CHiLL

We have three stages in our backup: 1) On-site production backup: We use VEEAM to back up all of our VMs to our backup SAN, located in our primary server room. Our backup jobs are running forward-incremental, which means the first job that ran was a full backup and all subsequent jobs are incremental. 2) On-site fire/ransomware backup: We have 2x old NAS devices with 4x 3TB drives each, located in two other physical buildings. They have a power on/off scheduling and I've configured them to come on weekly for 3 days...however not the same 3 days. They're never on at the same time, in an effort to tackle ransomware...we always have one NAS that has been offline and can be used to recover data. VEEAM is configured to run Backup Copy jobs to these on a weekly basis, with a script to enable/disable the job via Task Scheduler (otherwise VEEAM constantly complains that the NAS is offline). This also kind of works as a fire backup solution, as our data is in three different physical buildings...however it's not actually fire-proof. 3) Cloud Backup: Google for Education has a loophole where you can have unlimited cloud storage. The main VEEAM jobs are configured synthetic backups, so that it creates a full backup file each month for each job. We copy these full backup files and the metadata files to Google Cloud once a month, as an off-site backup.

It appears that our school will do everything in their power to keep the school open, even if he government announces closures. So if the call is made, our students without symptoms are still expected to come in. Failing that, just year 11 students are expected to come in with a 'skeleton staff'.

I've replied back to him with our reseller and the fact that there's nothing they can do about it because we aren't eligible for EES in any way. As for the training, I'm unlikely to be able to get the time off for that, even though Reading isn't that far from me here in irmingham. I guess unless it falls within a school holiday/my annual leave, I can't go (thanks management).

The problem with allocating loads of cores is that the VM has to wait for that amount of cores to be free at once before it can process the instruction. Whilst that doesn't sound like an issue, I recently ran into an issue where each of our host CPUs had wait times of around 4000ms, due to each server being allocated more cores than necessary. We'd configured all servers with a minimum of 4 vCPUs, with SQL servers and RDS, configured as much as 16 vCPUs. I was up to about ~90 allocated vCPUs across our two hosts, whereas the hosts have 32 physical cores combined. Whilst cores aren't directly comparable between physical and virtual, reducing the total vCPU count from ~90 down to ~40 has massively reduced the wait time for the CPUs to about 300~600ms. Performance on the servers don't appear to be affected, but overall performance should have increase on the hosts themselves. I remember a remote support company guy saying that you should allocate up to 1.5x the amount of physical cores you have. So 32 physical cores should have up to a max 48 vCPUs assigned.

Disabling Kaizala didn't disable the chat. We have Office 365 supported remoting in at the moment. They say that the IM policy is defined in the OWA policy within O365 Exchange Admin Centre. This is set to disabled for our users and he confirmed that with the fiddler logs - IM is disabled. However the button and chat feature still works.

I have also emailed Paul Morrison. I went down the route of we want to enhance the student experience with the latest version, like larger schools can and we cannot. Edit: I've received a very basic reply from Paul: Clearly our messages are getting through, as he references Edugeek directly. However what they do next, we'll have to hope and see.

Inevitable?

You are of a very similar size to use in terms of pupil numbers and equipment. We are a team of two; the network manager and myself, the technician. We are both on full time, 36.5 hour contracts and sometimes I feel that we just about cover it. I'd love another person as it would free us up more to research and implement newer solutions, whereas at the moment it takes a long time to do any of that whilst keeping the site up and running due to constant interruptions.

I have 4 CPU cores and 24GB RAM on Server 2019 - and it's not a great experience with a handful of users on, let alone 30.

I've spoken with Office 365 support about this and they're still looking into it. It isn't Kaizala because Kaizala requires a mobile app to work for the end user. Here's more info about the issue: Screenshot of the button in question: [ATTACH=CONFIG]57105[/ATTACH] When the user presses this button, the action is pretty irregular, however it does one of two things: Open Skype if installed or open a chat window within the window. This is intermittent because if Skype is installed, it will almost always try to open that application, but sometimes it will open the chat window. If it asks to open the application and you refresh the page, it may ask to open in Skype again, or it might open in the browser. Obviously we don't want students using instant messaging, however I cannot figure out how to disable it. Skype for Business licenses are disabled for students (but it doesn't stop them being able to launch, log in and use Skype for Business if it's installed on the machine as part of Office 2019). I've also disabled Kaizala site wide and it still works for them.

We have two dedicated virtual file servers, one for staff and one for students. Our other file storage is part of the SCCM server, for it's software deployment setup files and such.

We did this back in 2015, however I haven't looked at it since. At the time I contacted Office 365's support and they did it for us. Maybe try that, as it's an Office 365 related question?

Looks like it's been damaged - every display I've seen with those symptoms is because it is cracked. How the crack happened is another story.

Looks like they were hit on two fronts; I agree that the students shouldn't be treated unequally. We have some students and staff who refuse to use biometrics due to their religion, so they're issued a card instead. Secondly; If that's the case, are all schools that fall within GDPR falling foul of this? Whilst it's true that fingerprints aren't essential of identifying whether a child is entitled to lunch, but it doesn't half speed up the process. What's the alternative? Dinner staff type the name of the child, identify them by their photo and then serve?

The Invisible Man - 7/10 A Blumhouse remake of the H. G. Wells novel. It was a pretty decent film, though it's been a week since I saw it and forgot to post here. It's a decent thriller, though it's kind of predictable.

For updates, planned maintenance, or more general info we send emails to the All Staff group. For urgent/something is down messages, we send popups to staff via NetSupport Notify (it's installed on all staff computers, teaching and non-teaching). For school closed messages or similar, the admin team send texts out to staff and parents.

I thought it was just OK. Chris Harris is the best thing about it for me, because he's a proper car guy and yeah, his Colin McRea segment was great. I just don't feel the other two. I can manage with Freddie Flintoff, it's mainly Paddy McGuinness...normally I don't mind him but every time he talks or introduces something...it's like a game show and really grates me.

Yeah, I saw that...though from my perspective he wasn't portrayed differently than how we normally see him as viewers on race weekends.

Finished Formula 1: Drive to Survive Season 2 on Netflix. Really enjoyed it.

Yeah, I've been on the thick end of that stick with Microsoft support. Those of us on OVS-ES are stuck with Office 2019.

Under FTE definitions, it only really classifies teachers as Full Time Educators. When you switch to KW, it's basically all staff that use a computer at all as part of their job. So that includes TAs, but can exclude, say, cleaners. Edit; Quoted wrong person

Yeah I see that too, although like you, I don't have just "Windows 10, Vibranium and later". Instead I just have "Servicing Drivers" and Upgrade & Servicing Drivers". Edit: I wonder if they're changing it to avoid confusion? Windows 10 2003 would be weird under their previous naming convention of yy/mm. Although that is still the naming convention for SCCM (2002 is due in March)

Pretty much, I believe Knowledge Worker (KW) is how they define it now, replacing FTE. If you're going down the licensing route, you can take one of two options; If you have 999 or less users, then you'll need an OVS-ES agreement. If you have 1000 or more users, you'll need EES agreement. (Note: Users is not KW, it's a bit confusing. Your total user count defines whether you'll get OVS-ES or EES. Then the amount you actually pay is based on your KW count)

If I remember, that switch makes the XML file include the shortcut path to the application, instead of just the Windows app ID. Example: With switch: Without switch:

To access RDS from the outside world, you really should be using RDS Gateway. The Gateway server sites on your DMZ/Internet side and processes authentications/access and passes successful authentications through to your RDS server, which is on your internal network. We currently have two methods of remote access - RDS and Always-On VPN. RDS is extremely slow when multiple users access it due to server resources. Always-On VPN is a much cleaner way to manage it. There was recently a vulnerability in RDS and RDS Gateway that could allow attackers through, bypassing authentication completely.