TheScarfedOne

I know that there were a number of schools looking to move away from the grid last year due to cost increases. I wonder how many are looking at it now?? They need to start treating us like proper clients, the customer service is poor.

As I mentioned in my post earlier, the Devon Region Network Managers Meeting is on 3rd December - I suggest we all raise this as an immediate concern. The service from the grid has, to be blunt been terrible over the past year - not only in terms of reliability, but also from feature changes like this with little/no warning. Has everyone recieved the invite yet? If not, I will post it up...

Yep - unfiltered is definately going byebye. We've (my techs) have been using StaffProxy for about 6 months. It has its niggles - more so at the moment! UpdateProxy goes on the blick too everynow and then.

Personally, no but it shoudnt be too difficult. At the end of the day, this is how corporates operate? The main concern for us would be meeting the regulations for filtering - but there are suggestions around the site on various solutions.... SmoothWall, Bloxx etc... Im keen to find out more too - so anyone with experience, or knows someone who has, info please!! How do independant schools get their connection?

This software is a real PITA! Finally got it to work yesterday, but a bit random. Do the server install as normal. Then change the config file to use "servername" not IP. Restart the service. Install the client. Again, change the config file to use "servername" not IP. Randomly, then if you use the shortcut or the exe on the client - it doesnt work - but if you use the one from the server location (map drive or vnc) it works fine. Grrrr... damn software!

We had fun and games a few weeks back with the mail feed to our Exchange server. Packets were randomly being dropped before reaching the mx at the grid. This has been a very bad year for SWGFL connection reliability. We likewise are also looking at other options. Who's going to the meeting on 3rd Dec in Tiverton?? Another grilling in order for them?? Edit We also had the "no connection" problem when our hub school died, the day it came back on we got the bill! (thankfully they nulled it for this year)

The other option is to use placeholder files. We use these quite a lot on our system. The script does an if-then-else, to see if a text file exists in a location. If it doesn't, then it runs the registry add silently and then copies the placeholder file. If the file exists, the script exits.

Here is a useful bit of powershell code which I spent ages looking for! Exchange 2007 turns OWA on by default - which in most schools you wont want for students. Run this (substituting "groupname" for a distribution group for students), and all your student users will no longer have OWA. get-distributiongroupmember "GROUPNAME" | Set-CASMailbox -OWAEnabled $false There are similar commands for IMAP, POP3 and ActiveSync - will add those once I find them! EDIT: Here are the others (substitute "-OWAEnabled..." or add at the end...) -ActiveSyncEnabled $True / $false -MAPIEnabled $True / $false -PopEnabled $True / $false -ImapEnabled $True / $false

Resurecting a bit of an old thread here but.... Halion One, and its sound banks - we have installed these onto our shared area, and pointed Cubase at it (this was done when Halion One was installed by changing the path). Now - for the user when they first open Halion, it correctly finds the sound banks. They log off - go on another computer and then the banks list is empty. The drive is still mapped the same. We use Roaming Profiles. Any ideas??

Windows Sharepoint Servers (currently v3) is free - assuming you have a suitable Windows Server 2003 box to put it on. Office Sharepoint Server (aka Sharepoint Portal Server) is not free. Started off with WSS3 here, and moved up to OSS in the summer so could get the Exchange Webparts and also the MySite bits. Great for an intranet - now being used as our VLE platform.... just got to convince Moodle to play nice with it (or reverse!).

Anyone else havin issues with outbound mailflow with locally hosted Exchange? Open call on it at moment.

KING EDWARD VI COMMUNITY COLLEGE Ashburton Road, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5JX Tel: 01803 869200 Fax: 01803 869201 Website: King Edward VI Community College (KEVICC) Totnes -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trainee Network Support Technician Hours: 37 hours per week all year round Scale B £10,165 per annum (subject to Job Evaluation) Temporary until 31 July 2009. This is a training post with a possibility of the vacancy becoming permanent from September 2009. This post is integrated with the Network Support Department, and is responsible for designing, developing and maintaining the college network. The Network Support Department is committed to providing high quality facilities for all users and continued investment in the provision has meant that hardware and software facilities are exceptional. We are looking for a technician with some experience of working with a standard Active Directory system, although this is not necessarily a requirement as training will be provided. ICT technicians are team players working under pressure to high standards with staff and students alike and who are keen to contribute to the development of the systems across the school in both academic and administration capacities. Full Job Description, Person Specification attached - Application Form available on the College Website. For an informal discussion please contact Stuart Wilkie, Network and Resources Manager, on 01803 869200. Closing Date: noon 22 October 2008 Interviews: w/c 27th October 2008 King Edward VI Community College is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment Network_Person_Specification.doc Network_Technician.doc

I remember what I dod now - the damn msi would run properly under GPO, so I scripted as below.. if exist "C:\Program Files\D-Tools\" goto :Installed ELSE :Setup echo. Valid Daemon Tools not found... echo. Preparing Daemon Tools Installation Settings... echo. Map the network drive containing the setup files... net use R: \\SERVER\SHARE echo. Running Setups... "R:\Daemon Tools\daemonscript.msi" /passive "R:\Daemon Tools\daemon347.msi" /passive /norestart "R:\Daemon Tools Helper\Daemon Tools Helper.msi" /passive "R:\Daemon Tools\Daemon Tools Settings.msi" /passive net use R: /d /y shutdown -r -f -t 2 :Installed echo. echo. Valid Daemon Tools found... echo. Preparing Daemon Tools Configuration Settings... echo. Map the network drive containing the setup files... net use R: \\SERVER\SHARE echo. Running Setups... "R:\Daemon Tools\dtools.exe" net use R: /d /y

i got the scripts we use for this and will post this tomo..

would be interested in this too - particularly in light of what the bill was going to be this year. i think some of the exeter schools were looking at this - hope someone from there can post. we on the managed service at the mo, and got a isa publishing sharepoint and exchange. got some webparts for sharepoint to publish my docs.

FMS installers seem to obey the same rules as the main SIMS.net ones. I will post up what we do later on (gotta go and find it again... not played with it since scratching my head over it in the summer!)

The link for change request for MSI installers... CR 0809-395377 http://support.capitaes.co.uk/ChangeRequest/DetailChangeRequest.aspx?id=%c3%98%c3%9a%c3%92%c3%96%c3%a8%c3%a6%c3%8c%c3%9f%c3%a5%c3%9d%c3%92

KING EDWARD VI COMMUNITY COLLEGE Ashburton Road, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5JX Tel: 01803 869200 Fax: 01803 869201 Website: King Edward VI Community College (KEVICC) Totnes -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Web Delivery Technician Hours: 20 hours per week x 40 weeks per year (term time only) Scale D £7782 (calculated pro rata rate) This post is integrated with the Network Support Department, and is responsible for designing and developing web systems closely integrated with the college network. The postholder will lead on, and be responsible for, developing a dynamic new external website to specification (based on Joomla), as well as continuing the development of our internal portal (based on Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server). There is an ongoing project to integrate e-learning and assessment/parental access into the portal environment. We are looking for a Content Management System specialist to manage, maintain and develop these systems for the administrative, curriculum and marketing needs of the College. Based on the forthcoming need for electronic assessment, you will also be involved in piloting and developing procedures and systems to support this emerging area. Full Job Description, Person Specification and Application Form available on the College Website. Closing Date: noon 10 October 2008 EXTENDED TO: noon 17 October 2008 Interviews: Thursday 16 October 2008 EXTENDED TO: w/c 20 October 2008 King Edward VI Community College is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment

Which College in Devon are you? We did the migration about 6mnths ago and happy to provide any help :-)

Ive wrapped the K-Lite Mega Pack, and we use GPO to deploy it. PM me and Im quite happy to get you going.

We did this a year ago, and things settled down around Christmas. The main thing is do lots and lots of testing. Ideally - setup the "new" network as a test rig which you can then go live with. PM me if you want more info

When I was looking at moving away from CC3 last year, I wrote a set of scripts to format disk, and build XP based on a series of unattend files, then run the CC3 smart client routine - running from USB. This worked well - but it depends whether you want the restore option. As this isnt strictly a CC3 build disk - the restore partition stuff is never completed. I will see if I can dig out the files for you if interested. PM me if you want more info.

400ish workstations, 200ish laptops, 18 servers, 40ish IWBs, 50ish projectors Network and Resources Manager (me) Senior Tech 2 Junior Techs 1 Web Tech 1 Resources Tech With all those laptops, and the wireless problems it brings (grrrrr) still not enough!

Heads up for AVG Network Edt here. Moved to it last year. EDU gets 50% discount, and the licences are for 2 years. Support is good, only needed it once so far, after version 8 updating was broken (proxy stuff was hard coded to use a specific port). Works nicely and is quite lightweight. Also found another nice feature... marking .swf as a banned file type in email - so it strips out the flash games that the kids like sending eachother!

Another heads up for USBDLM. An absolute gem when we started using it in September. A tip though - which caught me out, always allow a few letters for USB, for those awkward ones who want to plug in multiple USB pens/flash cards etc... I had to send out a new config file after overlooking this one...