop? 6GB is not over the top if you have a single DC. If you have two, drop it to 4GB, if you have three maybe you could get away with 3GB, but 4GB is minimum recommendation by Microsoft and VMware. As for CPU cores, you have to consider the peak CPU usage, not the average usage. Additionally, if you are using any of your VMs as backup proxies with Veeam (recommended) then they will need adequate CPU performance or your backups will suffer. CPU load due to NICs can be minimised through the use of 10GbE as it is a different protocol and utilises TCP offload to reduce the CPU usage. But, this also is a reason why I recommend bumping up the CPU configuration for VM Hosts. This is my experience from 7 years of virtualisation. I agree, sticking with local storage in the server or DAS is recommended here. However, I do not think a couple of grand for a NAS would in any way bring acceptable results. You are going to experience high (noticeable to end user) read and write latencies, and the CPU/RAM of a $2,000 NAS is not in any way going to be able to handle the workload. First of all, you wouldn't even be able to barely buy 5-6 RAID quality (WD SE or RE) drives for that amount of money let along a decent NAS unit to hold the drives. Using consumer-grade drives will result in tears (slow performance, RAID failures due to drives dropping off, and a higher drive failure rate than expected). Actually, that's not the case. PCIe comes in different widths, with single lane PCIe providing 2Gbp/s duplex bandwidth. So, a 4 lane PCIe bus will cater for 10GbE, but anything less will not. I have two older servers in use with 4 PCIe slots that do not support 10GbE. Most new servers do support it, but some lower to mid-tier servers do not. It is my experience that underspec'ing is done far more often for a virtualised environment than they are overspec'd. This happens much less frequently in a physical environment because it is a more familiar environment to most techs. The comments I'm seeing on here about the use of single server VM environments pretty much confirms that. Yes, it's still recommended to have a physical DC (AD and DNS) or some things can break if your VM servers are all offline. However, a low-end Dell server will suffice for this. We use an R210 with 4GB RAM housed in a separate building from our primary server infrastructure. This is also where I store my secondary Veeam backup server (DIY FreeNAS server using Lian Li case small flash drive for OS and 4 x Seagate Constellation drives for data. It is also small enough to carry offsite in a hurry like your QNAP. We also have off-site backups and a fireproof drive backups are stored in as well.

I would agree with that sentiment, but disagree with the use of a single server for virtualisation. You need at least two or you can't afford to virtualise. Decent servers are relatively cheap when you only have the requirements of hosting one server on them. In situations of limited resources, it also usually means a small environment and one that is likely better off using a more traditional physical infrastructure.

I strongly disagree. I think you would be better served by 3-4 less expensive physical servers with good warranties and vendor support and a good backup solution. If you're SOLE server ever goes down (highly likely at some point), how long will your ENTIRE environment be down while you obtain a replacement server? Whereas, the likelihood of having multiple physical servers fail simultaneously is extremely unlikely. And, even in such cirucumstances only part of your environment would be offline. A good (and inexpensive) backup solution like BackupAssist can perform a full backup (bare metal) of physical servers for rapid restore. Virtualisation is not the answer in every situation.

In my opinion, the top projector for a classroom is a 60" plus LED TV with a wall controller over RS232. After years of tolerating the woes of projectors, including poor visibility with any ambient light, having the reset after extended power outages, getting knocked out of alignment, or having them burn out early die to teachers failing to turn them off or leaving them in "blank screen" mode - I finally gave all of them due for replacement the flick. We now have loads of 70" Sharp TVs controlled over RS-232 via wall plates. Great visibility in any lighting, crystal clear even from the back of our largest rooms, no worries about them being left on or getting out of alignment, no globes or filters to replace, a very long life. Everyone is much happier. Of course, if you absolutely need projectors in your given situation, then it sounds like the Casio units might be a good bet. But, I thought I would run another option up the flagpole.

If you primarily or only run Windows servers, then Hyper-V is the clear way forward for you. If you do use Hyper-V, make sure you use Windows Server 2012 R2 with the latest updates for your Hyper-V hosts. Here are my recommendations based on 7 years of running a virtualised infrastructure: 1. ALWAYS use at least two hosts for your VM environment. Using only one is foolhardy, more than two is unnecessary for most and just more expense and more to manage. 2. ALWAYS overspec your VM servers by at least 30%, especially for the CPUs which are much harder and more expensive to upgrade. The minimum RAM you should use is 1.5GB for Linux servers, 4GB for standard Windows servers (file, web, general purpose), 6GB for DCs and 8GB for Database servers. Always use at least 2 vCPU cores per Windows VM and 4 vCPUs for DB servers. Use a minimum of two NIC ports for every vSwitch (LAN, DMZ, SAN) and 4 or more are better for the SAN network (if you use a SAN). A bare minimum for most environments is two servers each configured with at least 2 x quad core Xeon CPUs (1 x 8 core or 2 x 8 core even better), 32GB of RAM and 3 x dual port NICs (6 total). 3. ONLY use a SAN if you know what you are doing. An improperly configured or managed SAN will give you nightmares and you are better off using DAS. Don't try to use an inexpensive NAS as your VM storage. Bad mistake. If you are spending less than $8,000 for your SAN - it isn't good enough to use for your primary VM storage. The lowest end I would go is with a mid-tier TruNAS server, a Drobo 1200i, or similar. Better yet, build a SAM-SD or buy a Nimble storage SAN or Oracle 7120/7320 (just discontinued might be able to find at a deep discount). Otherwise, just stick with DAS with good fast 10,000 or 15,000 RPM SAS disks. 4. Go with servers that can support 10GbE NICs. Even if you won't use 10GbE right now, it's good to have the option in the next 5 years. Remember that with a VM host ALL of your VM servers are sharing the bandwidth on the host rather than it being distributed across multiple physical servers each with their own independent NIC. Many often fail to realise this little fact. 10GbE really comes into its own with VM hosts and SAN storage. 5. BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! Ensure you have a good backup server and backup storage. Don't skimp on this aspect of your environment. Use a server with at least a quad core CPU (i7 or Xeon), 12GB RAM, and two NIC ports. Ensure your backup storage uses enterprise rated disks such as the WD SE or RE series. A good option for backup storage is a Drobo B800i with 3 or 4TB WD RE drives. I recommend Veeam backup for your backing up your VMs. The newest version also supports secondary backup to tape or a secondary backup storage. I personally recommend building a cheap Micro-server running FreeNAS located in another building to copy your backups to just in case. I built one with 7.8TB storage for $1,600. Another option is an iOsafe fire proof backup drive connected to your backup server via USB 3.0. BackupAssist is also a great option particularly for backing up the Hyper-V hosts themselves (bare metal) and critical data backups.

Whoa...never use just one server in a virtualised environment. That truly is putting all of your eggs in one basket. You ALWAYS need at least two servers To serve as VM hosts. And, both should be able to run all of your VMs in the event of a server failure. Veeam backup is a great recommendation, but you want your backup server to have lots of CPU grunt, at least 12GB RAM, fast storage and at least two NICs that can be trunked. Otherwise, your backups run slow, restores run slower, and you would barely be able to run more than one VM in an instant restore scenario.

After 10 years it's probably a good idea to start looking at new switches as I would imagine most if not all of them are 100M? There could be another issue going on, but at 10 years old it's a good reason to refresh and alo look at your network topology to see if you can improve it. Do you have a flat network BTW? It may be your network has simply hit the limit. Using VLANs properly will minimise excess broadcast traffic around the network. I second the Hp ProCurves. You will need a 1Gb layer 3 switch to function as a router and core switch, and 1Gb Layer 2 switches elsewhere. PoE and 10GbE for your network backbone (uplinks between switches) are worth considering as well if you have a long refresh cycle. A couple of good combinations using the HPs would be the 5406zl for core/routing and 2520g for endpoint; or, if you have more to spend and want 10GbE go for the 8206zl with 2910s for endpoint.

I would look at the console logs on a computer suffering this issue. It's best to do this immediately after getting the error. Just login on a local account and pull up console. Search for the username that tried to login. You should find a more non-descriptive error than the "cannot login...at this time" error message. When I recently encountered this error for our student user accounts following a migration of student home drives to a new file server, the console revealed that the error was due to the home drives failing to mount, which stopped the login. A quick inspection revealed a very small problem with permissions on the home drive that once resolved fixed all login errors.

Robocopy is probably what I would use for such a small number of users. Permissions will be propagated down from the parent folder if you have things set right. Don't use ADMT if you are hoping for a completely clean new domain.

Sounds to me like your firewall or web filter may be blocking you. Some of the Servers used by Apple for installing iOS updates, and VPP app redemption can be blocked by app blocker or web filtering settings. I have gotten 3004 errors before because of this and it took me a few hours to figure out what was causing it.

It is clear to me that the real meaning of "tolerance" has been lost to an entire generation. Tolerance does not mean agreement, it in fact means disagreement with something (a point of view, a lifestyle, etc.), but allowing it to exist anyway. As in not trying to persecute or imprison people holding that view. The Latin word 'tolerare' that we derived the word tolerate from meant "to bear, to endure (often associated with pain)". So, to say that you will only tolerate something that you find somewhat agreeable or rational is an oxymoron. So, when many people use the word "tolerance" what they really mean is "agreement with". In which case, you find most people to be intolerant of many things.

+1 for Veeam. Version 7 with the latest patches can now backup to tape as well if you need it. I know lots of places now retiring Backup Exec in favour of Veeam as a result. Update: I should also state that if you aren't using vSphere or Hyper-V and don't need to backup VMs (which is what Veeam is for), then another good solution is BackupAssist. Fantastically simple, but powerful and reliable software that doesn't cost a mint.

You're right about one thing, Christianity and politics never make a good combination. Politicians have to perpetually lie and be as cunning as a fox to be successful, which is pretty inconsistent with being a Christian...

I would advise using a little less haste in jumping to upgrading to the latest OS releases from ANY vendor or else you will suffer pain. It is one thing to do this for the individual consumer where the odds of something going wrong are much less and the repercussions small, but to do it an a corporate or education environment without adequate testing is...well...not recommended. Your issues seem to be somewhat self inflicted. I don't even rollout updates for Linux (of all things that are probably least likely to break) without some prior testing and research (known issues, etc.) and taking snapshots and testing some more after updating to make sure all is rosy. I have experienced software bugs in almost every system I have ever used at some point that caused serious issues or required a rollback (firewall, switch, wireless controller, Solaris, Linux, windows, Mac, iOS, vSphere, Citrix, FileMaker, SQL Server, Ghost, AV systems, Photoshop...you name it). Always proceed with caution with major updates, I don't care who they are from.

OwnCloud http://owncloud.org is a great way to host files for mobile users on a Windows network. Another VERY effective way is with MobilEcho, which has fantastic features and integrates seamlessly with Windows file servers (or NAS boxes, or Mac or Linux file servers, or SharePoint, or all at the same time). As for printing, I would look at Xprintserver http://www.lantronix.com/it-management/xprintserver/xprintserver.html as it is much cheaper than many of the other solutions mentioned and doesn't require setting up any software on a Mac or Windows server, it's a pure drop-in hardware solution.

Do you have a Windows File Server? If so, then just use that with the Macs and either map the drives for the Macs via login scripts (you can't use GPOs to do this for the Macs unless you're using something like Centrify or LikeWise), or purchase an ExtremeZ-IP license for your windows file server and use AFP shares and the Dashboard Zidget to allow users to map their own drives easily and without a login prompt (as long as Kerberos is setup right). For the iOS devices, you could use OwnCloud or purchase MobilEcho which provides fantastic integration with any file servers that can host SMB or AFP shares. It is even able to do "re-hosting" of network shares on multiple servers (e.g. Windows file server, Mac server, and NAS device) from a single host server. It uses standard AD authentication and recognizes existing ACLs for controlling access to shares. It also has built in full editing of MS Office docs without having to open them up in another app, and you can control access using certificates and invitations. Even works great over a VPN.

We use -- for our computers. Some examples: B12-iMac12-01 (the first 2012 iMac in room B12) T5-Opti745-30 (the 30th Dell Optiplex in room T5) I avoid using the OS version as that info is easy to retrieve and we don't keep a mix of OS versions around (all either Win7 or OSX 10.8). It's more important for me to know the machine type I'm looking at from the name on the network. The only time I use the OS in the name is when it's a VM (e.g. K3-iMac-02 is host and K3-Win7-02 is the Windows VM on that host).

You really need to go back to the boss and get the vital information that you are sorely lacking: (1) What do you intend to use them for (i.e. for who, what, where, when, and why)? (2) How many are needed and what is the budget? Depending on the answer, you will have several possible best choices such as: (1) iPads or iPad Minis - The top choice if you want a great tablet experience including the best selection of apps. There is a lot of excellent information and tools (free and paid) for deploying and managing them as well as using them in the classroom. You will find the most support and ideas available for the iPads as they are the most widely used. In most cases, you are right that few will question your recommendation being an iPad. (2) Android - If you have a smaller budget or have a strong distaste for all things Apple - as SYNACK does - then Android is a reasonable choice as long as you're careful. I would avoid the Tesco or Aldi, or any other uber cheap Android tablet. You'll find commercial support non-existent and very little info in the community in deploying or managing them. You will also likely be left in the lurch for future Android OS versions, and the crapware on them is another bonus. If you're going to go with Android, you'd be best to stick with the Nexus line as they are pure Android with great build quality and support. Deployment and management is easier as well. Second choice would be Samsung. (3) Surface - If you're a pure Windows shop and everyone will just pester you and moan about not being able to do exactly the same thing they can do on their PC, then the Surface 2 Pro is a strong candidate. They will cost you a pretty penny though and in the end you just have to wonder whether buying some cheaper touchscreen Windows 8.1 laptops wouldn't be a better solution, but without knowing the actual requirements or budget - who knows. (4) Chromebook - if you find out that what they really want is just a netbook replacement, the Chromebooks from Samsung or HP do a pretty good job of that at a great price point. Especially if you are already using Google Apps. To reiterate, find out what is needed, how much you have to spend, stay away from the cheap junk and buy gear from trusted companies (in tablets) that you can get support and community assistance for. That's what the "nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM" mantra was really all about.

You haven't stated what issues you are having? How is your site configured with the existing Mac / AD integration and what versions of OSX Server, client and Windows Server are you using? Also, do you have a .local AD domain? You say you are having issues since Apple decided to "upgrade", but are the issues you're having the result of upgrading OSX Server or your clients (or both). There were major differences in the way we had to integrate and manage our Macs when we made the jump from 10.6.8 on our server and client to to 10.8, including abandoning WGM and Managed Preferences. It's something that required a lot of testing and planning. Hopefully you haven't just upgraded your server from 10.6 to 10.8 or 10.9?