midweek

If you haven't already, take a look at this guide: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Guides - Configuration Manager 2012 - www.windows-noob.com I've done exactly the same as you and am currently messing about trying to deploy an image to a virtual machine in Virtualbox. As we'll go production with this soon anyway I've modified the schema (went without issue...phew!), created a test OU, got it to PXE boot and managed to build & capture a basic image. If you leave windows firewall on make sure the ports you need are open (i forget which but it's in the guide). I think the boundaries and boundary groups part is important to allow you to push the client package etc. Also just set your system & user discovery methods (administration>overview>hierarchy methods>discovery methods) to the OU you created and it'll only pick up the single PC and any test users you put in the OU. I'm no expert at SCCM 2012 but as you are in a similar position but maybe a step or two behind me I thought I'd post my progress!

Such a shame this isn't a full blown network manager post as I only live around the corner! The school is in a lovely area though.

Perhaps stating the obvious but do you have the Apple TV and the Ipad on the same SSID?

I had this on some user accounts. Switched our Smoothwall from NTLM to Kerberos authentication and it disappeared.

I know this is a slightly older message but we're in the middle of using iPads in exam conditions for the first time. My experiences so far: - The app is key. The ones we've tried so far (Newpad and Textilus) have caused problems. The main one encountered has been that after a period of time, maybe 1 hour, the response between when a user types and when the writing appears on the screen becomes appreciably laggy and often causes double or triple typing of letters. Makes it difficult to discern user error from a technical one when it comes to marking. This doesn't seem to be a problem with the bluetooth connection as the on screen keyboard suffers the same fate. - Printing - we have the iPads on a separate SSID with no LAN/Internet access and an airprint printer on the same SSID. This seems to work quite well. I'd be really interested to know what apps other schools are using for this.

Hi I actually set up a very basic test network with two clustered hypervisors with a third server running Server 2012 as the storage and managed to produce a highly available setup with the VMs on SMB shares. It was really easy and failover was almost instant (drops one or two packets if you ping the VM and fail a hypervisor). No idea how it would work in a production environment though. Also found this today which might be closer to what you are after: How to Use Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Replica for Disaster Recovery

Any idea if this is included in EES licensing like Endpoint Security or is there a per device licensing cost? Had a demo of Airwatch and it looked really good but at £12 per year per device it is prohibitively expensive for our school.

We use Google Apps Directory Sync to sync our users with AD and put them in Groups etc. Works OK but takes a bit of setting up. Fortunately Google support is really quite good and they talked me through a lot of the setup and some of it's more interesting foibles. We originally used a csv but GADS is better once you've got it configured. Still has a tendency to suspend the odd user randomly though. There is a Google Apps Password Sync now. I haven't tried it yet but as we are looking at SSO we'll have to move to it sooner rather than later. You need to install it and then have every user change their password for it to work though. Oh and using Groups as distribution lists is really hit or miss. If you share a doc from your drive the groups appear but if you try and find them in contacts, for example, they aren't there. Google are aware of this. Plus when you share resources to groups it doesn't show up in the "shared with me" section of users' drives as it would if you shared with an individual user. Really frustrating. Again google is aware.

Just set this up on a properly cobbled together test environment (Dell SC440, Dell Optiplex 745 and and old Gigabyte motherboard with various bits plugged in!). Had two hypervisors in a cluster using the third "server" as shared storage using Server 2012 Storage Spaces and SMB shares. Seems to work pretty well. I can live migrate the VMs across no trouble and physically pulling the plug on one hypervisor causes the VMs to migrate automatically. So technically I've got high availability without a SAN! Can't really comment on the speed of it all (although it does only take seconds to perform a migration) or how well it would scale up into a production environment with proper DR and all the rest but it's an interesting start.

I'm a year in using Smoothwall and in my limited experience: - Support - Good when you get them on the phone. They never, ever reply to a support portal request. - Filtering and Firewall seem pretty good now that we've got if configured roughly how we want it. Had a horrendous time with https filtering and authentication on iPads and iMacs though which still isn't really resolved. - Our UTM failed and they were pretty good at helping us to set up a 2nd box on an old server using a temp license key. Make sure you've got same day response on your contract though. We thought we had but didn't so it took ages to get our box shipped out to Germany and back. - cost is more expensive than the Lightspeed though as I recall. - reporting on the Smoothwall is clunky and doesn't always show URLs that you know have been browsed to. I'm told this is getting a complete revamp soon though. Now my (brief) experience with the lightspeed rocket: - had an online demo with US lightspeed sales and was very impressed by the product and agreed to give it a trial. - Engineer turned up (late) and tried to install the lightspeed to cover our ICT Suite only. Couldn't do it. - Told me it didn't work with VLANs (???!!!), said I should hook it up to a single PC to give it a go, then left. - Tried hooking it up myself with limited help from their tech support but it wouldn't play ball fully. So I can't really compare the lightspeed on a technical level or in a real world environment but if they can't even get the trial to work I wasn't about to move away from our Smoothy. I saw a Fortinet install the other day though and that looked really good....

I've been asked to set up similar in my new job (they had already bought the CALs). I have encountered every single one of those problems which makes the MS solution almost unusable. Shame as it's potentially a great solution.

Hi All I've got an interesting (and by that I mean infuriating) problem setting up Remote Desktop Services. We have a Windows 2008 R2 server set up with RDS (session host, license manager etc). I can log in locally to the domain with no problems. I have set up the group policy for the server to create roaming profiles on a network share for remote logins ("Set path for TS Roaming Profile") and forced a loopback on the policy. When I log in with either an existing domain user or a new one all goes swimmingly and the TS roaming profile is created on the share and the login time is a matter of seconds. All the network drives are available. Logging off again takes seconds also. However on any subsequent logins the process hangs briefly (60-90 seconds maybe) on the "Please wait for the User Profile Service" and when it logs in there is a message saying the profile wasn't fully synchronised. The errors in event viewer are: Event ID 6005 - The winlogon notification subscriber is taking long time to handle the notification event (Logon). Event ID 6006 - The winlogon notification subscriber took 89 second(s) to handle the notification event (Logon). Event ID 1509 - Windows cannot copy file \\?\UNC\server\profiles$\user.TM.V2\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\ to location \\?\C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\. This error may be caused by network problems or insufficient security rights. DETAIL - The specified network name is no longer available. Event ID 1540 - Your roaming profile is not synchronized correctly with the server. Windows will load your previously-saved local profile instead. See the previous events for details. Once logged in the user can access all the shares and indeed clicking on the link produced in Event ID 1509 takes you to the correct location. I'm pretty sure the permissions are correct on the share (the profile creates initially after all). We have Dfs in operation but even on a non Dfs share this occurs. Logging off again hangs at the User Profile Service and then give a message about partially synchronising before logging off. If I delete all trace of the TS roaming profile locally and at the share then the process starts again with a good initial login and partial subsequent ones. Anyone come across this behaviour before? DNS seems ok as far as I can tell. The folder length doesn't exceed the maximum to be copied does it (approx 117 characters)? Any help appreciated