jamesbmarshall

Something like Windows Virtual Desktop might be able to help here, too. Just in case you're interested in learning about how: Deliver remote desktops and apps from Azure with Windows Virtual Desktop - Learn | Microsoft Docs.

Happy Friday! This is a bit of a random one, but I am trying to get my hands on some old RM hardware; specifically a working Pentium 3 C-series PC, or Pentium class D-series PC. It's for a personal project, but I might have some work-related ideas for it, too. There must be some still knocking around in a cupboard somewhere. Makes me cry to think how many I've thrown away over the years... I know I probably require a head examination... but I'd really appreciate anyone who could help me out.

I'm a little rusty, but if you check out page 122 of the most recent product terms (below), you should get an idea of what you may be entitled to under the Student Use Benefits, depending on the way you licence things. MicrosoftProductTerms(WW)(English)(January2021)(CR).docx

Do you specifically need to suspend the ability to receive mails into the mailbox, or just stop the user accessing it? If the latter, depending on your configuration, you can just disable them in the Office 365 Admin Portal.

Yes, you can just write a PowerShell script to read in from a file of passwords to set each user. You can also disable expiry, and I *think* (may not be true) you can override the "reset on next login" option.

You'll need to speak with LGfL on that one I'm afraid!

Office 365 Education offers 50GB mailboxes (and lots of other stuff) for students and teachers for free.

Or get rid of the on-premises mail requirement completely and move to a cloud service like Office 365, which is still Exchange but without the need for a chunky on-prem server, and all the storage and backup associated with it!

Can you provide a link to that reference?

Yes, since December last year: Protecting customer data from government snooping - The Official Microsoft Blog

If anyone is concerned about where Microsoft stands on this, or wants to find out more about how Microsoft handles data when it comes to cloud services, check out the Office 365 Trust Centre: Office 365 Trust Center – cloud computing security. Microsoft is accredited to UK CESG OFFICIAL for Office 365 and is also certified ISO2001 and signed up to the EU Safe Harbour agreement.

I believe it launches later this year (December?) so best advice is to speak to your preferred licensing reseller and get the details from them. It'll probably follow the same as Student Advantage where you'll get the licences added to your EES or OVS-ES agreement and then activate it in Office 365 via a link or product key but your reseller should know for sure!

It's not going on the free plan. Office 365 ProPlus will be available to teachers under the same terms as Student Advantage; i.e. you'll have to cover all of your FTE staff for Office under your existing OVS-ES or EES agreement in order to qualify. So not free, "no additional cost"!

What did they say?

Just keep in mind that it can be a memory hog; if you have lots of users/changes etc. then it's best to keep it on a separate machine.

It's not if you know what you're doing, but the concept of federated identity and single sign-on is relatively advanced. Not everyone who works in schools IT has that experience or confidence. If you've got the skills, the budget and time to implement it properly then go for it! You can actually split your ADFS infrastructure between Azure IaaS and your local DC. There's a whitepaper on this (Download Office 365 Adapter: Deploying Office 365 Single Sign-On using Windows Azure from Official Microsoft Download Center) which has been around for a while now. Probably still all valid, certainly the general gist is.

Or just tell users to go to http://mail.office365.com?

I haven't looked into Groups very closely yet (never enough time in the day, blah blah ) so I don't have an answer for you I'm afraid. What I would say is that if you're struggling maybe log a call with support and see what they say. Off the top of my head it sounds silly that you wouldn't be able to delete something; especially if you're an admin!

No, I'm not saying don't bother with SSO. I wrote the post because I was frustrated with people not fully understanding the capabilities and making wild assumptions about what they'd need. ADFS is great, it's powerful and it's secure. It's just overkill in many cases, technically beyond what many folks in schools are used to managing and doesn't necessarily give the perfect solution most people have in their minds. For a primary school with such a small number of users, I would recommend password sync. The infrastructure required to implement ADFS properly (and I don't believe in doing it any other way, really) is going to be more than is easily justifiable to the school. (By which I mean the cost, time and effort required to implement ADFS vs. password sync are not going to significantly improve pupil outcomes)

I have an answer: the PowerShell names do not change.

My two cents on this... Connecting your local AD to Azure AD: YES. Makes managing the whole user lifecycle much easier. Password sync is more than adequate for most scenarios. It's a total no-brainer in my view. Plan carefully, then celebrate your sensible decision with a little dance. ADFS: (probably) NO. I've written this up and shared it on this forum numerous times: Deploying Office 365 Education? You don't need single sign-on, and here's why! I still stand by what I say in the post, even if it is probably slightly out of date now (I need to go back and update with some of the changes that have happened in the year since I wrote it).

Exactly. It's a technical preview, folks.

Nope - it's a Technical Preview i.e. stable enough to test and develop against, not supported for production use.

I know it's come up a couple of times earlier in this thread, but regarding the commercials... this is just a technical preview. The mechanics of how you buy it, upgrade to it, which versions (Pro, Enterprise, etc.) and all of that stuff will follow in time. For now I'm just very excited to be running it and talking to people about it!

First, ask yourself exactly why you want ADFS at all? Combining the roles into one box is, IMO, a bad idea. If you do go down the ADFS route you will need ensure you have a reliable, highly available infrastructure as you'll be putting yourself in the middle of any authentication with Office 365. If your single little box goes offline for any reason, nobody can sign into Office 365. I wrote this up - it's probably in need of a little bit of updating, but the gist is still true: Deploying Office 365 Education? You don't need single sign-on, and here's why! If you're still going to go ahead with ADFS you should look at around 4 boxes: 2 ADFS internal, 2 ADFS proxies in your DMZ. You'll also need to look into load balancing. You can probably cut corners slightly in some areas, but at the very minimum you'll need two: 1 ADFS internal and 1 ADFS proxy in the DMZ.