sahmeepee

SIMS can be much more amazing than that! It's not quite as simple as setting up the test environment unfortunately. Typically you might want to test in 2 different scenarios I would guess: 1. You want to try doing something to your data like run one of the SIMS routines and you're scared of breaking it. In this scenario, you will need to use the sims dbattach tool to detach the database and handle the migration of SIMS accounts (from the master db). You can then use the backup dbattach has made to restore onto your test system. You would also be wise to copy across the contents of your server's SIMS directory (in particular SIMS\Snova\ and SIMS\setups\, but I would shift the lot for safety's sake) You also need to find out where your document management server stores its files and shift all that over too. Be aware that when you've migrated the data over, the test system will still be pointing at your live docstorage (e.g. liveserver:8080 so you'll need to change that in SIMS settings) That's about it for scenario 1. 2. You want to try running an update or a new major version on a test system because they always break something in the program or in the client install routine. This can be tricky, because Capita keep track of whether you've downloaded and installed each update, so if you were to go ahead and install the latest update on your test server it would no longer be available to download on your live server. You have 2 options. Run the update on your test server then contact Capita and get them to reauthorise the update when you want to put it on the live server. (Easier, but potentially slower method.) Run SOLUS on your test server, but tell it to only do a download, not an update. Copy the installers from SIMS\setups\{long string of characters}\ to a safe location. Run SOLUS on your test server and tell it to run the already-downloaded updates. When it comes time to run the updates on your live server you can copy them into SIMS\setups\ and run them manually using dbupgrade. This method is more under your control, but also more prone to error as you're no longer relying on SOLUS to run things correctly. They don't mind from my experience as long as you're only using it for testing. We've certainly been very open with them about it and they seemed cool with it. People discuss it quite openly on the SupportNet forums as well.

Users need a few things on top of rights to the local SIMS folder. Have a dig around in the contents of simSperm.bat to see what it tweaks: simsperm.bat - Google Search That said, the May release of FMS also needed write access to system32 which was an unexpected surprise from our friends at Capita! AFAIK there isn't an FMSperm.bat, and if there was I suspect it would open up more than I'd be happy with.

I'm not aware of any SANs with iSCSI and fibre connections on the same chassis. Maybe someone else has seen one. You could have 2 SANs, but then you would also need 2 lots of switching (fibre and ethernet) and 2 lots of connectivity in your servers (fibre and gbit ethernet on top of your existing network card) so there would likely be no cost saving over just using fibre. You only need an iSCSI HBA if you plan to boot from an iSCSI SAN. That's because Windows typically accesses iSCSI using drivers and config settings loaded from your windows installation... and those files are on the disk you're not yet connected to! What the HBA does is give your server access to the SAN before the start of Windows boot. As you suggest, many people don't bother with the iSCSI HBA if they are only using the SAN for storage of data after Windows bootup.

The files are actually downloaded into: SIMS\Setups\{long string of characters}\ If you tell SOLUS not to install the updates and just to download them then you will be able to see the folder and files - otherwise it will finish the install and delete them.

Sorry to go back on topic again We've got an iSCSI SAN here with 4x1Gbit connections into a Gbit switch (aggregated to provide effectively a 4gbit connection). If I'd been looking to boot off the SAN I would have thought about fibre channel more seriously (fibre and iSCSI HBA cards are similarly priced), but that's not really on the horizon right now. It runs about twice as fast as the local disks in our fastest servers do, so I'm happy with that. Total cost of the SAN including the 3com Gbit switch was £6100, giving 6TB of SATA in RAID6 with 8 disk slots spare for SAS or SATA. There are cheaper chassis out there which would probably do the job acceptably, but it sounds like money is no object in your case! My selection was more at the budget end between DotHill, Infortrend (Eonstor) and AC&NC (Jetstor)...

Presumably everyone who exposes their OWA to the outside world is paying for an external connector license? Proper Exchange licensing (bit old, but still accurate?)

Yup, same here, as well as an old superceded update which was apparently released in the year 3008.

That particular supplier's business division, if I guessed it correctly, also has about 10 different companies/trading names under the one group. If you foolishly send a faxed order to the "wrong" one it takes ages flying round their internal systems and eventually you get an email from your account manager at what seems like an entirely different company telling you you sent your order to the wrong place! Well silly me! Why the hell they can't amalgamate all the names is beyond me - Adobe have managed it and they even have recognisable brand images to deal with.

Is it possible they've accidentally made Exams require .net 3? That supportnet article would be much more helpful if they told you which update was causing it to barf so we don't have to install world+dog. We often have to put these updates out straight after release to fix existing urgent problems, so I'm enjoying sitting back and waiting for c0ckups to be fixed this time before I lay waste to our SIMS workstations! All our workstations should be on .net v2 by now 'cos May needed it.

Wow, you can say that again! I last looked at it about 9 months or so ago when I saw a presentation on google video by one of the developers. It certainly looks much more usable than it was back then. Can it do multicast though?

I've just downloaded the June update to check and it came through fine. We get our support direct from Capita though - if you're supported via your LA you will be hitting their servers instead of Capita's UPDATE: I checked the downloaded files in the setups folder and we don't have the one you named, so presumably it relates to the May release which we already have installed.

I haven't checked, but i'm guessing there are mobile versions of google calendar that would be OK. This was my first hit: GooSync Home Page (available in packet sizes of £0 and £19.95/yr). One advantage of gcal is that people are keen to write addons for all google apps, so you can usually find what you want. I'm looking at making better use of our Exchange setup in the short term, seeing as it's already bought and paid for.

Media Player Classic can do this too - just point it at the .VOBs and it will play them if the DVD doesn't have protection on it.

Full fluff-piece here: News Centre : Department for Children, Schools and Families

I think you missed a zero. If you look at the bottom of that document it says:

We have separate SIMS and FMS servers as you describe. We have SIMS workstation installed on the FMS server without any problems. When I run SOLUS with our setup, I can do it from anywhere (workstations included) and the update installers and patches always go to our SIMS\setups\ directory on the SIMS server. That includes FMS updates. I can't guarantee this was the case before we migrated to FMS 6.91. Prior to that point I think we used to run SOLUS on the FMS server itself and never had any problems beyond those introduced in every new SIMS release

If you have 2 "companies" in FMS, one for the 6th form consortium and one for everything else, and you pick the relevant one using FMS database selector or by running a different FMS shortcut, then no - the FMS upgrade won't change that. It will move each database over to SQL individually. The FMS upgrade will eventually become necessary I think as: a) Capita stop supporting older versions including all the pre-SQL Server versions (i.e. 6.85 and older) b) Your finance department can't keep up with new legislation, such as the Consistent Financial Reporting standards which are now with us. The old FMS versions will never have those features added AFAIK.

I spoke to my contact at 3com about this to find out what: debulshitified into, but he couldn't get further clarification. If it's 3NS, then I'm not particularly interested - even if it is a free meal at the Radisson.

They worked OK for me I think. Possibly you could try a different xvid/divx codec on your PC as I assume that's what they put out. We use the Koepi.org one. I didn't have that problem.. this isn't like those other sites in that you don't need to make any connection to youtube at all. I didn't even give it a proper email address - I just gave it a mailinator one and picked it up a few minutes later.

When I got quotes on SANs one company did put something like that forward with a commercial SAN OS running on top of it. It was the cheapest quote of the lot, but ultimately I didn't go with it because it seemed too important a device to risk problems with. For not much more than your figure you can get a commercial iSCSI SAN with a bazillion bays and loads of redundancy features (raid5/6/etc, redundant fans, PSUs, NICs...) all backed up with a healthy warranty and support as well as a dedicated OS and tons of hardware acceleration. Whether your environment would need FC rather than iSCSI or SAS drives rather than SATA is something only you would know. I would want to be very happy about the speed and reliability of a SAN before I used it to virtualise everything though.

Also check to see if you have a c:\windows\netop.ini - If you do it might have settings in it to change the place where your policies are stored (to allow you to have a central repository or a machine-specific policy store)

We have Linksys WRT54GL APs with DD-WRT on. Works a treat and lets you monitor them with RFlow Collector (or presumably other packages that understand Cisco Netflow format). We haven't noticed any stability problems running at the factory transmit levels.

U3 is evil, especially for those with roaming profiles, as it delights in dumping a ton of U3 poop into their appdata folder, meaning I have to run my profiledeclutter script before they can log off!

Our SIMS and FMS run on separate servers, each with their own full copy of SQL2005. I'm pretty sure you can run them both on the same SQL2005 install, just with different instances. There will almost certainly be information about the supported configurations on SupportNet.

pcounter vote++