lmgtfy

I was wondering how many people use Smoothwall on their own hardware vs. how many use Smoothwall on a UTM? Basically since April this year we have been having performance issues with our Smoothwall box causing it to either to drop the Web proxy service or cause web pages to take up to 2 minutes to load a single page. We currently run the Smoothwall box on our own hardware which is a dual quad core Xeon running at 2.33MHz (Intel L5410) 8GB of RAM, and dual 1TB Barracuda ES.2 SATA drives, along with 4 Intel® PRO/1000 Network cards (e1000e) We only see these performance issues when Smoothwall reports in User Activity that there are over 500-600 users using Smoothwall. We are currently licenced for 1120 as we have roughly 1000 computers/laptops/tablets plus we allow some use of BYOD. Does anyone have Smoothwall running with this amount of users and if so what do you run it on and do you have any problems. I have being using Putty to run Top to see what might be causing these issues and this is what I find. Dansguardian3 runs at between 500-700% and datastore runs at 100% all other processes jump up and down never running above 100%. The memory usage is very small but then I guess this is because Smoothwall is only 32bit and can never currently go over 4GB anyway. I have had a number of support calls open with Smoothwall since April and mainly waiting for the new database update in the Summer which was going to help with these load issues but unfortunately it has not. The latest news is there are no software problems and it is down to our hardware being not man enough to cope with the load. Ok fair enough I thought there are three ways we can go with. One buy the Smoothwall UTM3000, two buy are own better specification server, three look at other products. Please don’t get me wrong I like the Smoothwall software what it does and when it works it works well in terms of functionality but we have had Smoothwall for 3 years now and although all these new updates come out bring new features it seems to need ever increasing resources. We first had the Smoothwall running on a Intel Core 2 Duo similar specs to UTM1000 which ran well for a year but then upgraded due to slow downs and now less than a year later we are looking at a massive upgrade again. The UTM3000 sounds like a nice box albeit rather expensive at £5000 to buy but should Smoothwall really need such high specifications to run smoothly (pardon the pun) we currently have 8 virtual servers running on a server of this spec going from heavy use SQL servers to heavy use file stores and web servers it seems crazy. I don’t think we would buy the UTM either way because last week we were quoted £3000 for a Dell PowerEdge R620 running 16GB of RAM and Dual Xeon E5-2640 processors with all the bells and whistles including a 3 years NBD warranty. Please can anyone offer any advice to the situation we are in? Having just paid out over £3000 for our annual Smoothwall costs I can’t see us getting another £5000 to pay for a hardware upgrade. Thanks Chris

Your right @glennda I have also been trying to find some standard sip trunking with decent pricing as well but I can't find anything close to free local and national calls and mobiles at 2.5p a minute.

Yea I'm finding the same. We are currently testing a 3CX phone system and have been quoted mobile call costs of 7p a minute but if we go for a Shoretel system they will give us sip trunking with free local and national calls and mobiles at 2.5p a minute. Thinking of getting a SIP GSM gateway something like this OpenVox VS-GW1200-4G VoxStack GSM Gateway - 4 GSM Channels and sticking 4 Virgin mobile unlimited sims card in at £15 a month which effectively give you free minutes to mobiles. Not sure how happy they would be but its not in their terms and conditions not to do this.

Just interested to know if you ever found a trunk provider that was cheap as in your post above? Cheers

Wow thanks for the fast reply, we had Tri-lan IT in last week to give us talk and a quote. Interesting you went with BT for your SIP trunks I did think Tri-lans call costs were a little on the high side. What handsets did you go for, do you use the mobile apps at all, and finally any niggles or problems with 3CX as a system? Sorry for all the questions

@bclarke I know this thread is really old now but did a search for 3CX as our school is looking into it now as a new phone system and was really interested to know if you went down that route or not and if so how it went? Cheers

Logmein hamachi could be used. Its free and easy to setup tunnels through firewalls so no opening up ports etc to get it working.

I think you are both right if I can persuade them to invest in a little more they could have a proper Xibo setup. @pete Can you recommend a cheap LCD TV/Screen that you have used. I was looking at something like LG 42CS460 42in FHD TV - Televisions | Ebuyer.com with Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 Nettop - Nettops | Ebuyer.com to run it unless I can get together something from old parts.

A member of staff has seen a LED scrolling message board on a recent school trip and would like something like that outside their office. Now we have couple of Xibo based display screens across the school but they only have a couple of hundred pounds to spend so I can’t really recommend they get a TV screen instead. All the ones I find online seem quite old in terms of technology using a serial cable to update and the software looks really old. Does anyone use them and can recommend a particular make or model. The one I have been looking at is this one AV21567 - -- - LED MESSAGE BOARD, MULTI-COL, | CPC only because we use CPC can get it fast and it looks ok but the instructions are making me think twice just because how complicated it looks to use. It’s not strictly ICT but it does have a plug and does connect to a computer so I have to research these things I guess. Any help or alternative suggestions would be great Cheers Chris

We use the built in tools within iDrac that comes free as far as I know with most Dell servers. Was looking at it today to double check but it tells you intake air temperature as well as a load of other information and will send you alerts via whatever method you have setup I.e email. It also goes back along time historically so you can check patterns etc. built in power consumption stats look pretty cool as well, our servers are using on average 130 watts of a possible 800 watt.

@AMLightfoot the new knowledgebase idea sounds really good to me, I think with Smoothwall being as comprehensive and feature filled as it is, its hard to know all of the features as well as I would like sometimes. I had an idea which popped into my head today about another possible way Smoothwall could improve their support. I have been having an issue with our Frog server which wasn't the easiest problem to solve and instead of having to use teamviewer or remote support into a machine on site here they had a direct connection to the Frog server offsite and were able to test things and putty in when needed and fix the problem and send an email to say all fixed. I know for all my tickets I have raised with Smoothwall more often than not an engineer will end up teamviewing in which either involves me giving them access to my machine with all the right tools on or setting up a test machine with the tools on. Surely it would be a lot easier from both your point of view and customers if you had a back door into your own product. I know this might not be possible with some customers firewalls or some tickets but it is only an idea

I do appreciate that Tom and don't get me wrong I like my smoothie and that's why I always try and post on the direct support first before raising a ticket with Smoothwall. Perhaps you could implement a system though so if a thread on the direct support goes under answered for whatever reason it will flagged and a ticket raised? For example http://www.edugeek.net/forums/smoothwall-direct-support/112249-dashboard-top-domain-information-missing-well-information-emailed-reports.html

It used to be amazing, but now it appears random. Sometimes you phone get straight through and you are sorted in minutes. Other times you phone get voicemail and receive a call back upto 3-5 days later in my experience anyway. The online tickets which I only really use for low priority calls since August 2012 I have had 4 tickets all with 10 days plus response times with some being upwards of 20 not ideal.

We have 50 of the pro points onsite where I work and have had them in płace since September 2012. We are just outside of Plymouth in Devon so I guess it depends where you are in Cornwall.

Smoothwall seems to have stayed the same price for us other the last couple of years but I am starting to get a annoyed at paying £800 odd a year for just the support and getting very little for it. Have had a few questions on the direct support forum on edugeek unanswered which have turned into support tickets with very slow response times. When you do get support it is generally good but I was reminded how bad it was the other day when I phoned Veeam got straight through to a technician who sent me a patch and said if that doesn't work an engineer will phone you within 2 hours, all for a product we didn't pay much more than £800 for! My most recent ticket has been open for 10 days without an update. With what other company would this be an acceptable SLA I ask myself.

Thanks for the suggestions keep them coming, regarding all in ones it reminds me of the days I worked in a RM school with the nasty all in ones and remember it being a nightmare to work on in regards to swapping components and if the monitor died well you had it. Depending on warrants still worth a look at the Lenovos though Thanks

Got a test Antek ISK 110 case in today, wasn't the easiest computer to build but if you did a few it would be fine. Runs at 20W when idle with the above components and attaches to the back of one of our 19" widescreen monitors nicely. When running Prime95 at 100% it maxs out at about 75W and still stays relatively cool and very quiet. Will be doing some more testing next week.

Its that time of year when we beg to the powers that be that we need to buy some new computer hardware to replace our aging machines. The trend in our school is for ICT suites to be converted into classrooms with computers around the edge. Because of this we are looking for a space saving solution. I have seen some schools where they mount the computer under the desk and it all looks very nice, but it also looks expensive to first do and looks tricky to maintain etc. I am wondering if anyone has experience in some of the more slim line solutions out there. I have seen a couple of schools which have Dell PC's which are by the looks of it attached the monitor. Can anyone suggest anything that could fit my requirements. We are looking at up to £500 per PC. This may seem high but with a replacement cycle going up to 7 years on a desktop PC it needs to last the duration. I have been pricing up a few different options. The one that takes my fancy so far is this: Antec ISK 110 Mini ITX Case with VESA Mount | Ebuyer.com comes in at around £50-60 ex vat including the PSU which is a standard 19V laptop jobby which you can get spares for about £10. Its tiny and fits to the back of any monitor with a VESA mount. The other components I am looking to put inside would be: 1x Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor 1x Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz HyperX Blu Memory Kit CL9 1.5V 1x Asus P8H61-I R2.0 Socket 1155 VGA DVI HDMI 8 Channel Audio mini ITX Motherboard 1x OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 SSD 2.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s Read 550MB/s Write 500MB/s 85,000 IOPS The price I am looking is around £350 for the components and case, plus monitor and OEM license. Does anyone have that case or can recommend anything better? It has some good reviews like this one [build Log] Antec ISK 110: Tinier than Tiny but I guess without seeing one who knows what it will really be like. Cheers Chris

Don't see how just stating for around the £19 mark you could get a faster phone than the Sony J which over 24 months in my opinion makes a big difference. What I was trying to say is that there will always be cheaper slower phones available but that comes down to personal preference. I think @synaesthesia deal on the Ace 2 sounds good if that's the kind of phone you are after.

Lol some people like running the latest apps and OS. Don't tell me you use a Atom as your main machine because it runs XP and everything another faster computer would just slower. It's horses for courses. Depends if you want a low end slower phone, or mid range faster phone I'm sure Witch will decide for herself.

Utterly pointless in your opinion. I'm just saying from my experience having recently upgraded from a Motorola Defy which was cheap at only £12 a month but after 12 months of a 24 month contract it really started to get slow with all the new apps that were coming out and OS upgrades.

Or another cracking phone Samsung S3 for £20 a month, 300 mins, 5000 texts, unlimited data on three. Samsung Galaxy S3 - Compare Samsung Galaxy S3 Contract Deals Depends what your used to as £26 is IMO quite a lot a month to pay so your probably used to a fairly decent phone. Problem I think with going for something not as good as the S3 or Nexus 4 in two years its going to feel really outdated and slow.

I have the Nexus 4 it's a lovely phone. It's £23 on three with 300 mins, unlimited texts and data. I'm sure you could haggle a better deal with them though as they would still be making a big profit margin on this phone aim to get it under the £20 mark and you have got yourself a good deal. Reason I like the phone is it comes without all the extra stuff you don't need which eats your battery and slows your phone down etc, plus when a new version of android comes out you get it really quickly. LG Nexus 4 - LG Mobile Phones at BuyMobilePhones.net Ltd.

We have impero but still use a simple task scheduler to shut them down as its easier to apply different settings to different areas via GPO. In the startup script it goes something like this at /delete /yes at 15:45 /interactive /every:M,T,W,Th,F \\dc\netlogon\shutdown.exe -i -l 1 with shutdown.exe being BeyondExec - Spawn Processes or Shutdown Remote Windows NT/2000/XP WorkStations which works with XP through to 7 and allows options like not shutting down if logged on etc and multiple schedules.

@dgardner I know what this can be like. Luckily we have always had limits on staff and students home folders but the biggest one we had to deal with recently was email mailboxes. A few years ago staff had unlimited size email accounts with some users having over 10GB of emails and refusing to archive or delete old emails. We have 250 staff accounts let alone the students so the way we sold it to the management here was the time it would take to do a full restore in a disaster recovery instance. We have moved on a bit now and have a SAN etc so backup's and restores are faster anyway but there is no way we could give space's allocations like some of the people have mentioned in the thread. Staff get 300MB in their home drive, 300MB mailbox, 1GB archive mailbox and unlimited(ish) access in staff shared folders. All I can say is thanks goodness for Server 2012 deduplication.