mrbios

Tell that to senior management who are criticised by parents and ofsted based on results performance, sure that'll go down well. Fact is in education you're generally expected in IT to do everything you can to ensure least interruption and least distraction. Ensuring students stay focused on the teacher, if that means having computers awake all day, so be it. The usage of electricity isn't an environmental problem anyway, it's how it's generated that's the issue.

Y12 and Y13 here use visual studio for part of their course. C++ i think they've been using for the last 5+ years.

VB = virtualbox, in this context.

Really cool weather website by the way for visualising the whole thing: https://www.ventusky.com/

It appears to be far easier to setup now that my brain is in work mode Trying to play with it at 10-11pm last night at home wasn't a good idea haha. Thanks.

I'll have to have a poke around then, ta. While speeding through it last night i got as far as selecting the default template with visual studio and python in just to test and it looked nice. Didn't dive deeper into seeing if i could change what software was on the template though. Do you just load up the unpublished premade template then add or remove software, then publish it for use by students? Or is there more to it than that?

Question on this...have you got any setup instructions for Azure Labs? I just chucked up a test template to take a really quick look at it...it has edge browser and can browse the internet. How do you deal with that in terms of it not being filtered within the VM? or are there settings to point that elsewhere/chop that off completely?

Depends on what connectivity you need and how many to be honest. Do you need copper or fiber or copper and fiber etc? Personally i have 2 x Cisco SG500XG-8F8T switches in a stack and connect every iSCSI device to both switches. EDIT: Looks like the 500XG has been replaced by a 550XG, though doesn't look much different in specs

Microsoft made InTune free at the end of last year. I've got 91 staff (matching FTE) and 1500 student licenses added to my account for the cost of £0 in my last licensing renewal. ....I've no idea how to use it yet mind, as soon as i read it was free it was a "i'll take that, thank you" just in case

Can you give an example? One example i can think of is a wifi network, normally those quoting will be able to provide configuration as part of the package. If it's networking there's generally quite a lot of consultants that can help you out. Companies selling specific solutions such as cashless catering also tend to do setup themselves as part of the package. So it varies really depending on the particular solution you're looking to be installed and configured.

Switching to AccessIT in April ourselves. Moving away from MLS.

Hey it's a good thing! ..... because the government took all our money, so cheap is what we need *Laughs into bucket of tears*

Novatech, Scan, Millgate, softcat, ict direct. Those are generally my go to suppliers for everything hardware related, especially when i need 3 quotes. Got account manager for novatech on skype messenger for quick easy quotes, online account with scan so i can just buy stuff from their store when finance are away/during school holidays, millgate are the best at getting me good prices on software and cctv cameras, softcat are our current MSVL provider and tend to be really good at the "bigger things" such as firewall, filtering, backup software replacements etc. Then ICT Direct are there for when i want something cheapy cheap

The same user has to login to the same computer before that user profile is removed. Which can be a pain if a teacher doesn't have a set seating plan, especially given like us we're on a two week timetable. Personally i'd have to set student user profiles to not remove for 15 days as a minimum, and hope that the student still logs on to the same PC during the next lesson in there. This would work for computing lessons for example, but if a Science teacher booked an IT suite one week, they're not necessarily going to go into the same IT suite the next week, and even then they won't have seating plans for one off booked IT suite lessons. It's a right pain. I'm going to push ahead with making a script to save any files with a modified time of the last minute or two prior to logoff to a temporary store. At least on the odd occasion the issue occurs we'll be able to recover someones work, then i'll script that to auto cleanup every X days. That's the only short term workaround i can come up with for the time being to mitigate the issue.

Not at all, 30 seconds is an average login time. There's 1100 students, if i didn't clean them off regularly i'd end up with what i'd guess as between 4 and 8 profiles per day per machine, times that by a week, or a month and you end up with a lot of data building up in the Users directory filling up drives...even more so if we're expecting cached OneDrive data to be in there even with files on demand turned on. They're all 120gb drives with a fair bit of space free, but i'd prefer to ensure that can't fill up by keeping the profile area clean. Staff ones remain for a month, as they generally log on to the same PC each day for the most part, so it's only students that are an issue.

You confused me initially, but i've worked this out now. So you're right that the "OneDrive - School Name" folder still exists and has the files in, if the userprofile hasn't been cleared. Currently we wipe student user profiles daily on shutdown which is why that confused me. The OneDrive application actually has a temporary store it caches changes in as well, so when you copy a file to onedrive, the application stores that change file in that hidden folder, and that hidden folder is deleted on logoff. That's the one i was referencing. I was hoping that folder would persist even if the user profile didn't. I've setup the Environment Variable as you have, that's very handy as i wasn't sure how i could create custom folders in all users OneDrives. Thank you for that one! I'm now looking at making a logoff script that will look for any files modified in the last 60 seconds within the "OneDrive - School Name" folder, and automatically copy them to the users local Downloads folder, then setting storage sense to wipe files in downloads if they're older than 90 days. That way for 90 days any potential failed syncs will be in the users downloads folder, but won't accumulate too much disk usage over time......i've not setup storage sense yet so I'm just hoping i can make it do what i want. Also that way i can continue to delete user profiles daily for students rather than having to increase that and potentially end up with full disks.

I've tested this a few times, but maybe there's a setting to ensure that temporary directory persists? I've used the GP to change the local location of OneDrive files, then watched that folder disappear as someone logs off. We've had it 2-3 times and we only push onedrive as a "you can use this, if you want" kind of thing at the moment, we're reluctant to really push it until we know a problem like this isn't going to become a headache.

I wanted to start forcing people to use onedrive more as well, but that's stalled since discovering the issue that if someone saves and logs off too quickly they lose everything because the client won't have uploaded the file, and the process of logging off wipes the file from the temporary directly it goes into on the local machine. How are people avoiding that issue? as i find the most likely time for people to save a change is at the end of a lesson where they just go file > save > log off in quick succession.

Really scratching my head with confusion on this one. I've got 16 Android tablets, we have Gsuite, though we don't really use it, it's purely there for authentication purposes as it's configured to use Azure AD for SSO. We also use Meraki for MDM. We've set the EMM provider in Gsuite to Meraki, and set it to enforce EMM policies on android devices. We're on factory reset devices, logging on with unique gsuite accounts for each device, mobile management in Gsuite is set to "Unmanaged" for android devices (Until we changed that, we kept getting prompted for the google device app policy rather than to install meraki system manager) So the process on each device is > Login to Gsuite login (which redirect to Azure AD for credentials) > get asked to install system manager > Install > Device auto enrolls after scanning QR code and maybe asks for a few permissions > done. However....i set 15 of those devices up on Monday and all went well once we worked out the settings. Yesterday i tried to do the last one, and now the process is going like this: Login to Gsuite login > get asked to install system manager > Install > Scan QR code, Device doesn't auto enroll, instead it asks for another login screen which requires a meraki managed login > the device then adds into meraki, however it doesn't then have an owner set in Meraki like i was expecting from the initial 15. Where or what have i done wrong?

Been through a few, including special measures and out again. Never been asked a single question, not sure they've even asked if we exist, we don't exist unless something goes wrong remember?

Struggling to get Veeam to do what i want it to do. I've got multiple VM backup jobs, they're set to do a full backup once a month and incrementals in between, with varying numbers of incrementals depending on how important a particular VM is, up to 30. I think backup everything to tape every Friday evening. What i want from the tape backups is to take the Full backup + incrementals, every time a tape backup takes place. However what I'm getting is that it either backs up just the full backup file and not the incrementals, or just the incrementals and now the last full backup. For example if i do a full backup on Monday, tell it to store 5 incrementals and i do a tape backup on Friday it'll backup the Full from Monday but not the incrementals. Then the next tape backup will backup only the incrementals, so i end up with two sets of tapes that i'd need to restore from, why can't i tell the backups to always keep a copy of the full on every tape, along with associated incrementals?

Just seen the video of the police shooting the suspect, that's got to be shocking in itself (given guns in this country are considered a last resort use) but then to see the police back off rather than do their usual procedure has got to be pretty damn scary to those still on the bridge.

Oh see my edit, i didn't get there quick enough. As I'm no expect, it might be worth waiting for someone to advise as to whether it's a bad idea to intentionally shift the sludge elsewhere in the system. In theory if it's an airlock it just leaves one radiator for the pump to shift water through, but if it sludge i didn't think about the fact it could just move that sludge "elsewhere" obviously don't want it ending up in the boiler pump or something....maybe someone more experienced could advise on that though.

Could be an airlock, but that could also look the same as a sludge issue. Have you tried turning off all the other radiators in the house by the TRVs just leaving that one on, then turning the heating on for a few minutes then off again? Keep someone by the radiator when you do this as they might hear air move. Is it a pressure based system? EDIT: if it is sludge, i guess probably best NOT to try this incase that pushes the sludge elsewhere through your system. When you say the piping is smaller than usual, is it smaller than 15mm? 15mm is standard internal plumbing for radiators, taps, toilet etc. normalled with 22mm in the main heating ring, and into the house etc. I'm getting quite handy with DIY, bought my house a year ago and have since had to replace two radiators, the 3 port valve and accutator, the pressure valve, also just had my bathroom done and i had to plumb in a new pump for the shower.

How much to 19" screens even cost these days? Last time i had to find anything smaller than 21.5/22" it was a real struggle without finding something double the price of what i'd normally spend on a 22" Last set i bought was £72ex vat each (BenQ GW2283....so there were cheaper options too) just looked at 5 retailers and found two options which are both within £3 of the ones i purchased, and both have incredibly limited connectivity options. Which is anotehr thing.....i don't see many 19" screens with HDMI inputs, and everything minipc/nuc sized is going hdmi or dp only these days, same with laptops.