Oaktech

Currently I have onsite backups provided by one of these: https://iosafe.com/store/products-soloPRO-buy which is then script XCopied to an offsite location provided by our ISP. our backup is simple windows server backup, but by using several XCopy scripts, it becomes one nightly onsite backup, 1 offsite a week stored for 30 days and 7 offsite incrementals. The last backup of the week becomes the one that is stored for 30 days. Were looking into Azure, but at the moment it's unnecessarily expensive compared to what we have with the ISP. When we convert to an academy we will probably go in with our trust's Azure backup. It also helps, that the ISP's data centre is close enough that in a dire emergency I could take a USB HDD down there and retrieve the backup physically.

I was about to say that... I love sezing FSMO, it's the most heart stopping thing I've ever had to do! Had to do it on my first day at this place as the DC had a fit over the holidays, came in on the first day to no working GPO, no DNS and no DHCP.

I've had the same issue with some r930 machines, randomly not switching on. I didn't even open it up, I just told warranty it was rattling. One went back under warranty no question, but the other was just out. The one that was out had some bright green gunge on the screws which looked more like a lubricant than a thread lock. I had a battle royal with Toshiba over that and they ended up sending me screw kit and giving me a 75% discount on a new MB, I think just to shut me up. The screws that turned up were probably all a MM longer and coated in blue or red threadlock. Take from that what you will.

The megatec shutdown software is pretty universal if you were going to take a punt on the system...

Could be this... https://redmondmag.com/articles/2014/05/16/network-performance-problems.aspx

Have you got the failed batts out yet, there might be some clues on them... I've had packs made up by Bournemouth Battery Centre and by our local security suppliers whose name I forget right now!

I've got a 2012r2 server core DC and a 2008r2 physical DC. The server core machine was already here when I arrived, it's been bombproof so I've just left it alone besides updates. I believe I can do an inplace upgrade of the 08r2 DC to 2012r2 but nowhere in any of the guidance does it mention having an already mixed 08r2/12r2 environment. My functional level is 08r2 and I'm not looking to raise it right now. All the inplace upgrade advice says to do a domainprep and a forestprep, I've followed the technet guidance and checked that this has been done, which it appears to have been. I've done the firmware update on my HP microserver, I've got a 2012r2 disc, I've got a good backup... I guess I just go for it? Any words of wisdom or gotchas?

If it becomes a problem, I can come and get it, but it'll have to be a weekend. I've got a motorcycle engine I need to drop off in Gloucester in a few weeks time so I can combine it with that.

That would be amazing... I'm happy to pay for postage if you can package it up...

If you already have a wireless system you can just get a new headset... PULSE - MIC-3000LJ - Super Lightweight Headset Microphone with Telescopic Boom and 3.5mm Locking Jack Plug | CPC UK Is your basic thing... H6 Headset | Earsets and Headsets | Countryman is the other end of the spectrum. AT899c-TH - Subminiature Omnidirectional Condenser Lavalier Microphone, unterminated version | Audio-Technica would be ideal for musical theatre and can be clipped in the hairline to be invisible

Ok, I'm not on the site and my Tech has emailed to say that as of this morning a reset has fixed it. He can't replace the cable without assistance as it's at high level and not plugged into a patch point, it's on a long cable (~25m) right back to the switch. Firmware is 9.4.0.0.110 and has never been upgraded but as the school doesn't have a support contract we can't access firmware upgrades - its on next year's budget bid. I'll pop in tomorrow and give him a spare brand new AP and see if that fixes it. I can't afford to swap a known good one because the wireless is heavily utilised by static clients (all printers, MFDs and a lot of desktops are wireless) I'm working on the wired infrastructure, someone sold them the wireless about 4 years ago and basically said 'you'll never need to use a wire again' which is stupid.

Thanks guys. It's a flat network, no vlans, acls or other jiggery :censored:ery. It's plugged into a smart switch and is locally powered. The link speed shows as 1gbps on both ap and console. The only oddity is that the pass through port is being used. The machine on the pass through is off most of the time so I can't say whether that machine experiences any of the weirdness. The console shows no abnormal events and it shows the firmware as being the same as all the other APs

When I issued our old ISP with notice to quit (If you've been here a while, you'll know who it was) within 20 minutes a salesman was on the phone trying to speak to the head. When the reception lady told the guy he could be passed to me or he could off he gave her some scary pitch about how what we were doing was possibly illegal and how we would immediately be hacked and that did we want to deliberately put our kids in danger and, and and... Took me about an hour to calm her down and she's the receptionist, goodness only knows what might of happened if he'd got through to someone with decision making powers.

My partner school is having issues with a single Ruckus 7363 AP out of its network of 12. Clients connect to it with good or excellent signal and and occasionally logins fail or are very slow. If you roam to it, Internet access seems zippy but access to internal services such as mapped drives is very slow or fails. It's happening about 3-4 times a week and sometimes a reboot fixes it, sometimes leaving it off for an hour fixes it. Sometimes it just fixes itself. Any ideas. I'm sure it's nothing serious becausevthe other 11 points are working fine.

Is anyone doing network upgrades and might have a 4 or 6u cabinet going spare for cheap or free? I can even swap for an 8u if you like! Preferably in dorset or hants, but if you can pack it up I can pay postage I was given a few 8u cabs to help me get away from cables with plugs on above ceilings but I have one room where an 8u just won't fit. Thanks in advance

The Ubiquiti offering is great, but if all it's doing is internet over a few 10s of metres, then the propellor 5 is much better value at just £65 an end!

That's a fools errand. You be much better getting a wireless bridge kit like the deliberant propeller 5 and puting one at each end and hanging another access point off the remote end.

Thanks for that, I do still have stuff as defaults, so I'll sort that. I've got a long maintenance window next week, so I'll do it then. If I disconnect from the target it won't reconnect at all untill the host OS is restarted, and then it sits reconnecting. Again, thanks for that, but that is the one thing it definitely isn't. My client network runs in the 192.168.0..0/23 range and my host-disk comms runs on a physically separate 10GB network with l3 routing between 4 addresses in the 10.10.10.0/24 and 10.11.10.0/24 ranges for redundancy. I've noticed that one of the discover portals was missing (host 1 has both 10.10.10.100 and 10.11.10.100 whereas host 2 on has 10.10.10.110 and not 10.11.10.110) so I've added that back in and it seems to have made things a bit better - the host says connected now and the machines don't seem to be randomly freezing at the moment - so, fingers crossed.

I created my cluster back in april and it's been running beautifully since, but I've now got some issues. The cluster is a pair of Lenovo 3650m5 2.4ghz/64gb/300gb sas, a pair of BCM5780 10gb iscsi cards, a pair of HP aruba 2920 switches with the 10gb modules in them and a lenovo s2200 storage enclosure. It's all running 2012r2 patched up to date with the latest drivers. The servers and storage are all running latest firmware. My issues started about a week ago, one of the hosts unexpectedly powered off. The cluster did what it was supposed to do and moved all the machines to the second host, brought them up and nobody noticed. The event error was a PSU issue (not sure why, there are 2 PSUs. I contacted lenovo and they sent out a spare PSU 24hr courier) ever since then that host has been stuck 'reconnecting' in the iscsi initiator panel. The iscsi connection is working as I can use all the cluster features, however actually using both the virtual machines and the cluster hosts is incredibly slow, they'll be fine for between 1 and 30 minutes, and then certain aspects of the GUI will just hang for about 30 seconds. I've described the only faults I've seen. There are no pertinent errors on any of the VMs and the only recurring error on the VM hosts is Initiator failed to connect to the target. Target IP address and TCP Port number are given in dump data. which tallies with what I'm seeing in the iscsi initiator panel. It's not very often that I have to admit I'm out of my depth, but right now, I'm out of my depth. Help

Personally I'd steer clear of anything with a lot of plastic on it (CBR125, YZ125R, Hyosung GT). You are going to drop it, plastic is expensive to replace and you'll find if you claim on insurance that they'll write the bike off and your premium will go even further through the roof than it will be already as a new rider. My personal advice would be to avoid anything 125 with a Suzuki badge on it, the built quality is shocking these days. Likewise anything chinese with the notable exception of the Sinnis Apache which seems pretty good. I'd consider a Hyosung 125, but they are an acquired taste to ride being a vtwin. My personal choice would be a CB125F or, as you say, the MT

@Gez_Impero... Comments?

If your budget is very limited and you want shared storage, you might want to look at using a cheap/refurb windows server stuffed with as many disks as your budget will allow and using it as an iscsi target for the machines you want to use as hosts. If you go down this path, I would be looking at running the storage on a windows server with a minimum of 4 network ports that you can use as a pair of teams, and then having a reasonable gig switch (more than a 4mb packet header) with them, running off the same UPS as the servers and then having 4 ports on each host server that you can split into 2 teams - one to do storage communications and one to do rest-of-world communications. This isn't a particularly elegant way of doing it and the performance might be less than you were expecting but it'll work. I've just dropped 16k doing a 2 host/17tb storage/10g stoarge network project, and I consider I've still cut corners a bit because I rely on our core switch for cluster communications. Our core switch has a UPS on it, but if the ups on the core switch goes before the cluster has migrated/shut down i'm going to be in trouble! I would be more inclined to stick with good, fault tolerant local storage (2 disks for OS, raid 1, as many disks as you can afford raid 5 or 6 or JBOD) and configure replication between your hosts. I'd also spalsh out on data centre - it's about £250 per host per year currently on an EES.

Have a check on your lid close action - is the machine suspending to ram and using it all up?

That is EXACTLY how I do mine. Are you in my head?

Or a smart card reader... Or you allow user switching... It happens a lot here when students close the lid on a machine without logging off a few times. I see 5 logged on instances of a machine on Impero and the next person to try it gets the error and comes to see me. I just restart the machines normally although it will often allow a local logon.