MatZeRO

A few of my aerial and ground shots.

We do sadly.

I've been the IT manager at this school for almost 12 years, I've not requested it. It is possible that it was requested before my time but we have had a new range of IP's from SWGfL in that time. As I mentioned we have had a firewall audit and they sent us all of the ACL's for our router, I can't understand why it is allowing this access because it looks ok to me. To be clear, we are able to connect to other schools equipment such as printers, wifi controllers etc. I then asked my other half who is a teacher in a different school (in a different county!) to see if she could access my wifi controller by typing in it's IP. She could I think it may be an idea to introduce a firewall between the router and our network as clearly the SWGfL are not setting up the routers correctly. I guess it's my bad really, I should have checked this earlier but you kind of assume that people you are paying large amounts of money for the connection are doing it correctly. It would be better if we could configure our own Cisco router.

How did you resolve the issue? It's odd because SWGfL initial reaction was that we were wrong and it wasn't possible unless we requested it. We have not requested it and after a firewall audit we can't really see why it is happening.

We asked them about this issue a couple of days ago and they said that if it was happening it must have been a change that we had requested! Of course we did not request the ability to see other schools or for them to see us. They then generated a firewall audit for us and we have removed any rules that are no longer in use but the issue continues. They don't seem to know what to do about it.

We have here and we have had no issues. If you do have issues you can always turn it back on.

We disabled SMBv1 and have no issues with any other products including Papercut and Sophos. We are talking to NRS about our cashless catering because we have several tills that still run XP embedded.

Thanks to everyone who has provided the version numbers. Much appreciated.

Hello to everyone! We are currently on version 5.0.03 and whenever I call Impero support I'm told we are on the latest version. We know that this is not true because we have received lots of emails from their marketing team telling us that 5.1 is out and how much better it is that the previous versions. We want to upgrade because we have been stuck with a number of bugs for a long time and we are constantly promised it will be fixed in the next version. I wonder if you would share your current Impero version number so that we can see where everyone else is. Thanks in advance.

We manage everything from speakers, servers, desktops, laptops, microphones, iPads, projectors. We do everything in house where possible, we fit projectors and smart boards, we ran all the cabling and installed a school wide Ruckus WiFi system. We even manage the phones. We have a tower we build if we need to get to high up projectors.

We use an access database and put asset tags on everything. Hard work to setup but now it's easy to keep up to date.

http://www.ITInStock.com and http://www.EasyIT.co.uk Whatever price they give you, haggle and push them down.

Take some time and plan for what you need. Be sure about what is coming up in the future, think about what sorts of things need to upgraded and be really sure you have the best ideas in mind. Think about future ICT needs, where are the courses going, what are the teachers likely to ask for in the future. Seems like a lot of money for 70 machines. We buy 2nd user machines at a fraction of the cost of a new one. We had to replace computers for our admin staff, about 30 machines. We ordered some machines from a company called EasyIT for £105 per unit. Turns out the machines were only used for a few weeks at the Olympic games. They were in perfect working order and we have had zero issues with them. We also ordered 100 computers to replace some ageing RM One machines we had knocking about, we paid around £11000 for them from another company. They are only 1 year old, never had any issues with them either. Saved a fortune. If something goes wrong with them, well thats what we are there for. In terms of servers, we orders ours from a company called IT in Stock. They are 2nd user servers. It seems that lots of companies upgrade there servers ever year and just chuck out the old ones, IT in Stock come in collect them up and re-sell them. A server that would have cost us thousands of pounds ends up costing us hundreds. If something goes wrong with it, we fix it. HP Servers are all modular and anyone could change parts in and out. I think you can make your budget go a long way, just have the confidence to order 2nd user stuff. Another example while I think about, we just moved our server room from the tiny unsuitable server room to a new room. We needed two 42u racks, we wanted HP. We priced them up with Insight and they said we would be looking at between £1500 - £2000. We had a look around and ended up paying £375 for 2x HP 42u racks. Think ahead, plan, spend wisely.

First post, well not really, i used to be registered about 3 years ago but ive not been on here for ages and cant remember my account details! I have a quick question about salary and thought you guys would be able to give advice. I am a Network Manager in Gloucestershire. I work in a school with 1700 kids and around 230 staff, we have 800 computers. I line manage 4 staff. We also provide support to 6 feeder schools (limited support on a "when they ask" basis) My department is responsible for everything to do with IT including the phones. I hold Microsoft qualifications up to MCSA and several MCTS and also Apple qualifications up to ACTC. I am sure that there are loads of you have similar responsibility’s to me and I wanted to know what grade you are on. I have been here for 7 years and I am on a grade H point 26. I am thinking of asking for a regrade and I wondered if you guys thought it would be reasonable or a bit cheeky? They have just advertised a job here for a finance position and they have graded it a grade J! For a job that is basically an assistant to the Bursar. I have whole schools responsibility for every child and staff member, governors and some parents and I feel my grade could be higher. What do you guys think? Am I being greedy? Thanks in advance!