SHimmer45

+1 on this i also wouldnt touch Maxtor with a long pole, regardless if they have been brought out by seagate they dont seem to have improved at all, they are just a cheap drive

alot of the server in the school im in are a split between Dell and Intel, i favour the intel kit as it is cheaper for the same spec's, and its easier to see what you are getting for your money as the Dell options arent always clear. as for disks Fujistu's are also popular with OEM's for servers as well, Adaptec make good RAID cards

looks VERY nice bits of kit but painfully expensive, but then quality niece products often are

personally i would look to use SCSI/SAS drives over cooking model SATA based drives usually the more enterprise level disks have a longer rated life span, also WSUS can be quite disk intensive so you will benfit imo from the faster drives

search for something called Advanced Installer, i have used it and works well, the pro version adds even more functionality

fibre connections from your main comms cab to satellite ones for specific blocks id say would be the most feasible way of doing this and would give flexibility within each block. though this isnt what you are trying to achieve would it be an idea to look at smaller cabs which are less of an "eye sore" you are going to be limited by the cable run length of copper being 100m point to point which isnt alot when you actually walk the distance out over an actual school site

id agree looks like the problem is you have set a limit on the size of the file set

you might find this article a good start point How to Enable Disk Quotas in Windows 2000 (listed for Win2k but the options are pretty much the same) allows you to specify quota's for users and i would guess groups which would be more useful for you. the biggest issue you are going to find with quota's that the staff are going to find it a problem as they are used to not having limits. a RAID1 NAS sat on the network is another option (already mentioned) 500GB/1TB mirrored sets are not hugely expensive, and most allow the setting of AD permissions. though not suited for having 100's of people moving huge amounts of data id say it will plug a hole if you are struggling for space

i didnt think the image appears on the machine as an option as part of the PC's booting. usually the image selection is done from the server and and the client just receives the image when you reboot the machine and it loads the PXE environment with the network drivers etc.

I have used Ghost to image a room of Windows 7 machines with no problems, using the Ghost cast method to push a completed image including all he applications installed etc. Microsoft recommend prepping the machine that you are taking the machine from before doing so to prevent problems with SSID's being damaged or created incorrectly, never found the need to sysprep XP images or the W7 ones i have recently put created. image creation will take alot longer than rolling it back out, Ghost is sensitive to lagging clients which makes it appear to hang, it does eventually drop the failed clients but not always. Creating the bootable media works better with MSDOS option than the PCDOS esp if you have any older PC's as they wont load it, im sure its BIOS/CDDrive related and the reading of the created boot image. Software Im Using: Symantec Ghost V11 (ghost cast server, Network bootdisk creator) TFTPD32 : an opensource TFTP server/service for windows : TFTP server : tftpd program (if you dont want to use your existing DHCP server or wish to push custom PXE boot images for different network cards, if you are using a W7 to host this from untick the ping address before assigning it)

synchronise is a good tool for pc control on a per suite basis

if you have still got an active support contract the tools are freely downloadable from there site. it is expensive in some respect if you are not dependant on the helpdesk support but alot of the features need the information they are providing for you so they have you you on that one. the librarian here could do without the extra's that come with the contract so it stays..

Izusi engined Astra's or Cavalier will do monster miles and go high 40's/mid 50 even when driven hard, cracking cars a bit basic but cheap if you can find them.

the mac filter lock out tool for server 2003 works well and is a great thing to have if the school has a large number of pupils with Ipods/Iphones/Ipad's etc

you can add the TA to the powerusers group directly in AD, as for giving them local administrator access from what i have been looking at most suggestions recommend using a VB script at logon or defining a GPO, i havent tried this yet so cant comment on any problems yet. Adding Domain user accounts by default to the Administrators group of domain computer - Petri.co.il forums by Daniel Petri this thread looks like what you are after (using the restricted users) so a DOMAIN account is then added to the groups you specify is how i am reading it, by using the restricted users section in AD

Granting power users will give alot of access to the machine in terms of viewing and making changes however it still wont allow you to make global hardware change's or install printers for example. you could make the TA a local administrator on the machine's and a power user on the domain. So they would have a lot more control over the local pc's but still be relatively limited on the domain itself.

Yes Ghostcast is part of the Norton Ghost Suit. THIS might be worth a look to give you a idea of costs.

Interesting thread FOG does look a good tool, after this summer of imaging alot of machines it would be nice to setup something that is more flexible than norton ghost suite which is often a pita, and as people have said WDS can be "clunky". Though for 25 laptops (if they are identical) i would setup the one and then use a ghost cast session to roll it out to the other 24.

have the machines been set to use the classic start menu? or are are they supposed to use the default theme and then changing when it log's in?. it shouldnt matter if the client is a PC/laptop if they are connected to the domain with ranger installed, sounds to me like the user environment desktop settings is set to use the local desktop in the users profile rather than the ranger one you are attempting to specify

We went through this pain with .NET when we upgraded, we held off for a year as they were having so much bother at schools who had adopted early, and were advised to by the SLS Main Issues we had were: Slow to access resources (latest updated fixed this) (December 2009 ish) MLS Scripting Internet Explorer Plugin causing the keyboard to drop characters very limited documentation. Email setup isnt detailed in the older manual versions and the details of what .NET needs is buried in the .NET directory on the server. Identikit doesnt really work. Various UI bug's (guarding salutations only displaying 1st character from manual import, Silverlight doesnt resize properly on a 15" screen) it does have nice features and can help bring a library to the pupils but there are too many rough edges and i feel the customer is doing alot of their testing. They have been trying to sell us the hosted solution and the moodle plugin's but we are not going to be doing this as we have just got it to a stage where it is nice and stable and working well, also their support desk can be hard to get hold of, however when they supply the information it is clear and easy to digest.

you could set up a dummy printer queue on the domain, then have a small script that is on the laptops which are off the domain which maps to the dummy printer queue. (or the actual printer you wish to use) so set a "printer account" on the domain and then use this account in the script running on the laptop this will provide your authentication. once the laptop is authenticated you can print and connect to other resources as required. have used this quite alot to provide printing etc. Id suggest using an account with has very limited privileges as you may find you want to actually store that login in the script on the laptop.