sparker

One word - don't One problem apart from the terrible service and quality is that they look like toys so get treated like toys. We had some samsung notebooks that got treated wel be cause they looked like 'proper' laptops

I made a RAID 1 array for my VM's and a RAID5 for data and just put Iscsi target on the RAID 5 . Are you using internal storage on the server or do you have external storage?

For my Fujitsu servers I just went to the web site where there were images to download specifically for my machine and intended OS(VMware). If your machine (HP?) is from a major manufacturer I would imagine that they have the same. I just burned the ISO and off it went and left me with a perfect install . If that is available for your new box I would recommend using it. After that I would keep the base machine as a host and install all of you roles and applications on VMs. Not sure if you are doing this but FYI you cannot install RDS on a DC in Server 2012. Also be aware of you domain level before you install and domain join as I think 2012 requires at least 2008.

Depends on what it is doing but I usually assign 40gb disk space and 4Gb ram. That is enough for a DC but as soon as you add more roles you obviously need to add more space. You probably have most of your data on shares elsewhere though. Smaller VMs are easier to back up and move and are easy to make bigger so I would keep as small as possible.

Well I would suggest setting your new server up and experimenting before joining it to the domain. Build a few VMs and et familiar with them. Back one up and restore it etc. Is it just you plus google or do you have some support you can get involved - worth getting their input especially if they need to look after the finished product!

Personally I would keep SIMS and my file server apart so that when SIMS has its annual catastrophes it can be rebooted without having to get everyone to stop what they are doing. I have only used VMware for virtualisations and always snapshotted before applying SIMS upgrades without problems (well not VM problems anyway) If you are running 2012 you cannot put RDS on a DC so definitely keeps those separate. I like to keep my DC virtual so I can back up with Veeam easily but a good idea to have one DC on a physical box or at least a different physical host. As i mentioned, you could use your old server as a second DC and a target for VM backups. Where abouts in the country are you ? I am in Berkshire but happy to help if I can.

Hi I just left my primary school and we were fully VMware which is good but expensive. Personally I would make both servers 2012r2. Make the new one your production server and just use the other one as a VM backup target ( we used Veeam) and as a second DC. Try and locate it far away from the main box and you potentially have a BC/DR solution. If the primary dies you can spin up something from the VM backups and you already have a DC so just need to size FMSO (but probably onto a new server)

I have just left my primary school where I had 18 Vm's on 2 hosts on VMWare. I would probably have used Hyper V if 2012 had been available at the time but as a newbie I found that VMWare support is excellent whereas MS Support is either delivered through a partner (which my school would not pay for) or paid for online per case which I found to be really poor. Certainly there is plenty available on line but when you are on your own and production is down its good to have VMWare support to take care of you. I had a complex issue which turned out to be the SAN and VMWare support stayed with me till a resolution was found when the manufacturer of the SAN had given up.

Have you used them cos I imagine the kids would have loads of fun peeling them off!

That's a good idea I hadn't considered. Do you know a supplier of good lower case stickers?

Anyone know of a reasonably priced, lower case , wireless keyboard? found a few but £100 is a bit much .....

I have just left my school and joined a school support company that sells all the major wifi vendors Meru Meraki Aerohive Ruckus etc but they are offering a free try-before-you-buy on Unify if that might help you. Sorry if this is in poor taste as I am now on 'the other side' but just trying to help. Other vendors may offer the same of course!

Thanks Dave - good advice - i'll drop InkTank a line and see what they say.

My current quote is for 22k for three servers( Dell) with 16Tb in each. I currently have a san with about 10 tb but will be able to arrange it more efficiently when I migrate it to whatever I end up with but what I want to end up with is a highly robust distributed solution ( I have two server rooms about 100mtrs apart) which will give me nearline reduncancy and then use my old SAN to replace my full to capacity NAS. I am running VMware atthe moment with HA enabled so my main weakness is that everything is in one rack and is at risk from theft fire flood as a result and if that happened I reckon the downtime would be 6-8 weeks - assuming I could rebuild it all as it isn't all backed up because I don't have room. I am looking for block level replication and need a supported solution as I may not be at the school for ever plus my linux skills are somewhat rudimentary. If it offers performance and scalability advantages over a 'standard 'pair of block level replicating sans then it seems good but hard to evaluate from a position of no experience hence the shout out to your kind expertise! The company offering me Ceph also want £2200 a year for support as well ( 20%) which seems a bit steep. What would you recommend?

I am looking at rebuilding a distributed robust storage solution and was considering two SANs with block level replication such as the Fujitsu Eternius 90 but then someone mentioned Ceph to me and so I was wondering if any of you fine people had any experience with it? I like its (apparent) simplicity and scalability but it's a big investment for our school so I want as much reassurance as I can find....