Roberto

I'm in exactly the same boat as Ross, just moving our college from one campus to another but on the same physical grounds. We're not BSF as we're a college, but still helpful I hope. Also happy to give advice - and hear some from people who know what to expect from your first year in a new site. I'll give you a couple of points I've found to get started. 1. Many things will take longer than you think they will (and often it will be the simpler jobs that trip you up... you already know the difficult jobs will be difficult and plan accordingly). 2. It's the odd little jobs that take the most time to sort out 3. There are far more odd little jobs than you think there will be. 4. Throwing resources at a problem only helps so far - you can only have so many contractors / temporary helpers standing at a patch panel patching or trying to move items into a classroom at once before they just get in the way. 5. Someone needs to manage your aspect of the move. Managing this will be a full time job for **at least** one person, so this person/people can't let themselves be bogged down with very many 'doing' tasks as they will need to be available to solve problems and make decisions as things happen.

Yes. There's one installed and working in one of our mac servers right now. But it was horrendously expensive and difficult to source a SFP+ nic for a mac server compared to one for a Dell server, say. The fact that a 3rd party provides 10Gb NICs for mac servers is hardly a standing ovation for how well Apple themselves 'get' the server market.

Moderating a forum isn't preventing you from exercising any right you have to free speech. It's refusing to publish it, which is absolutely not the same thing.

As much as I love apple kit usually, I can't help thinking they really don't "get" the whole concept of server hardware at times. Even the xserve feels like a mac pro shoe-horned into a 1u case than a properly thought out server (and don't get me started on the trouble my suppliers and I have had finding a 10gb NIC for it)

A Terminal Server is your friend here.

I'm quite a big mac fan myself but I really can't see Garageband by itself as a good reason to do this. Logic, or Final Cut Pro or similar, yes. However, if you have to, you have to. The specific answers to your questions in your first post are "Yes, no problem, you don't need 3rd party software either; Yes no problem; No but it may help; that depends on your students, we certainly do; can't comment on Fog as I don't know that, but OSX has its own imaging tools that work well". Don't forget you can install a Mac version of Microsoft office onto these machines, and you can get things like email working on them too (we have exchange email services available to mac users using the apple mail app).

As we're talking about buying for a business rather than an individual, I wonder what the business case is for the sort of customisations that require jailbreaking an iphone...

If you're asking me what I think I like best as a phone and communications device, then I would answer "iPhone". I'd point to the reasons that Domino has outlined just above my post to justify that, too. If you're asking which your business should be buying then I would say "whichever one you will find easier to support". E.G. do you have any iphone enthusiasts in your IT team already, for example, or do you know someone who has already got an Android phone configured just how you like it who is willing to help produce a crib sheet for that, etc.

Commvault Simpana users here, backup is done across the network to a 12 Tb disk array on a central "backup server" which is backed up to tape. We do a weekly full backup of the windows network and daily incremental backups during the week. The VMware cluster/SAN is backed up using the same routine as the windows servers. The mac SAN is given a full backup on a monthly basis and a weekly incremental between those dates (there's a *lot* of data there but the rate of change is very very low). I'm pretty happy with how reliable it all is at the moment. It's a pain in the hoop to get Simpana working properly but once it is in place it is extremely reliable (this has been my experience of all "enterprise" backup software tbh). It also does very well at talking to and backing up a wide range of server applications (at the time we purchased it, it was literally one of only two possible solutions that could backup sharepoint 2007). We have considered 'online' backup but it is expensive, and we were dubious about our 100mb connection keeping up with our needs. We may look at this again the next time we consider our backup solution, as we're about to upgrade to a 1Gb connection.

We just use the OSX AD plugin, and don't have any problems. Unless there's a particular function the software you're looking at offers and the OSX plugin does not, then I vote for saving your money. The need for "helpers" was most definitely present in older versions of OSX but has got much better with each version, aside from a few bugs. Apple's "Remote Desktop" technology is based around VNC. It's either use VNC or go home empty handed. If you use a mac client to connect to other mac clients/servers then you get a fancy wrapper around this which makes the experience much better. But it's still VNC under the hood. Not sure if Software update can do this, it certainly isn't up to the standards of WSUS. Apple Remote Desktop can do this sort of thing - scheduled tasks and updates.

We're planning this in our new campus, we're having a 'guest' VLAN for students and staff who wish to bring in their own laptops. Web access only, and connection to the LAN via terminal server only.

OSX doesn't support "PXE boot", true. It supports "Netboot", which is the apple equivilent. You can use this to deploy Mac OSX workstation to your clients fairly painlessly. As for authentication - you can bind your mac workstations to Active Directory so users can log in with their Windows accounts without resorting to a Mac server, so I wouldn't worry about that part. Storage - a Mac Mini server uses comparatively slower disks so I'm not sure I'd want to use this for heavyweight user file sharing - again you can connect to the Windows servers for this. "Group Policy" type settings - If you have a Mac server, the workstations can be locked down with OSX Open Directory, the Mac world version of Active Directory. I'd control the users via AD however.

I suspect they'll allow the ones they are comitted to doing to go through but not start any new ones. That's certainly what happened when the FE sector's building project ran out of money... We were lucky to get ours approved just before it went belly up, and our new campus does look quite nice.

Why a RODC and not a standard DC?

Well we've all got to go someday, but you'll only die from Asbestos related illnesses if you've been drilling holes in it or standing around watching someone else drill. Don't do that.

Yes it has. Can you say "flamebait". I know you didn't mean it to be that, but that's what it is. My tuppence worth: No, your employer might not need it. No my employer might not need it. But some do. In some cases it's a valid choice, I reckon. Different solutions fit different situations. I think if something like, say, CC4 does exactly what a school wants, they can afford it, and they want something that requires (relatively) little low level setting up and so-on then it might be a good choice. Otherwise, go elsewhere.

That's exactly what it is. We have similar usernames and a similar problem. It doesn't (for us) happen on all accounts, just those it can't resolve with 100% accuracy itself.

6th form college, 1200 computers (about 50/60 Macs) - 60 servers (half are virtual). "Unified Comms" style Telephone system. Electronic card operated door control, cashless vending, registration, plus other odds and ends. 6 full time "Technical Services" staff, that's 3 "helpdesk" level, 2 "engineer" level, 1 manager. We have taken on 2 contractors to help out while we move to a new campus over summer though.

Looks like it's up a day early at that BBC link. I'm downloading it now.

If they really mean "ISA Server" and it isn't the case that they actually meant "ForeFront TMG" but just haven't got used to calling the new version by its new name then frankly they're fools who shouldn't be allowed to touch an Internet connection, let alone protect one. ISA server is very good at what it does (we use it in conjunction with websense, and we're very happy with it). It doesn't do content filtering in itself though, as others have said. ForeFront TMG however, ups the game considerably. Whether it's enough for an educational environment I can't really say yet, but we plan to migrate to that plus Websense, Real Soon Now.

We're looking at a package from OneLan for digital signage on our new campus, and one of the options they have included is for a digital PVR function that records all the TV channels you choose to receive for the past week or so on a "scratch" volume, and transfers any you want to keep to a library. The kit seems quite good from what I've seen far and the people are quite switched on and "aware" of the education market. Can't comment on price as that's commercially sensitive data and we're also opting for a lot more than "just" the PVR components.

Can you browse the web ok using Safari? Without knowing anything about Netsweeper, so apologies if this is nonsense, does it function as a proxy server (or do you have one somewhere else on the network)? If so, have you configured OSX to work with it as a proxy? system preferences/network/(select connection method you're using, ethernet or airport)/Advanced/proxies

I know that CC4 will work quite happily with machines supplied by HP, Stone, etc - possibly not so much with whatever bargain basement stuff ebuyer has for sale this week (which, don't get me wrong, is great at the price for home use just sometimes not something I'd want to use for a business or school). You'd need to be sure that drivers for your machines were part of the CC4 build to get the most out of them though. That said, if on-site support and knowledge is limited, there's a great deal to be said from buying the hardware and the software from the same place and being able to ring them up later and saying "I don't know if it's a hardware or a software issue, do I look like that Roberto guy or something? All I know is that either way we got it from you so it's your problem."

I'm not a fan of CC3 / CC4 but in my opinion it makes a lot of sense to have that or something like it if you want to buy a solution from someone and use it pretty much "as is" without customising it. This can work well for a smaller org, or one with a small support team, where you want something that "just works" without a lot of bother. If you start wanting to make changes and set up custom stuff that the people designing your "middleware" didn't anticipate then you can end up fighting against their stuff, and the value of having it rapidly changes.

I can't see where it says that in the article at all. If you're referring to this Exchange Server 2007 management tools can also be installed on a 32-bit computer then is refers to the management tools, e.g. the server administrator's tools for controlling the server, not exchange server itself. There was a 32 bit version of Exchange 2007 floating around in the beta but almost from day one Microsoft were very very clear that this was for testing purposes only and not for "live" deployments.