pantscat

Ah... ok! I assumed as you said Forest that there were multiple remote domains... You can check your replication interval in Active Directory Sites and Services - if you've not touched it, then the default is 15 seconds I think under 2008! The paranoid part of me would still want to leave it overnight if you've got the luxury of time, but if not, give it an hour and then check DNS and DCDIAG. Yes... in my experience DCPromo will usually remove all the DNS records, but I have seen a few get left behind occasionally. Generally due to dodgy DNS though! You can just add the server to the other site. Cheers, Ant

Hi Mo, Yes - I've rebuilt DCs more times than I care to mention... You've got the basic steps there, but I'd do it this way: 1. Run DCPromo, demote the DC 1a. Remove DNS 1b. Allow 24-48 hours if you're in a large forest to ensure that all the changes propogate. (check How to remove completely orphaned Domain Controller to ensure there are no orphaned records) 2. Ensure that the computer account is removed from the domain 3. Ensure that DNS is update with all A records and SRV records for DC02 3a. Run DCDIAG on all remaining DCs to check for any issues. 4. Flatten the windows server. 5. Rebuild the server 6. Run DCPromo again to install the domain onto new DC02. 7. Set it as a GC - if required. 8. Wait 24-48 hours for replication. 9. Check AD is happy - run DCDIAG on all DCs. 10. If running Exchange, check that it has automatically picked up the new DC (unless you're using static mappings...) Delete the old computer account - when you join the new rebuilt server to the domain it will automatically create its own account. Any SRV records in DNS should be removed when you demote the server... Let DCPromo do this. Cheers, A

As others have said, I wouldn't bother upgrading a 40d - it's a great camera, and the best time to upgrade is when you find that the camera body is what's stopping you from getting the shots you want. It'll probably take a while to get to that stage too... and it really does depend on what sort of photography you do as to what you should upgrade to. For example, if you like sports/wildlife photography than the 7d is a great upgrade, the crop sensor means that it gives you a bit more range over a full-frame body (that 1.6x factor!) and it's got great Auto-Focus and a very high burst rate (how many shots it can take in one "burst"). If you're more keen on low-light or portrait photography, for example, then you'd probably be better off going full-frame with a 5d of some sort... the bigger sensor lets more light in, so, generally speaking, you'll get better low-light performance which is useful or just generally because more light = faster shutter speeds = lower ISO = better images. I'm speaking very generally here and obviously there are exceptions... Oh, yes... I forgot to say... good glass is very very important. You wouldn't want a Bugatti Veyron running on ling-long ditchfinders, would you?

Assuming that you're wanting to use the Apple-TV for Airplay mirroring... can you not just provide no line of sight to the IR receiver on the Apple TV and just use the remote app to control them via an iPad (thus over wifi?)

Here's a tip - don't use auto, or the flash will keep randomly popping up when you least want it to. Stick it on "P" instead (same as auto, but with no auto-flash)... take loads of snaps, pick out the ones you like most and then look at the EXIF data - from here you'll start to see the correlation between the aperture and shutter speed and the effects it has on an image. As someone else has already said Talk Photography™ is a very useful resource. Personally I did a two-day getting started course about two years ago which was really useful to get up and running. Also - get a copy of Lightroom - if you're shooting in RAW (cr2) then the images will likely look quite "flat" without some sort of processing. This is one of the most important things I learned... subtle post-processing can make an average image look rather acceptable.

Well in that case, I'd definitely trial Veeam and just backup the VM side...

Are your DFS-R shares on VMs? If so - Veeam is definitely a lovely option. I didn't find it to be expensive... cheaper than Backup Exec by the time you've factored in SQL, Exchange and other such "agents". Also - I've found Veeam support to be very good, not that I've ever had a problem with it, more a case of me not RTFM.

What issues are you having with Backup Exec and the DFS-R folders? I'm in a similar position, but oddly inverse... Backup Exec is doing a fine job of backing up all of my user data (NDMP backup from my Netapp SAN) and I'm looking to use Veeam to do everything else.

What did the original spec say? If they were supposed to install FTP then they'll need to do it again and properly...

I've installed HP SIM on a temporary VM to have a little look at. My aim is to use it to monitor our physical proliant servers, our virtual servers and our HP Procurve switches. But... I'm a bit stumped... I've done a scan of our server IP range and it's detected a number of systems... but... where do I go from here? I've tried to read the HP SIM getting started guide, but I think it's a little too early on a Monday morning for that. Has anyone done this and can offer some advice? Thanks!

Run DCDIAG...

Do you need four seats? How about an MX5? or you might just squeeze a Honda S2000 into that budget...

INTJ too... bah. I thought we were supposed to be special?! I could never be a programmer though... being an entrepreneur appeals though!

Perhaps just get a core switch that does L3 routing? That's all you need!

I'd check what port it uses to connect? I'd bet a big pile of cash that it's not just 80/443...

Oddly enough, after I very confidently stated that O-365 wouldn't be sufficient, I started to look into the retention policies and I see that this might actually be a decent option... plus I could always run it in Hybrid mode... That's quite interesting - we're using FOPE, but I hadn't noticed that! Thanks Sarah - that's an interesting link.

Yes, but with my on-site Exchange I know that I've got sufficient retention. I agree completely - I'll never be able to offer the same storage allocation for my users as a cloud-based solution can. That's a good question! At the moment I've not yet calculated how much of our storage is being eaten up by PST files. I'd imagine though that each user would happily eat up 5GB or more without any trouble. But... if we had an archiving system that implement de-duplication or single-instance storage then I suspect this figure would be a lot lower - even more so if it was compressed too.

Thanks @Michael - I've already had a quick look at Office 365 but my undertstanding of the retention period is that we wouldn't get much of a historical "backup" should a user delete something.

Ahh - ok. Thanks @GrumbleDook.

Bumpity bump... does anyone use any mail archiving at all!?

Are all these figures just CapEx or OpEx too? My CapEx figure works out at around £135 per pupil.

Absolutely - that's just one reason for doing this. It's just not a valid excuse to shrug your shoulders and say it takes a long time...

Hello all, I've recently brought the subject of Data Protection up here and SMT have suddenly realised it's not just an IT issue... Anyway - as part of this review I'd like to look into Email Archiving. At this moment in time we're creating our data retention policies and I think having a proper enterprise email archiving system will help no end - at present we've got the situation whereby users who are reaching their mailbox quota are simply dumping a lot of email into PST files. This is a bit of a historical issue... it's always been the way it's done - but it's not an efficient use of storage and it's also dangerous from a DPA point of view. So - does anyone here use any particular email archiving system? If so... would you recommend it? How much did it cost you? I've already looked into Symantec Enterprise Vault - but the costs are pretty high for the number of email users we'll want to cover (270-ish). Cheers!

Have you checked out where the resource constraint is on the physical server? Surely you need to know why it's performing badly before you do something about it?

That's a bit of a bugger. I like TMG - it's working well for us... but I suppose it's time to look at other products that will do what we want to do. Has anyone made any progress on this? Seems crazy to reinvent the wheel!