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  1. zag
    Intro
    One (of many) things that created discussion from my last blog post was the total amount of storage we provide to our users in school. Unlike some schools we do not limit quotas for user or shared areas but we do keep it very well maintained via automated and manual processes. Many people seemed to be surprised our total data store was only 500GB for a school with over 1,000 users. People mentioned figures such as 5tb to 20tb of storage which seemed very large to me. Some other network managers mentioned the cost of transferring all this data to solid state technologies and they have a point. It was also mentioned that the cost of storage has plummeted in recent times and why shouldn't we let users save what they want? Good question indeed..
     
    I would argue though, that network managers need to start looking at reducing the total storage to make their systems more efficient AND stable. By this I mean, if you fix the quantity (and quality) of data then it becomes a lot easier to manage, easier to backup, and quicker to restore as well as making it much easier for users to actually find their data. So if you are interested in how you can do this then read on:
     
     
    Advantages
    First of all lets talk about the advantages of limiting the total storage size:
     
    - Our entire file server backup SSD to SSD over a gigabit switch takes 48 minutes.
    - Accessing files is quick as they are all based on Solid State Memory with very low access times. When I say quick, I mean really quick, no bottlenecks, no delays, just instant access to any file on our network.
    - The file system is more reliable, again as its based on solid state technologies.
    - The quality of data is "better". By this I mean that things are easier to find and are more relevant to teaching.
     
     
    Archiving Files
     

    We archive all files each summer over 5 years old. We make it very clear that this is an automatic process, BUT give all staff a chance to opt out via a simple reply to the email. The archiving is actually done with a Robocopy script as you can see below. Robocopy is available inside windows from a command prompt. Once the files are archived to the new directory we leave them there for 6 months, then move them onto another server with a non shared drive. Eventually after a few years we will archive these off to external hard disks and store in a secure area of the school.
     

    robocopy.exe "C:\Data\TeacherDataNew" "C:\Data\_Archive\TeacherDataNew" *.* /S /COPY:DATSO /MOVE /ZB /NP /XA:RHS /XF *.ini *.ico /MINAGE:1800 /R:2 /W:10
     
     
    Separating Media Files from general storage
     

    We actively encourage all users to save media files to a special media server. This is infact just another file server with a large samsung SSD but it does give nice segregation. This makes finding media files easy for all users. We provide links on every student, teacher and admin staffs desktop for Video and Audio files. This is backed up less frequently and is not part of our daily backup routine. The biggest downside to this method is actually they have no remote access from home to these files, this has caused small problems in the past but with the advent of things like sky/onedrive it is becoming less of a problem. If a user wants to watch a video it can be found from a simple link on the desktop easily.
     
     
    Reducing the size of Photos
     

    We re-sample all photos on the network to 1080p quality. Most digital photos copied to the network are around 6mp big. There is no need to store files this big on shared storage so we manually re-sample these images once a term to fit the biggest screen resolution we provide. This means they can be printed in full colour and be seen on screen perfectly. Typically this turns 4mb+ files into 0.2mb. To do the actual resizing process we use the windows powertool ImageReziser on codeplex site. Just load an explorer window and search in the top right for any *.jpg files that are over 1mb on the root of your network shares. Once its finished searching you can right click on all the files and resize to 1080p resolution. Make sure you do some tests first so you can check the permissions. We've found a bug in the most recent release that resets the permissions to only administrator, the older versions work fine though. I always overwrite the previous file and never up-sample in the options.
     
     
    Media Server
     

    This is a thing for the future but I would like to run an internal youtube server at some point. This would reduce the size of video files stored on the network and let them be published online or to any computer in the school at a adaptable bitrate. Therefore reducing the need to store 1gb+ raw video files on the network.
     
     
    Restricting file types

    We use FRSM on windows server 2008 R2 to restrict students to saving executable files on the network. Our web server also scans and notifies when zip files are downloaded. We also set it up to email an admin when they are saving media files so we can manually remind them to move it to the media server. If they don't we move it for them after a few warnings.
     
     
    Restricting folder Creation
     

    A very effective way of maintaining the structure of a teacher shared drive is to make the root of the drive read only. This means they can't create new folders on the root and have to actively browse to their departments folders. I'm not going to micro manage what they put in their own shared spaces but this method does point them in the right direction.
     
     
    De duplication
     

    Our backup solution does De-duplication automatically. A 500GB read can turn into a 380gb write Veeam. I thought this was worth mentioning to show how many similar files are used on the network.
     
     
    Searching for multiple files
     
    There are loads of free utilities to find duplicate files in a folder. Its well worth running it to identify these files. I wouldn't recommend the auto delete functions of these software, I just run them to find the files and manually look at them. Some good options here although I can't recomend a good one as some come with optional spyware installs.
     
    How do I indentify and delete duplicate and files in Windows 7 and - Microsoft Community
     
     
    Removing large files
     

    We use a program called Windirstat on the main file server regularly to spot large files. These are often Zips or install packages that a teacher may have downloaded. We delete all install packages (as they are only used once and shouldnt really be there anyway) and advise teachers if there is a large file in their areas that might possibly be moved. Most people don't even know why the large file is in there area and its safe to archive or remove.
     
     
    Remove specific file types
     

    If you wanted to move (for example) all PSD files over 1 year old off the main network shares then just run this script. We do this once a year at the end of the term on student folders. This process does not delete files but it can move files into another folder (keeping the structure) to be moved offline somewhere. If a user ever needs it back a simple email is all that is required and a copy and paste from the live archive folder.
     

    robocopy.exe "C:\Data" "C:\Data\_Archive\PSDs" *.psd /S /COPY:DATSO /MOVE /ZB /NP /XA:RHS /XF *.ini *.ico /MINAGE:365 /R:2 /W:10
     
    As always this wont suit everyone, but may give you some ideas on how to manage the ever increasing storage monster! Be careful when you start moving archiving files, I never delete a single file just move it to a location where it can be stored. Personally I have a live "achive" server that I move things to that stays there for months, if not years so its a simple case to restore if needed. After a few years it may be worth archiving these files to an external hard disk.
  2. zag
    Intro
    I've been doing this job for many years and one of the biggest targets I have had in that time is to make our entire ICT ecosystem "Stable". By this I mean that things work as they should in a classroom or for our admin staff and dont break too often. In fact when something breaks it should be a surprise or an extraordinary event, not something that inevitably just happens. We all see jobs of "the projector is broken" or "the hard disk died" but these are entirely preventable if you buy the correct equipment and maintain it properly. I'm a great believer in building solid infrastructure and letting staff and students get on with their job with ICT there to help, not hinder people. So after having a think I've written a few bits of advice down for the benefit of others.
     
     
    Projectors
    Lets be honest, in a school, projectors are probably the most important bit of kit a teacher will use. For years we had problems with bulbs blowing, or coming to the end of their lifetime. I couldn't see an easy solution until one day Casio released a "bulbless" projector. Now the claim was pretty wild and the price was almost double our normal projectors but I thought I would give it a try. 5 years later and most of our projectors are of the new Casio Model and we have not had one problem with them in all that time. They just work!
     
    Recommended Model = Casio XJ-M140

     
    Servers
    Server farms in schools tend to be a collection of random devices purchased over the years in a panic to fulfil a short term _and_ long term need. A few years ago I looked in our server room full of different machines and realized that this had to change to make them more reliable. Since virtualization has come along, the hardware for a server has become far less important, it just needs to have lots of memory and enough space for the VM's. We chose to upgrade all our servers at once to a single make and model. You would think this would have been expense but actually buying 8 simple servers all with the same specification came to around £8,500. We chose the very base model with a RAM upgrade, nothing more. No RAID (its caused me more problems than its ever solved), no dual CPU, no redundant PSU's... Just a simple server that will do its job. The advantage of not using all this extra stuff is that it just works, there is less to break and its cheaper! The great thing about using identical hardware is I can swap it over easily and quickly. I don't have or use any manufacturer warranty as its quicker to fix myself. We did add an after-market Intel SSD drive for the storage which was an additional cost but for the reliability and speed its well worth it.
     
    Recommended Model = Dell R320 1u 32gb ram, 600gb SSD, Single PSU.

     
    Backup
    After struggling for years with Backup exec and "bare metal" recoveries (whatever that means) I finally found a better solution. With the advent of virtualized machines its actually very very easy to backup entire servers. We use the VEEAM software to do this and it literally takes 4 minutes to backup or restore a server. No more complicated options or configuration screens. Just simple backup and restore. A recent feature they have introduced is individual file backups so now all I do is restore a file if someone deletes it. You can use shadow copy for an extra layer of help to any student or teacher who is a bit trigger happy with their touchpad. The end result of this is quick restores and peace of mind when it comes to full servers and disaster recovery. Users should never even know when something needs to be restored, it should be invisible. A vast improvement over the 2 day restore times that we used to have with Backupexec
     
    Recommended Package = VEEAM

     
    Teacher Devices
    Teachers are notorious for breaking things, and to be honest I don't blame them. They do an incredibly hard job standing up in front of a class every day and the devices we give them should help them do that job without causing any additional stress. We've tried desktops in the classrooms but they ended up being damaged often by students during breaks and lunch. We've tried laptops but there always seemed to have something go wrong with them or be accidentally damaged. We finally tried giving teachers iPad mini's and a funny thing happened.... the teachers liked them. If I asked a teacher if they wanted a laptop or ipad the answer was always an ipad. Not surprising really but when you go watch how they use it in class its really impressive. They can be used to show presentations, take the registers or visualise documents on the whiteboard. The best thing is teachers tend to look after the devices more and get in less "software troubles". A simple process to plug in a cable to the wall and the image immediately shows on screen is so much better than the right click >> output to >> function F5 rubbish with windows. Again these devices just work, especially when assigned to individual teachers as a personal device.
     
    Recommended Model = Ipad Mini

     
     
    Printers
    Printers drive me crazy, they always have done. A company really just needs to build a printer that prints what you ask it to. There are no need for 5 pages of grey-scale options, bloatware or obscure buttons to decipher when you have a paper jam. We have found the most reliable way to print is to have a shared photocopier attached to the network that all can use. Now teachers are lazy people sometimes and require that a printer is within 50 meter walking distance. So we had to buy a few more than we wanted but they do work, and rarely go wrong. We setup email to print and network share printing with little trouble. We also use Papercut to audit the printing and generate some nice usage reports. This keeps the tonor usage down and ultimately means the photocopier can be used for a longer time without running out of toner.
     
    Recommended Model = Sharp 3110n MFD

     
    Storage
    We've all had a hard disk die on us at some point in time, its an inevitable fact that at some point 5-10% of them will just give up the ghost and loose everything on them. That was until SSD drives showed up. They are not effected by someone dropping their laptop or overheating in some way. But what some people found who bought OCZ and Crucial devices is that they died in different ways due to poor cheap components inside. We went with Intel and have never had this problem, it just shows that spending a little extra money on things can work out much better in the long run. We are now 4 years into our SSD experiment and have never had a failure. All our desktops, laptops and servers run on them with no trouble at all. Its a no brainer for me.
     
    Recommended Model = Intel 320 series 60gb-600gb

     
    Email
    About 5 years ago I was sitting by the beach in Greece enjoying a cold beer and soaking up the sun on my summer holidays when the inevitable call came through that "our email is down, can you fix?". It turns out our server room air conditioning had failed and the email server had overheated and crashed. It took 4 days for me to return home and struggle to get the server back up and running. Trawling though exchange SQL server logs and obscure Microsoft knowledge base articles I managed to just about get it up and running. From that day forward I promised to look into "outsourcing" our email. To me its a very simple service that has no need for in house servers or complicated mail connectors. So as soon as live@edu came along we jumped ship, and then onto Office 365. This has been one of the best decisions I've made as a network manager as again the service just works. I think we have had 7 minutes downtime in the 3 years since our changeover. I have nothing but praise for this service and its an excellent example of how the cloud can make things easier for us. Oh did I mention its free as well?
     
    Recommended Service = Microsoft Office 365

     
    Internet
    Everything runs on the internet these days, I would go as far as to say that it is more essential than a telephone and maybe oxygen If the internet goes down I probably get a complaint within 3 minutes from someone and it continues every 3 minutes until its fixed. Now back in the old days we had an ISDN line and then ADSL line both of which used to die randomly. It wasn't actually the internet line that was causing disconnections, it was the router due to all the traffic. So when we came to move away from local authority shared service a few years ago I made sure we got the best Cisco router we could. We invested in a 100mbit BT line which came with a managed Cisco router. To this day we have never had an outage, its rock solid.
     
    Recommended Service = BT Leased line + Router bundle

     
    Wireless
    We've been through several generations of wireless, from a single dlink transmitter to a collection of netgear Aps that crashed all the time, to our final destination of Aruba managed system. This works with a central controller that is very stable and 38 AP's around the school. Since putting it in 6 years ago its never gone down, not once. Aruba were notorious for breaking things with firmware updates, so we simply didn't do them. Lately we have upgraded to a recommended release that is stable and allows us to push out a 802.11ac signal. 2 firmware upgrades in 6 years was all that is needed. Moral of the story is don't upgrade for the sake of upgrading.
     
    Recommended Model = Aruba 3400 controller + Aruba 220 Ap's

     
    Windows Update
    I'm going to be slightly controversial here and recommend you do not do Microsoft updates on clients that often. I've never been a "patcher" because I believe that stability is more important that low lever security. By this I mean that you probably dont need to worry about the 30 memory overflow patches Microsoft release each patch Tuesday. Yes they are theoretically a danger and if some very very intelligent person wanted to target you but is it really a problem? My answer is no. Sure go ahead and patch a major vulnerability that causes chaos around the world but trust me you will hear about that on the 300 million other computers before it comes to you. Just as an example, we recently patched all our client machines on the network and the next day desktop redirection was broken for all users. It turned out to be a single update that caused this and needed a registry patch to fix it. This caused 2 days of problems for all users and made our network "unstable" to the end user overnight.
     
    Recommended = Patch once a year, stay on a recent operating system such as windows 7.

     
    Anti Virus
    I'll be honest, I don't use anti virus at home, never have done and never will. I find the industry survives on scare stories and pre installed bloatware for new windows machines. The best way I have found to stop viruses is in fact to make a few system changes that stop them spreading. Make all the roots of your network shares read only, even to administrators. This will stop 80% of viruses right away. And the other 10% will probably come in via email so block any executable attachments. Finally the last 10% probably come from people installing or running software, its easy enough to block those with FSRM on windows 2008 R2. I once broke our entire exchange Webmail system by trying to install Symantec anti virus. The moral of the story is fix your system before looking at anti virus packages. We use Forefront here which is the corporate version of Microsoft Security Essentials, its light weight and we turn off a lot of features such as system scan. We only use it for real time protection. I think the last virus it picked up was in 2010
     
    Recommended Package = Microsoft Forefront endpoint protection

     
    So there you have it, just a little advice on keeping the systems running by buying the correct infrastructure and configuring it in the right way. Always remember that the user comes first, they don't care that there is a bug in a system or that its only meant to last 3 years, they just want it to work. I can only suggest you try and design things with your end users in mind. Comments welcome
  3. zag
    We are moving away from our LEA supplied broadband solution so the next step is to replace our ageing cachepilot. Having used the cachepilot for over 5 years now I can safely say its holding us back on creating a fast reliable internet service.
     

     
    We looked at a number of different options for school wide filtering proxy including:
     
    Equiinet Cache pilot
    http://www.equiinet.com/
    I've used the latest firmware version and I find it incredibly slow to scan and respond to webpages. It uses some smoothwall technology to scan live pages which is good but the hardware didn't seem to be able to keep up. The user interface is dire, it looks like it was designed by a linux geek. Just as an example it takes over 7 clicks to block a single page.
     
    Smoothwall
    http://www.smoothwall.org/
    I tested the smoothwall box after recommendations from this forum but I have to say I was disappointed. The hardware was old using a very power draining CPU, and the box was huge and unattractive. The initial price was high (although they were prepared to knock a few grand off when asked). the demo boxes were also shipped from Germany which was disappointing. I found the user interface unnecessarily complicated to do simple tasks but I did find it powerful.
     
    Sophos web appliance WS1100
    http://www.sophos.com

    First impressions of the box were excellent. Its small, beautifully designed and reasonably quiet to run. The interface is second to none, they have a rule that everything should be done within 3 clicks, all the common functions can be done in 2 clicks which makes it even faster to use. The wizard setup interface is one of the best I have ever seen and setting up active directory took one line of input to point it to our domain controller. I love the main dashboard page which shows the total bandwidth being consumed live. There are also traffic pattern graphs for the day to show the peaks and troughs. Basically the main dashboard gives a wealth of information on the schools internet connection.
     

     
    Bloxx
    http://www.bloxx.com/
    I never tested Bloxx but the high quoted price put me off before I had a chance. Would be interested to know if anyone else uses them?
     
    Conclusion
    So there you have it, I don't think I've been so pleased with a piece of hardware in a long time. It worked out of the box, was easy to setup, the price was as good as any other quote I got and it even looks really good in my server cabinet I swapped over the proxy today for staff and I can already see the logs filling up with websites visited. I have also had 2 comments from staff about the internet being fast today. Best of all we now have active directory based group policies so our teachers can use iplayer during lessons but the students can't during school time. We have also setup time limits so the boarders can have a more relaxed policy from 8-10pm each night.
     
    Very very pleased with this an good to know its a UK company as well. This is how all filtering software should be!
  4. zag
    I run Sharepoint 2010 on a hyper-v server which I backup each term.
    Now these backup images are starting to get pretty huge at about 50gb so I thought I would look into reducing the footprint on the sharepoint server.
     
    http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5512/foldersharepointfolderi.png
     
    After a bit of googling I came up with these solutions
     
    - Turn off IIS logging
    IIS Manager >> sites >> sharepoint >> logging >> do not create log files
    Space saving 12gb
     
    - Turn off Usage Health Data
    Sharepoint Central admin >> monitoring >> configure usage health data
    Space saving 4gb
     
    - Shrink the main database
    SQL server manager >> databases >> sharepoint >> tasks >> shrink
    space saving 1gb
     
    - Shrink the web analytics database
    SQL server manager >> databases >> WebAnalyticsServiceApplication_ReportingDB >> tasks >> shrink
    space saving 1gb
     
    So there you have it, My hyper-v image is now "only" 30gb which is reasonable to backup regularly.
     
    Now I need to work out why sharepoint is using 98% of the system memory and 100% jump in cpu every 15mins!!
  5. zag
    So we are now an academy and I've been looking at the future of the LEA supplied broadband service that we have been using for the last five years. The only advantage I can think of keeping it is that everything is bundled and to be fair it does work. But with the advances in video and multimedia on the internet such as iPlayer and YouTube we are consistently reaching our capacity so its time to look at our options.
     
    http://www.meedios.com/zag/Fibre-Optic-Broadband-Speed.jpg
     
    Disadvantages of current LEA supplied Broadband
    - Slow 10/10mbit fiber link
    - Very expensive after the harnessing technologies grant has gone the council want to charge us treble the amount it used to cost
    - Managed firewall is difficult and bureaucratic to change
    - Central backbone seems limited (we share it with 40 other schools)
    - Cache pilot filtering (which in my opinion is very poor slow technology)
    - Inability to chop and change services
     
    I went and got a few quotes from various suppliers for full fiber lines right down to cable and VDSL technologies.
     
    Currently we are evaluating BT Infinity VDSL connection.
     
    I just got a new telephone line installed in the school for 100 quid and ordered BT business infinity, it costs £55 a month with 8 IP addresses. Very happy with it so far but it remains to be seen if it can service the whole school over the next couple of years.
     
    Speed test for the new BT "infinity" Connection.
    http://www.speedtest.net/result/1204680340.png
     
    Compare that to our current Easynet LEA supplied line
     
    Speed test for the old Easynet LEA connection.
    http://www.speedtest.net/result/1204689434.png
     
    The new connection is clearly faster both in response times and raw speed.
     
    As far as testing goes I just set the router up disabling the wireless and DHCP options. Then I gave it an ip that is just 1 different to our current router. I then change a client PC to use the new IP as a gateway and everything worked smoothly without needing to change any other network settings. The new connection is noticeably faster than our current 10mbit fiber line which is not really surprising since its 3x the speed and has no filtering at the moment.
     
    One other thing I am going to do is move to Live@edu for our email hosting. This means I don't have to mess around with Exchange server or MX records any more. But internet speed and reliability will be key to the success of this hence why I'm looking into it now.
     
    So in summary we can get a quicker, easier to manage and hopefully more future proof line installed for the fraction of the cost of our LEA supplied services. I think we're going to go for it.
  6. zag

    Sharepoint 4GB limit

    By zag,

    I came in the other morning to loads of reports of errors with sharepoint 2010.
     
    http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/2492/sharepoint2010box.jpg
     
    After a while I found out the errors were only showing when people tried to add things to the database like files or announcements. On looking at the logs we have this error message
     

    Source: MSSQL$SHAREPOINT CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE failed because the resulting cumulative database size would exceed your licensed limit of 4096 MB per database
     
    Now when I installed sharepoint 2010 originally I'm sure I put on the SQL server enterprise edition which shouldn't have these limits so I checked the server and sure enough SQL server 2008 full edition was installed. So after a few hours of googling I saw many reports of people with the same trouble. What seems to have happened is that I installed Sharepoint using the "Standalone" option. Now to me that makes perfect sense because I wanted all the SQL server and sharepoint components on one server. But apparently this option is just for people testing sharepoint on for example a development laptop. It installs a seperate version of SQL express and doesn't recognize if SQL server full edition is installed.
     
    So we've been using sharepoint for 6 months in a full production environment using SQL server express!! Oh dear.
     
    I found this blog post which had a solution, it says to run the SQL upgrade with a special upgrade switch
     

    setup.exe SKUUPGRADE=1
     
    Great! but this only works with SQL 2005.
     
    After a few more hours googling it turns out that the 2008 version actually has an upgrade button under the "maintenance" category in the main setup.exe. I ran this and it upgraded SQL express to enterprise no problems at all. I then ran the SQL server SP2 patch and my Sharepoint is running again
     

     

     
    So Microsoft please change the wording of the Sharepoint standalone option in the installer to give a clear warning about the 4GB limit and that it wont automatically find the full SQL server. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has fallen into this trap.
  7. zag
    http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/6105/image1dr.jpg
     
    OK, so I heard a great quote on twitter a while back:
     
    "In 5 years time, running an exchange server will be like running your own nuclear power plant to heat your home"
     
    This sounds like a sensible statement to me and since we have an aging Exchange 2003 server I thought I would look into being an early adopter of their "Live@EDU" cloud based email system.
     
    The benefits are clear:
     
    - Virtually unlimited email storage (10gb or something ridiculous like that)
    - Outsourced email - No more calls when I'm on holiday saying the exchange server switched off mysteriously while the workmen were in
    - Spam protection and someone else cares about the mail delivery
    - Its Free!
    - Skydrive online storage and Office apps
     
    I registered a new domain name and set up live@edu in a couple of hours. All it needed was a few MX records changing and I was logged into a fully functional webmail system with my new email address. It soon became apparent however that I was jumping the gun and we may need to keep our "nuclear power plant" going a little while longer.
     
    Speed
    The Live@Edu website is slow..... there's no getting away from it. I've browsed the outlook.com and its certainly useable but the difference is huge compared to our current locally hosted exchange server. I reckon its about 5 times slower from my limited testing. Not a good start! The data center is also based in Dublin which no doubt has an effect on the response times. Why not have a UK data center?
     
     
    Active Directory Sync
    Now maybe I was expecting a little much but it would be nice to have an easy way to synchronize Live@edu with active directory. Both Microsoft products - its surely not that much to ask. But no, sadly you need extra bloated software (Lifecycle manager 2007 Feature release 1) which comes at a cost. A quick browse of the instructions says you have to install software on all domain controllers and reboot each of them, who in their right mind would want to reboot DCs!! Even when I wanted to go ahead with buying the software it seems that a new 2010 version has been released with absolutely no online instructions on how to use it.
     
    So I'm resigned to using CSV exports and manual test accounts for now.
     
     
    Single Sign on
    This is probably the biggest challenge and eventual deal breaker for me. Currently our students log onto our system and the first thing they see when they launch internet explorer is their webmail. No logins, Quick, easy and functional. Unfortunately the live@edu currently has no easy way to provide a single sign on feature even with Microsofts own software portals. Now it is certainly possible to do but after reading all the extra software you need and programming skills its virtually impossible for the normal school network manager to achieve until someone writes a good bit of middle-ware. Microsoft currently provide an "SDK" kit for developers but no actual working systems. Maybe this will change in the future but for now its a lot of work to do even the simplest of tasks like log on with Sharepoint 2010.
     
     
    Lack of support
    Thinking this was a popular product I would expect there to be a nice forum or blog for Live@edu. I thought I found a great one here but sadly the last post was "a fond farewell". The guy who had made some really good posts has been moved onto another part of Microsoft with no clear successor (or at least one that can blog).
     
     
    Flexibility
    I can think of situations where having our own exchange server has been a great help. One time we had a student send out an email to the entire school with some very confidential information. It was easy enough to delete using EXMerge and was completely removed before anyone actually knew that it had happened. I imagine this type of thing would be a lot harder on a cloud based system.
     
     
    Backups and Service outages
    This has yet to be proved but I'm a little worried about who exactly is responsible when the service goes wrong. I know everyone jumps up and down when Google has a 1hr outage but this 1hr could be the difference between someone getting their exam results or not. Also I don't see any guarantees about data retention. What happens if my Principles mailbox gets accidentally deleted? Who do I call?
     
     
    Conclusion
    Cloud email systems are the future for sure, but maybe we will have to wait those 5 years for it to become a reality in secondary schools.
  8. zag
    I recently had a problem where we were running low on IP addresses. I looked in DHCP and had about 655 active leases over the last 7 days. Now I'm pretty sure I don't have that many devices in the entire school! It turns out that there were a large amount of IPhones and other unauthorized mobile devices attached to our wireless. I guess the kids managed to find out the wireless key again!
     

     
    There are a number of solutions to this problem, the most obvious is to change our wireless key regularly but I wanted a little more control over who actually connects to our network. I also looked into installing a radius server on our managed wireless but that looked like far too much effort for such a simple problem. Surely I could just ban the MAC addresses of these devices in DHCP.
     
    Unfortunately its not that easy, I looked into DHCP and found out that pre 2008 R2 domain controllers could not filter by MAC address from the server. Shortly after that I was pointed to this page that provides a surprisingly easy solution
     
    DHCP Server Callout DLL for MAC Address based filtering - Microsoft Windows DHCP Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs
     
    Quick Instructions
     
    Run the 32bit MSI on your domain controller
     
    Browse to windows >> system32 >> dhcp
     
    Edit the maclist.txt file
     
    Manually type in some addresses in this format (you can get the mac address from DHCP, its the Unique ID)
     

    #MACList.txt MAC_ACTION = {DENY} #List of MAC Addresses: 00334b141c32 #blahblah-Touch 34339e45190a #blahblah-iphone
     
    Now simply restart your DHCP server in services and it should start denying all those devices. Easy!
  9. zag

    The SSD experiment

    By zag,

    http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/4255/intelx25vretailbox.jpg
     
    So recently our main ICT suite came up for its 4 year renewal. We use ACER 6410 laptops in there and they have done a good job over the years. Now I like these laptops a lot but they are showing signs of age with 512mb or Ram and slow 5200rpm hard disks. I didn't really want to scrap them as the laptops are working well, they just needed a significant speed boost. The first thing I did was to obviously upgrade the ram. I went with a 4gb upgrade which cost around £75 per machine. A nice speed boost but things were still a little slow. I have used SSD drives in servers and my home HTPC computer for a long time and they work very well . I've never had a failure and the speed boost is incredible so its about time to look at rolling them out properly around the school.
     
    I use the Intel X25-M 160gb drives in a couple of servers and they are blazingly fast so Intel are the obvious choice for laptops being the market leader. Intel only do one value drive, the Intel X25-V 40gb which seemed to fit the bill nicely. The capacity may seem a little small but looking at our client machines the hard disk is just over 11gb full and that's for the entire suite of software that we use as well. We use mandatory profiles and don't store the internet cache so there is very little need for additional storage.
     
    Cost
    I went ahead and bought 30 of these drives as an experiment. They cost £73 each I think the total cost was around £2200 so not too difficult to justify. If you add the Ram and SSD upgrades together its just shy of £150 per machine which seems a reasonable cost to me for what basically amounts to a brand new ICT suite.
     
    Installation
    The 2.5" drives slotted into the laptops no problems at all and it was a simple procedure to image the old drive with Acronis and transfer to the SSD. The process took less than 20mins for each drive. I have a new USB 3.0 hard disk dock that I copied the images with so it took less than a day to upgrade all the computers. The retail packs of the Intel SSD drives come with a 3.5" plate and since they are SATA they will work in laptops or workstations just fine. I even did a few new images on these and its amazing how much time you save simply installing windows or doing automatic updates.
     
    Performance
    I'm not sure I need to explain this side of things as the increases in speed from SSD drives are well documented. I'll simply write down a few benchmarks to show you. The speed was stunning.
     
    Boot
    Original Hitatchi 5400rpm - 80.82 seconds
    Intel X25-V SSD - 39.19 seconds
     
    Shutdown
    Original Hitatchi 5400rpm - 25.20 seconds
    Intel X25-V SSD - 5.68 seconds
     
    Photoshop elements load
    Original Hitatchi 5400rpm - 24.67 seconds
    Intel X25-V SSD - 7.52 seconds
     
    Conclusion
    Simply put, SSD drives are the single best upgrade you can give a computer. I've used them reliably in servers, home computers and now and entire software suite at work. The costs are finally coming down to a level that makes them realistic in a school environment. I would personally wait for the new generation of Intel devices to come out in Q4 this year as they may bring some cost benefits but its nearly time to go all in on this technology in my opinion. The benefits are just too large to ignore.
  10. zag
    http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/6426/19248027.jpg VS. http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/3509/15041575.jpg
     
    Most IT people will tell you that backing up data is probably the most important part of their job. I've lived through a few disasters in my career and so far, touch wood, i've made it through without loosing any large chunks of data. I've always used backupexec in all my jobs but recently heard about Microsoft Data protection manager 2010. We heavily use Microsoft software in school so I it made sense to to test it out. I was also coming to the end of backup exec 10d lifetime and needed to upgrade it to support the latest Sharepoint, exchange and SQL servers so a decision had to be made.
     
    Price
    DPM - Its really cheap, I don't have exact costs but the educational pricing is virtually free.
    BE - Cheap enough for the basic install but costs £300 per agent so the costs can quickly add up. Your probably looking at around £2,000 for a complete license.
     
    Winner - Data Protection Manager 2010, its amazingly cheap.
     
    Pre-requisites before install
    DPM - What a nightmare, I think I installed about 5 separate hot fixes on my 2008 R2 server just to get the to get the actual software running. Not a good start!
    BE - Backupexec required a SQL server to be installed but this was included on the disk and express edition is fine. I actually installed the latest 2008 express R2 with no problems at all.
     
    Winner - Backupexec for ease of install.
     
    Agent install
    DPM - I can only describe this part of DPM as a total failure. Again I had to install loads of hotfixes on servers (even the 2008 ones) just to get it to accept the install. This means reboots added to the danger of installing updates that mess with the file system I didn't like this at all. In fact one of our servers blue screened after I installed a hotfix. I was also getting generic agent is not working error messages like this:
     

     
    BE - Installing agents was very quick and painless process for new servers. Worked as advertised with no need to install any hotfixes. The big problem is that the agents can't be upgraded from backupexec 10d, you need to uninstall the agents first. Now backupexec 10d has a problem with some agents not showing in add/remove programs. This meant I had to manually remove the agent following this article. Next problem is that the original media for backupexec was not the latest service pack so I had to map a drive from the old server and uninstall using the latest agent installer. It worked in the end but took several hours to diagnose.
     
    Winner - Backupexec wins in this category, but should make it easier to upgrade from previous versions.
     
    User Interface
    DPM - The interface is simple enough to use. It has only a few tabs at the top for protection groups, logs, media ect. I found it pretty easy to use but as with most microsoft products the help files are pretty useless and I couldn't find a nice quickstart guide. I did finally find some videos on youtube about usage.
     
    BE - I'm used to the old 10d interface and the new 2010 version is a nice improvement without changing things too much. I certainly like the front screen that takes you through some wizards to get everything setup nicely.
     
    Winner - Backupexec 2010 due to its nicer initial screen and better documentation. DPM is not far behind though.
     
    Storage
    DPM - First thing to mention is DPM does not use a normal NTFS drive to store the data. This means you cannot see the files it backs up to with windows explorer. It took me a while to figure out why the drives were showing 0%, it was simply because I had formatted them as a partition in disk manager.
     
    BE - Backupexec stores its data in BKF files on the hard disk or tapes. This format is easy to store in small or large chunks and you can browse it from windows or copy it anywhere you want. There are also lots of 3rd party BKF extractors that can be used if you really get in a mess. This has saved my job once in the past so is a very welcome feature.
     
    Winner - Backupexec because it has a file structure that is recognizable by windows.
     
    Backing up systems
    DPM - Backing up Hyper-v 2008 R2 went well, as did files on the server. I failed to backup exchange 2003 successfully and sharepoint 2003 didn't even show up in the options to select. It did work fine on sharepoint 2010 though.
     
    BE - Backed up everything I've thrown at it so far including SQL 2008, 2005, Sharepoint 03,2010, files, exchange 2003.
     
    Winner - BE by a clear margin. Very surprising considering Microsoft make their own software.
     
    Conclusion
    Backup exec 2010 is the clear winner from me. I gave Data protection manager 2010 a chance but it simply took too much effort to install the agents and I hated the way I couldn't see the backup files in windows. Microsoft really needs to do better with their enterprise backup solutions especially supporting older generations of software, DPM certainly has potential but its not there yet.
  11. zag
    http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/7760/dpm2010.jpg
     
    I've been itching to upgrade BackupExec 10d for a long time, but thought I would wait for DPM 2010 to be released. We use nearly all Microsoft technologies in school so it seems ideal to backup our File shares, Exchange, Sharepoint and SQL servers, hopefully even the Hyper-V stuff I've been playing with recently. DPM 2010 has now gone RTM on technet so I installed it today. First impressions are good, it looks just like backupexec maybe even a simpler interface. The first hurdle I came up against was installing the agents, so far I can't find any way to push them to servers so I had to go to the command line and run \agents\DPMAgentInstaller.exe on each server.
     
    EDIT: Ok to install agents go to the DPM UI >> Management >> Install >> Install agents. I think you need to have the correct enterprise licenses as well configured.
     
    The next problem is I can't actually find any instructions on using the software! Clicking help simply brings up the System Centre guide, and searching online for video tutorials results in some boring Microsoft bod talking about the general features with some very shoddy camera work
     
    I'll update this post when I get more into the actual usage of the product but initial impressions are good so far.
  12. zag
    http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/7047/forefront2007.png
     
    I've recently been looking into rolling out Microsoft anti-virus since everything else we use is microsoft. I took a look at security essentials and its pretty good but not licensed for schools and has no centralized management capability. Forefront security is their enterprise class anti virus but it seems a long way behind the consumer version. Installing it I got errors and it didn't work with SQL 2008 or Server 2008 R2. I eventually gave up after reading this blog post that says a new version is coming in the 2nd half of 2010. Bit rubbish of microsoft to simply not support their own software!!
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