dhicks

Would the annotation features is Google Docs / online version of Microsoft Word be suitible? You might have to convert PDF documents to Docs / Word beforehand.

We're in what sounds like a similar situation to you - now creating new Hyper-V VMs on nice new hardware running Windows Server 2019 with Storage Spaces. For the new Domain Controller and print server I plan to simply have one virtual harddrive per VM, leaving Storage Spaces to handle optimising which bit of underlying storage hardware the data is stored / cached / mirrored on. For things like file servers, I'd probably separate the file shares off on to a separate virtual harddrive. In general, for data processing, my plan is to separate data and processing functionality by having source code in source code control and data in cloud-based file systems, so keeping local VM storage requirements quite simple.

Hmm - good question. The included RAID card does mean we can use a RAID-1 array for the boot volume, I'm not sure if we could add an HBA card and re-use existing cables for a proportion of the front-of-case disk caddies. We've now gone and attached a QNAP storage server to act as the main chunk of storage for this server, the extra drive slots are simply an added bonus.

Ah - is this in relation to using individual drives via Windows' Storage Spaces rather than using hardware RAID? We tried it (made each driver its own RAID 0 array) on our HP DL360 Gen8 with integrated RAID controller, then created a Storage Spaces drive out of them - performance was terrible. I think you need a proper HBA card that presents individual drives to Windows, not a RAID card.

@ICTDirect_Dave: - ooh, how not much extra? Are these 2.5" drives? We currently have a storage array on one server consisting of second-hand 2.5" laptop drives that could do with an upgrade, 800GB SSDs might be just the thing!

Our original batch of interactive screens from four or five years ago were Promethean. They work well, just for some reason not with OPS slot PCs - they worked fine initially, but at various points simply stopped being touch-sensitive. We never did really get to the bottom of what, exactly, was happening, despite sending the OPS PCs back to the supplier (VeryPC, who were very helpful) for testing. If you're buying any interactive board with an OPS PC, it's probably worth making sure you buy them together as a unit and that they are warrentied together as a unit, that way if hardware does stop working it's the supplier's problem to sort out. We've bought Smart hardware in subsequent years, all of which works fine, although for some reason we've found we have to set some HDMI-connected PCs to "fast boot" mode in the BIOS settings otherwise they don't boot. I don't really use either of the software packages on any sort of regular basis, so I can't really comment on which is "best", although I'd imagine it's mainly down to user preference.

You can, of course, have a specific user auto-logon to a server, so that user is always logged on. I've found that actually works okay for syncing a Windows shared folder to a Google Drive shared drive / folder - set up a dedicated "storage" user or similar and have that user own the shared Google folder and the auto-login. Otherwise, I've found that rclone gives more flexibility: https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/ Mounting a Google Drive isn't the same as backup & sync - you don't get a full local copy. You could have a task that ran an rclone sync periodically, though, that would be pretty much the same.

The exact need depends on the page / section of the website - yes, for the main site structure I'm parsing Word / Excel documents (using Pandoc) into Markdown, then processing those into HTML pages. Some sections of the site require an indexed table of documents, with links to Word / PDF documents, so in some cases I'm using Jekyll's embedded Liquid processing language to generate those indexes, with links to the original documents. I have Google Drive mounted as a folder in the file system using rclone, then I have a Python script that coordinates the conversion of those files with Pandoc before being processed with Jekyll. I'm finding Liquid to not be the best-performing of tools for what I'm trying to do with it, so I think I'm probably going to get my Python script to do the indexing of files bit (producing CSV files in Jekyll's _data folder).

Outside of schools-related work (for the moment), I also look after a website for a small rail industry site. They required a site with a consistent template that was easy to edit, so I've set them up a Jekyll site, using Google Drive as the backed storage / CMS. All their content is now in a set of Word / Excel files, editable either in Google Docs / Sheets or in Word / Excel via Google Drive desktop sync. User management is simply handled by Google Drive, so if you want to allow a particular set of users edit a section you simply give them write access to to appropriate Google Drive folder. I'm not any kind of front-end expert, so for a page template I've wound up using GOV.UK's Design System - a pre-defined set of Javascript / CSS / etc, with most of the formatting and design decisions done for you, and should handle things like compatibility with multiple screen sizes and accessibility guidlines. That might well be appropriate for a set of schools (especially state schools), or other Jekyll templates are available. Jekyll is a static site generator, so all the server-side work is done as a batch job, for the world-facing website you just need a basic web server / CDN. I have a basic Apache configuration which pretty much just serves files, with SSL provided by an automatically-renewed Let's Encrypt certificate.

As suggested above, if you don't already have a vector version of your school logo, this might be a good time to get it converted. SVG data can be included as inline data in an HTML page - it might be worth seeing how well that works in an HTML signature block, which would solve any problems with images being separate / blockable files.

Does the time match on the Mac and your domain controller(s)? Is there a valid computer account in active directory for the Mac?

Is anyone else using / thinking of using any kind of wireless connection as a backup? We're in central London, Three's new 5G broadband service is available in this area - separate from their mobile phone network, this is what used to be Relish Broadband. I use the slightly older 4G service at home - it's fine for home broadband, you can stream videos and so on, although the upload speed isn't very good and ping time is poor (SSH connections don't stay open due to timeout issues). I figure the 5G service might be a bit faster / snazzier, and would provide a basic backup connection - if the main fibre connection goes down we would at least have enough of a connection to connect to the MIS and send emails and so on.

We're a medium-sized primary (prep) school, currently with some on-site servers but moving more over to be cloud-based. We currently have a 200Mbps fibre connection, so that's 200Mbps both down and up, and this is on a gigabit fibre carrier, so we have the option to upgrade to a gigabit if needed. We've been thinking to upgrade to 500Mbps when it next comes round to contract renewal, mainly because there's little difference in price these days between 200Mbps and 500Mbps. For a secondary school, if possible I'd try and get a gigabit connection on a 10 gigabit carrier, giving you the option to add more bandwidth in the future if needed.

I'd want to check with the ICT teacher and see what they had planned - the exercise given above certainly sounds like it's written with the idea that people write a terminal application, but the teacher might be using this as the basis for a GUI / web based application. You can store data in plain files, or in CSV files that you parse yourself or via the CSV module, but again the ICT teacher might specifically want people to start using SQL queries.

Thanks - I knew there was a good, technical reason, I just never got around to looking it up, so whenever anyone's asked me why there's a delay before you can log in to the Macs I've always given some rambly explanation citing "technical stuff". Now I can just say "Our Windows domain name conflicts with Bonjour Auto Discovery", which is simpler.

Do you mean: the pupils are required to write a terminal application (i.e. something that reads user input via a simple text prompt and writes output via "print" commands) that implements a simple guess-the-number (or similar) game? Python Anywhere (I think) supports MySQL databases for each user, but I would have them use SQLite - it's built-in to Python as one of the standard libraries, and data is stored in a simple file.

What are they going to be doing with Python - terminal-only output, maybe some web development? You could set up a Linux server for the pupils to log in to, autheticated against Active Directory so they can log in with their usual usernames and passwords. If you don't want to set up a server environment yourself, you could have a look at Python Anywhere, which provide (free) hosted accounts with a whole slew of Python libraries pre-installed and tested, ready for pople to start programming. They also provide easy-to-use Flask hosting for web-based projects.

You could set the NUC up with Windows, have it auto-login to a "presentation" user with access to a shared folder with a PowerPoint file in. Then have a Windows startup shortcut that loads up PowerPoint with that file from the shared folder in presentation mode. Then all teachers have to do is edit / change the PowerPoint file in the shared drive - you can control who has access by controlling access to the shared drive. You could have the NUC reboot overnight so new PowerPoint files are loaded in the morning, or have something monitor the shared folder and reboot / reload PowerPoint whenever there's a change.

Yes, AD integration is generally just fine. A couple of issues we've had: - Clock drift on the Macs - the time on the Macs gradually drifted more than 5 minutes off from what was set on the domain controller, at which point domain logins stopped working. Solution is, of course, to make sure the Macs are using the Domain Controllers as their source of time information. - We have an older Active Directory domain that's come through being upgraded over the years from Windows 2000. As such, it's something.local domain, not domain that matches our Internet domain (myschool.com). Seemingly, .local domains confuse the Mac OS login system for some reason, so there's a 10 second so delay when the machine boots while the login screen reports "Domain logins not available!". Can be a little confusing for the user if they switch the Mac on and start trying to log in right after boot.

We have 3 recent NUCs from VeryPC with a similar specification, and they make great desktop machines - we have them running dual-monitor workstations (even a three-monitor one, I think), and they don't seem to have any problem handling multiple screens. We have a couple of older models on the back of touch screens, and those handle 4K with no problem. We use Raspberry Pi 3s for our display machines - we have them simply boot up and load a browser pointed at a Google Slides presentation. They 3s can strugle with video sometimes, so I'd go for a Raspberry Pi 4 if buying new.

We use ZuluDesk - recently acquired by Jamf, costs around £5 per device per year, so around £150 a year in your case. Mac OS itself actually handles AD integration and mounting Windows shared drives, it's just easier to have that all configured by an MDM so setup is consistent across multiple devices. What will the Macs be used for? If the plan is to use them for video / audio editing, you might want to consider how you handle user profile storage. Options under ZuluDesk seem to be all user settings local or all user settings on a network share, no mixture. iMovie, in particular, does a lot of disk I/O - I think it automatically transcodes everything you give it into its preferred format, so if you have user folders redirected to the network you'll see a lot of disk access to your user share. We have a login script to handle mounting users' Google Drive on login, with the rest of the user settings being local, that seems to be a reasonable compromise.

I find Inkscape good for this kind of thing - have your (probably) scanned plans as a locked bottom layer, drop in further layers on top with icons for CCTV cameras. Can add further layers for other stuff as needed - might be handy to share with site staff.

We fitted ultra-short-throw Hitachi projectors in classrooms around 5 years ago. They've mostly worked very well, and been pretty reliable, although we are now replacing them with touch screens. We get complaints from teachers with projectors still in their classrooms that the projected image is dim - it's probably not that much different to what it's always been, but of course that doesn't compare that well to a nice new 65" touch screen! The Hitachi projectors produce an image from a metre or so away from the wall / board, and from quite low down. They aren't that heavy, either, so they might work okay sat on a sturdy camera tripod with a suitible adaptor. Add a NUC, cable tie all the power adaptors up so nothing goes missing and you have a handy all-in-one PC-with-projector setup you can plonk into a classroom. That's probably about £1,000 of kit, mind, which might or might not be within whatever budget you had in mind.

I'd go for a Chromebook - if buying new, John Lewis is generally pretty good, you can go along and try devices out and you get decent service / warrenty. If you're buying a new Chromebook, I'd go for one with a 360-degree hinge and both front-and-back cameras so it can be used as a tablet and for taking pictures - we've bought Chromebook Flips for the school over the past few years, and they've worked well. £350 might just about get you one with both 360-degree hinges, twin cameras and a stylus. If you want more of a budget option, you could go for a second-hand laptop with the (free) home version of CloudReady installed to make it into a Chromebook. CloudReady will install on some pretty old hardware, so you might be able to source an otherwise un-used laptop for free.

Depending on how the teachers envisage using VR, I'd go for a single headset tethered to the classroom PC, with the VR view mirrored on the projector at the front of the room. Use it as an introductory / plenery to the lesson - pick one pupil, they get to navigate around a VR environment for a bit while discussing with other pupils. The pupil can be sat down - should be a bit easier to manage than half a dozen pupils with headsets on around the room.