Roberto

Where does this "talk" originate? What is the desired outcome of this? What precisely are the talkers talking about moving to the cloud? We use O365 as a supplement to local services and while we're in the infancy of our projects with it, I expect it to be very useful. However, it's not a magical cure-all (as I'm sure you know, but your SLT may not!) and any project to migrate data to the cloud needs to have firm objectives that can be measured to judge success just like any other project, rather than a vague feeling that "cloud must be good because there was an article about it in this month's 'IT-illiterate principal monthly' and they had a picture of an actual cloud that looked really nice on the front page, so I gotta get me some cloud or else the other principals will take my juice money off me and spend it on gobstoppers at the next county-wide leadership conference".

Yes I make all my strategic platform decisions based on how long it takes to process a dialogue box I touch once every other blue moon.

It's quite inspiring to see all these tales of weight loss. I'll add my own much smaller tale: Before collapsing with pancreatitis in mid-july, I was hitting the scales at 17st :-( Now I've lost 2 and a half stones, down to a still heavy but much better than I was 14 and a half. This has come about through a big change in my diet after having my gallbladder removed (not only could I not each as much fatty or sugary crud, but I found myself simply not wanting that stuff anything like as much any more, or indeed wanting as much food in general). I'm still losing weight but much more slowly - all the easy gains have been made, I reckon! Also, I go out walking 5 days a week, and do between 3.5km and 5 km on each of those walks. As I think I've said in another thread, this is a really nice gentle way to unwind away from technology after a busy day at work, and if I put music on I find I can get a pretty decent time (for a walker) on the walk too. It's amazing how much better I feel these days in every way, both having my gallbladder out and losing weight afterwards has turned out really well for me... sometimes you don't realise how unwell and horrible you were feeling until you don't feel that way any more.

We've had good results with Aruba. It's not cheap, but we've implemented clearpass for BYOD management and been really impressed with it. I can only echo the other comments about device management at least as important as the APs when trying to implement BYOD properly. APs are only the beginning of the story of a properly implemented wireless network, and while it's a part you need to get right, in many ways it's the least difficult part to get right.

I've got a PS4 and I'm totally delighted with that. The fact of the matter is that the PS4 is probably slightly 'better' technically than the xbox one, but you will be happy enough in that regard with whichever one you get. If you wish to play online with friends (I'm _not_ much of an online person myself) then you are best off getting the same console that your friends have. On the bits of online gaming I've done with the PS4 (fifa, the need for speed game) I've had no problems nor heard of anyone else with a PS4 having them.

We've been using Sonicwall as a replacement for the firewall and filtering properties of TMG. We've been really pleased with it. We had rather a sophisticated multi-layer approach to filtering and network edge security and while I can't discuss the exact price we paid, I can say we've implemented a 2x Sonicwall NSA 5600 cluster for a substantial cost saving over our previous arrangement.

We've deployed it to a couple of machines via SCCM and it's installed damn near all the default packages for the respective locations ... and as one of those is my main desktop PC and includes all our odd and obscure "admin all the things" packages on top of the full staffroom load-out, that's actually pretty impressive.

We're a college and students are therefore able to enjoy a bit more freedom and responsibility than you get in a school perhaps, and our helpdesk has always been open to students for as long as I can remember (and I've been here since '98...). We get a range of calls from the mundane (password, printer credit refunds, etc) upwards to some fairly in depth stuff ("how can the student council manage an email campaign to the student body?", "Can the Black History Month project play a video they've made on the electronic noticeboards?", etc) I can see why it might not be for everyone but I can't imagine this place working too well without us being open to students!

Not sure that they have to be set in that specific GPO, but to be applied to the domain they need to be set in a GPO that is then applied to the domain itself - the Default Domain Policy certainly meets that description (IIRC), but I personally think there's a lot to be said for not changing that or the Default Domain Controllers policy at all, and instead creating a duplicate of the one you're hoping to edit to contain your changes at this level. This is one level where you don't want it to be any harder than it has to be to roll changes back if you make a mistake.

It's better than leaving a DC wide open to the internet but it's still a really bad idea imo. They need to get with the times, to be honest: There are lots of better solutions out there and (regardless of platform) exposing your internal central authentication provider to directly to the outside world is never ever going to stop being a bad idea.

I can only second the posts about using 32-bit office. I also wanted to say, and I'm sorry to have to say it, but this "software only supports two dots in an email address" thing, as daft as it is, isn't something that would be regarded as especially outrageous in the world of Finance and Payroll software, where a vendor whose products are 15 years behind the time is regarded as somewhere between dangerously forward-thinking, and reckless risk taking crazies by their rivals. As a sector, they really are shockingly bad. Sorry :-(

I laughed at the springfield gorge callback in the trailer but I can't help thinking this crossover is going to be pretty dire.

Quite right! I was kinda taking that as read, but given the gravity of taking that step it isn't a bad idea to emphasise this.

This suggests that your domain functional level hasn't been raised. You need to upgrade the domain functional level to W2008 level before fine-grained passwords are usable.

It should be run on the target for the settings you're testing/trying to apply. E.G. if you're changing workstation settings you don't need to run it on your servers. If you're just changing a server setting you do need to run it on your servers, but you don't need to run it on your workstations.

I have to say that walking rather than running is my thing (I enjoy walking, whereas I can run but don't enjoy it). If you really are starting from 'zero' then it might be that doing some walking to build up stamina and fitness/co-ordination to a certain level before returning to running might be beneficial. The couch to 5k thing mentioned by tommej is good. The podcasts are designed to be listened to as you work out and the structure of them means you should be able to follow them without too much trouble. What's most important is that you keep on and do what you can, instead of feeling bad about what you can't do and letting that put you off. Both walking and running are not only good physical exercise, but I find them a very effective way of getting away from technology and de-stressing after a busy day at work.

It's been lovely weather in the days around here, I went out for a walk in t-shirt and shorts earlier and felt perfectly capable. I'm off to the football tonight so I will admit to wearing jeans and a hoodie for that, as the temperature does drop in the late evenings and it's going to be a long time in one place instead of walking, but I can't imagine needing the heating on for a good while yet.

If your county support team have experience with Meru and can vouch for it in similar schools to yours and provide support maybe then this is certainly a good vote in favour of Meru. This is something I hadn't considered in my earlier comments because I work for a college that is incorporated in its own right and doesn't have much to do with the county's advisers. Ok. To a certain degree, it is easy to get buried in technical minutiae and lose sight of the bigger picture. Before worrying about beam forming and numbers of MIMO aerials you need to be asking some more fundamental questions. It may be that you've already done this of course, but it doesn't hurt to check. The questions you need to be asking yourselves should include these ones: How many connections do you anticipate on this wireless network? How "dense" will the connections need to be (e.g. 30 devices in one classroom is a very different prospect to 30 devices spread out over a large campus). What will the connections be used for? (Again, 15 people streaming video in one room on one AP is a different prospect from 15 people using a lightweight, web-based attendance recording system across the campus). Do you need to support 'BYOD' for the staff's own mobile devices? If the answer above is yes, then how many? What level of support can be provided for connection issues? (It's probably better to not offer a facility than offer one that can't be supported and which people grow to hate because of lack of support). What changes to the rest of your network infrastructure are needed to support the numbers of mobile connections arrived at above? How do any changes noted in the above point fit into your strategy for maintaining and improving the general network infrastructure? We all can only do so much. Despite being a full time infrastructure manager, it probably took me some help from others plus the best part of a year to finally pinpoint the precise technology we needed for our expansion. It's a specialist area... and very few of us that specialise in that area would be competent to be a deputy head. OK looking at the quotes you have been given. I'm not a specialist in Meru product lines but I'll give you my impressions: Company 1 Firstly, they're proposing substantial additions to your wired network infrastructure. I don't know if or why these are needed but that's eating a decent chunk of the cost. I don't think the Procurve 1410 is a PoE switch so I would wonder what problem two of them are going to be solving for a wireless network. HP Procurve E2530 and 2x Procurve 1410 switches plus other sundry wired network infrastructure represents £3400 or so of the cost by my rough guess. £500 alone is going on trunking -- why? As for the Wireless infrastructure itself, you're getting the Meru MC1550 controller here (as you are in the other bids). It can support up to 50 APs which sounds like good expansion potential for what I'd imagine a single-site primary school's requirements are, and looks perfectly capable of doing the job to me. They're proposing to use the Meru 1020 AP here which looks to me to be a reasonable choice. It's a middle of the road choice from the "professional" level of the product chart - unless you require very high density of devices connected to each access point or will be using high end devices that would take advantage of a 3x3 MIMO aerial arrangement then the 1020 (2x2 MIMO) is likely to be adequate. Company 2, Option 1 Again, lots of wired infrastructure here, though at a lower cost than the above solution. It worries me that they've not identified the type of wired network switch they're proposing to use, which makes me think they will all be from crazy vaclav's place of knock-off networks. Or netgear, which is even worse. Clearly this is a budget solution though and it would be wrong of me to condemn a budget solution for being done on a budget. I am a little confused by the much lower number of access points (I see only 8 listed?) and the addition of outdoor aerials; something I wouldn't expect to see on a budget proposal if 16 access points were being used to cover the internal spaces in the first company's proposal. Even if outside coverage is desirable, I would suggest this is something that is better to be added later unless you have a specific need for it (in which case company #1 dropped the ball there) and the money saved should either be, well saved, or used to improve internal coverage. Same controller and Access points as the first proposal so I won't repeat myself on those. Company 2, Option 2 Same comments about the wired infrastructure as on their first proposal. This is clearly a higher-end solution and its interesting that they're proposing access points with 802.11ac support here. They don't specify which AP they're using here, but looking at the spec and comparing it to the Meru AP spec sheet, I'd imagine it's the AP832. They're going with 12 of them, including some outdoor aerials for coverage outside too. I'm really not sure about this. While I think that any new wireless install proposal should discuss 80211.ac, I wouldn't make it a priority just now unless you have a specific requirement that would benefit from it. It appears that the MC1550 controller will support 802.11ac APs, so you can add these later if you find areas where you would benefit from it. Keep in mind that to see the full advantage from 80211.ac you may well need higher spec wired infrastructure and they're apparently keeping this the same between their two proposals which suggests they're either over or under-selling on at least one proposal. Company 3 This proposal is quite difficult to analyse in detail. They've created a set of "bundles" of installation work by the look of it, which makes it easy to know how much it's going to cost to wire up one more room so that it's ready for an AP, but difficult to pick apart the bones of that work. It looks like they're installing 8 APs for you, which again is hard to reconcile with the number of APs in the other bids. They're proposing the same controller and APs as has been mentioned already so I've got nothing new to say there. Looks like they're proposing netgear switches for the wired infrastructure here and as I've already alluded to, I'm not a fan. However, as I've also said before, it would be wrong to condemn a budget solution for being a budget solution, and at least these folks are prepared to detail what kit they're using, which is an improvement over company 2 in this regard. I hope this has been some help. I suspect I've probably asked or caused you to ask yourself as many questions as I've answered but hopefully some others will chip in with things I've missed and we can help you get things moving in the right direction at least.

A couple of things spring to mind here: Firstly, no ifs or buts in my opinion, bin the quotes from people who haven't come out and get new ones from people who are willing to come out. You need a proper survey of the site. Secondly, if you're ringing up a supplier and telling them "We want a meru" then you're immediately limiting yourself - like ringing up a VLE consultant and telling them "We want a moodle"... why limit yourself to one type of solution if you haven't done the work to exclude the other types (and forgive me if I'm wrong) and it sounds like you haven't done so for your wireless needs. I would make a point of trying to get a few quotes across a range of wireless implementations that you think all might be roughly in the area you want. In my experience all the providers have different strengths and some of them may meet your needs better than others and those needs may not be apparent until you've considered how each particular solution could best be deployed at your campus. We undertook an exercise to greatly upgrade our wireless network over the summer break just gone, and asked a few large providers of wireless solutions to quote and after a lot of backwards and forwards we chose a provider (Vanix) who looked at our requirements and saw potential areas of concern that was missed by some of the others who quoted (and which I was aware of to some degree but was keeping quiet on to separate the serious companies from the chancers) because they took the time to come out, speak to us and survey the place. Now I'm not suggesting that Vanix would be the right provider for you, nor am I suggesting you should buy the solution we purchased (60 Aruba APs with controller and a clearpass server deployment, to add to the 90 APs and controller already on site) but I am suggesting you want someone whose approach to your requirements is a serious and professional as Vanix's approach was to us. And someone who just throws a quote over the fence at you without coming out to survey the site and talk to key stakeholders isn't even close.

He certainly had all the faults you mention above and probably some more too, but given the way he held the feet of the (using his phrases, which I don't agree with) "Westminster Establishment" to the fire, I think he's done a fine job of enhancing the stereotype of us Scots as canny. I'm not a fan of his by any means but I think he did much better than most people anticipated. As for not making his case - he didn't. But equally, a lot of the No campaign was negative too. I don't think either 'side' covered themselves in glory here. I'm glad the vote was "No" though. Very glad.

No, Yes I suspect you're right about that, and not on your nelly.

Couldn't agree more. The current state of MDM is that when you lock things down, it's like all the posts I see from people who want to make users admins on a machine but prevent them from shutting the machine down or installing software. The correct answer is "stop making them admin". Totally agreed. I can only echo what @sted says, because its an argument I've made here many times but it isn't understood by people who don't really understand IT and who assume we're just "being difficult" and "throwing up obstacles" when we talk about things like this but they're all designed to be personal devices, "owned" and used by only one user throughout their life, not at all as shared devices.

I don't think any of these class of devices are that far along in the nitty gritty details of business management. Or actually educational management, as a business can take the attitude that staff that stuff up their work tablet by fiddling with stuff like this will be disciplined. This actually has some merit even if it cannot be directly translated to education; there's always going to be some way to get around a software block and it's not a technical problem as much as it is a discipline issue if students are (essentially) breaking school resources. Any technical precautions that you put in place to make it difficult to "break" a tablet in this way should be supported by disciplinary procedures too.

So what's happening with Exchange? Are all the services starting? Information store DBs mounted? Have you seen this article on repairing IIS on an Exchange 2007 server, if its just IIS that has tanked? If it's just the Exchange virtual directories that are damaged then this article might help.

Why are you disabling IPv6? That's not at all a recommended or tested scenario for Exchange 2013, and can cause unpredictable errors. Not saying its the problem here of course but it's one more source of potential problems that should be nailed down.