SHimmer45

if you want to go down the Dell route you can get some attractive pricing through resellers (ive got several grand off list without any effort)

needs MORE ram for growth if needed. also id say a single CPU might be an issue if you start running alot of VM's on it. man its a 5 u monster, id be look at 2u options if possible some of the dell stuff is rather clever in how they use the space. (same as alot of vendors)

microserver are rather frugal on power, are all four being attached to the same UPS? something like a smartUPS 700/1000 should be ample. i think HP provide power stats with the microserver which you can use on APC site as they have a UPS picker

they are running a beta program for a version of the ecdl software which doesnt use java

we use it here and after some initial** pain have got it to work "nicely" with IE 10/11 using the deployment config files. **OH THE PAIN!!

you can install the agent manually from the Solus3 agent folder on the SIMS share, should be a little installer script which does the install and populates the server connection settings firewall needs to be off / ports opened on the client for it to talk and receive updates

the terrastation we have which is windows storage server based (6TB model) which is used for backups has been fine for the last 3/4 years and has only needed one disk so far. it is however not the quickest thing in the world, but they are however cheaper than other brands (you get what you pay for)

unless you limit the ram usage SQL server will use all it can get from the system, its left like this as default. our SIMS host which has 16GB ram uses 85-90% of the installed ram for SQL.

if the disk is not on their support list it might have an issue with it, i have replaced disks on windows based terrastations which are not exactly the same without a problem however. and yes seagate are going through a rough patch (its been going on for a while*) where their disks are not what they used to be in terms of reliability. im a WD fan myself however the seagate's NAS line might change that...

ebay is worth checking out for older drives, i have done this a couple of times with good results. if your struggling to get hold of drives it might be worth looking at pricing up replacements which you can get hold of.

indeed

thanks for the responses, the TPlink stuff looks reasonable as a start point. have been looking at some of the smaller HP stuff for vlanning to get used to the interface's they use as HP kit is common (and more affordable than cisco) but then vlan principles are all the same regardless of vendor.

looks like that would have the same issue as my 3com switch atm

is packet tracer still free? is it the only option for virtual lan design software

looking for a switch to do some practical learning on VLAN's but looking for one which isnt massive / sound like a plane is coming into land. currently got a 3com switch which is sooooo loud ideally with a couple of gig ports for transferring / backing up large amounts of data to a nas when needed. anyone got an personal recommendations

NUC's are brilliant got one on test at work and i am completely sold on the form factor

As others have said +1 for this

Dells 2012r2 support is usually pretty good even for some of their older kit

what server is it? you might need to try the vendors site for drivers and see if they have 2012R2 support

shorewall firewall can run squid & the documentation looks decent.

the driver versions have to match for x64 & x86 i went through alot of pain with this esp if you are mixing PCL / PS / KPDL drivers. so on your server you will need a driver for itself & a driver for the clients your serving (x64 & x86 if you a mixed client environment) GPO will install the printer and the driver as one and will pull the required driver from the server as required has always been my understanding (similar in the way its auto installed if you click connect to a browsed network printer)

need to get another quote for an 5th gen i3 NUC 4GB RAM 120GB SSD 22" screen which can have the NUC mounted to the back. could you help @VeryPC_Colin_M

i found THIS helpful when trimming the excess fat from win 8

the servers in question are VERY ageing Dell poweredge 1900 & an old 840... so i think even a modern desktop is going to be more than enough for the hyper-v testing and other odds and sods i do with them. i think a xeon microserver would fit the bill ideally

be ideal for replacing the couple of old xeon dell rack servers that are cheesing me off because they are soooo damn big under my desk