superaz300

Hello Guys, First of all, apologies for my silence on this post. Joining a school as Network Manager through a pandemic has been an eventful time to say the least, but also rewarding to be thrown in the deep end! Before I start to tell my story of how I have found the role so far, I would just like to point out as some of you have noticed my account has existed on Edugeek for a number of years now. I have always had a passion for IT from a very young age, and I engaged in this forum at a very young age as this forum was originally shown to me back when I was at school from the techies I learnt and inspired from. Yes, I was that student that had such a passion for IT, I was building Windows Server networks from the age of 11 at home and then straight onto my apprenticeship at 16 for my first role of Apprentice Technician in a large secondary school. Now to the exciting bit! I have survived! I am very well settled in my role, over 1 year in but I can honestly say it really does not feel like a year. My first task when I started was to get the network stable, as there was not any investment in IT for 8 years before I started, so I had Windows Server 2008 - 2012 Servers, and Windows 7 32-bit hardware at least 9 years old. My first project was to replace all the servers (physical) with a new VMware 2 node cluster setup. I can't take all the credit for this as the trust IT director had already ordered and had the infrastructure in place just before I started, but I needed to finish this project and create the brand-new Windows Server 2019 Virtual Machines for DC's, File Servers, Print and APPS. Previously, the school was doing all software and operating system installation manually! so I took the opportunity to introduce SCCM, which made my life so much easier. The previous IT department used to receive around 30 emails between them a day, which was very difficult to manage. As soon as I started, an IT helpdesk was quickly introduced so we had an organised ticket system so jobs actually got completed. At first, I found staff did not like this change, they was so use to just ringing IT or emailing and expecting the issue to be resolved there and then, but recent feedback staff are now very happy with this change, and it’s a fair process in the way tickets get responded too which we now have much faster response times. In between working on infrastructure and the network, I also had to support remote learning which was a challenge in itself with the aging hardware. Luckily, we received some DfE laptops and donations from local organisations near the school to support this which meant we could quickly offer hardware to students and staff to use at home. With less people in the school during the lockdowns, it was great opportunity to really get stuck in and start working on network diagrams, and tidying up the server rooms and comms cabinets. During the summer, we upgraded all our fibre to OM3 and rolled out 15 brand new Aruba 10GB switches, to replace the old and retired Unifi switches that nobody could ever get onto the management page due to a very messy / wrong VLAN schema. As part of this, I created 4 new subnets for WiFi so we can deliver a proper Guest WiFi network, and a staff WiFi. Previously, Guest, Staff and Students where all on 1 WiFi subnet which was not ideal!! There are so many other projects / changes I have made which I am very happy with, and it certainly has given me a confidence boost to do this role when I look back on this crazy year, and what the school had before and now. I have made mistakes, just like we all do in a new role, but the advice I got, "Don't upset Finance, HR or the Site Team" I can see are very true! But most important of all, "Keep the kitchen staff happy" Thank you for all your help and advice as I began the new adventure into my new role. As scary as it was at the beginning, and every day is still a school day, but I certainly wouldn't change it now and I believe is the best decision I made to change my job! I do hope anyone who reads this thread in the future isn't put off this role by the challenges / projects I had to undertake in a year, I think personally for me this made it more exciting, and quickly taught me what I needed to know to do this job. I feel like I could write an entire blog on this, but I best leave it here! Thank you all once again Superaz300

Thank you so much! This worked a treat, we have now got this rolled out to all of our IT suites with no issues. I must say, Adobe haven't made this process very easy at all. Thank you for sharing, much appreciated.

Good morning all, I am wondering if anyone has had success with deploying Adobe CS5.5 Master Collection with SCCM? I have implemented SCCM at a school I started as Network Manager at, and the only application I am having bother with deploying is CS5.5. I know this application is old, but unfortunately its the only Adobe licence the school currently has / uses. We are due to move over to Creative Cloud at some point, but for the time been, I need to keep this application going. I have successfully customised the installation using the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Tool, but I am not sure on the parameters to execute the installation within SCCM. The school use Adobe Acrobat which is included in CS5.5, but I didn't realise this installation was separate to the actual CS5 installation. I would also like to create a separate package for this, I did attempt to do this but had issues with activation and it not activating against the CS5 serial number. If anyone can shed any light on this from previous experience, I would much appreciate it. My only other option was to create 2 images, one without CS5 and one with it, but ideally I like to keep my images clean. Best regards James

Thank you both for the replies. I have been told a member of SLT currently line manages the IT Team, so to start off with, this isn't going to be part of my responsibility. I will be provided training if the school want me to line manage the IT team, which from my experience so far of working in Education, it is nice to hear the T word! Strong relationships with key Staff is important to me, I understand that IT has also become a grey area in the school within the last 5 years, and I really want to turn that around and so that Staff can start believing in the IT again. I am definitely looking forward to taking this on and building my on my experience, and as part of that, I am sure I will make mistakes, but I guess its how I learn from them that counts.

Hello Everyone, I am 2 weeks away from starting my new job, as a first time Network Manager at a secondary school. As excited and overwhelmed as I am when I was offered the job, I think the nerves and reality has definitely hit, and I really don't want to mess this opportunity up. I am 21 years old, and I have worked as an ICT Technician since I was 16 which I started out as an apprentice. Network Manager has always been something to aim for, I just can't believe I have got the role much earlier than I thought. I am looking for any pointers, advice, do's and don't and general experience of doing this role. I have been to look at the school, and I have a good understanding of the technology that is currently there, and its certainly an exciting project to take on board as there is a lot of work that needs doing from an IT perspective. The current IT team have been running the show for the past 5 years, just 2 technicians, as the school didn't have the budget to replace the Network Manager. This is great as they understand the building, the staff and the way the school ticks more than I do. So far, my list of things to look at when I first start are: Making sure backups are functional Updating / checking Network Documentation Reviewing contracts / services the school has Understanding the Staff with any IT issues they have This seems like such a small list to me, but I feel they are important. I understand as part of this role, I now become the person people come to when IT doesn't go to plan, and its my job to take responsibility for both my team and the issues we face, but it also should be such a good opportunity, and I am hoping to learning a lot of experience. I do apologise for the long thread, I will look forward to any replies. Best regards James

Sorry to bump an old thread, however I just wanted to say a massive thank you to your post sir! I have been for weeks trying to workout why our new staff HP laptops could not change the screen brightness, I even involved HP Support because I thought this was driver related. As soon as I added the registry keys and rebooted, boom we could change the brightness. Never thought of Impero at all! If anything, I thought this was our Group Policy. Thank you once again James

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it. I don't think I included the hotkey driver in the SCCM collection, in fact I didn't. It looks like the hotkeys just work out of the box with Windows.

Hi All, I am just wondering if there is a way I can stop students from disabling the touch-pads on a laptop? A lot of my time at the moment is with a cue of kids telling me their mouse doesn't work because the previous user has disabled the track pad. All of our laptops are ACER Travelmate P257 series, they have to press fn + f7 to disable/enable the touch-pad. I can't seem to see anything in the BIOS about this, the only option I found was to disable the touch-pad all together. The problem is, it's not as simple as just pressing fn + f7 to enable the touch-pad, for some reason I have to restart the laptop before it can be re-enabled again. I do belive this is because the laptops are not been shut down and instead the lids just closed. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated, I am wondering if there is a script or something I can do with group policy? Thank you in advance James

Thank you very much for providing me with this video, I followed it exactly and boom, I think its working! Will soon know when the task sequence has completed. I feel very dumb at the minute because SCCM is a new world to me, but it has really impressed me! Thank you once again James - - - Updated - - - Thank you for your reply. I will indeed keep note of this for more complex drivers, or machines that don't provide CAB files from the manufacturer, thank you for your advice Sir. Best regards James

Hi Guys, Just wondering if someone can point me in the right direction. Just started a new job at a secondary school that has SCCM, I have never used SCCM before and I completely new to this. I need to add a driver package to SCCM for some new machines the school has bought, however I am a little confused. Acer, provide there driver package as a .cab file (https://www.acer.com/sccm/), therefore I am unable to select "Import driver package" within SCCM as this requires a .zip file. So my question is, how do I import .cab files into SCCM? I know some of you are going to think this is a silly question, it's just not something I have had the pleasure of doing yet, and I need to get these computers built LOL. Thank you in advance! James

This post might be a little late, but I remember back when I managed CC4 seeing this more than once! The fix for us was to perform a Health Check on the Users. You can do this in the RMMC, I can't remember exactly because it has been a while, but something is telling me you right click on the container the User is in, and select Health Check. This compares the Users in AD with the ones in the CC4 database. You may have to delete the user from AD, and also remove the documents folder manually \\SERVER\RMStudentWork\Joe.Blogs and also \\SERVER\RMStudentProfiles\Joe Blogs.v2, v3 etc. Then when you run the health check it should remove the remains of the user in the CC4 database. Go ahead and then recreate the user in the RMMC. Its a bit of a pain, I had this at least once a week! Strangely with me though it was always when a user was not on the First Server because we had additional servers. Best regards James

Thank you for sharing this! I have just download TSGui now, definitely going to have a play! If this works, I could even implemented this on some of the bigger sites I look after, will save some time during machine building without having to really do anything manually.

Thank you. This is really useful, I am still learning the power of SCCM and different ways it can be used.

Hey Guys, Just after some input how you guys do your SCCM. Currently, a site I look after has a Task Sequence for each organisation unit in AD. Example, TS Name is "Deploy W10 - Student Laptops". The same task sequence exists for around 10 other OU's. Granted, this is only a small school, however I was wondering of getting this down to 1 main TS? I would like it if I could get SCCM to prompt for the OU location upon running the TS. I have managed to get a prompt for a Computer Name using the OSDComputerName value, would be nice to get a list populated of AD OU's. Or, do you guys do it manually? As in, join to the domain, and manually move the computer into the correct OU? Looking forward to the replies. James

It was indeed this!!! Ours is a hard drive, you could either run the titles from the drive itself, or copy them to a network share. I believe ours also had a root directory on it with the MSI installers, but Sherston used to say they could only be used with RM networks. I would really really appreciate it if you could have a look for me! Thank you

Thank you Witch. The mega bundle basically has every Sherston title, it was on offer to schools on saving money. Think it cost about £1000, came on a HDD with all of the titles.

Thank you so much for the reply. Just tried that link and at first it looked really promising! Sadly, the links seem to be dead and I couldn't download anything. I didn't realise how difficult this software would be to get hold of! I really wish I did a backup of the original media we had.

I would love to go for a port forward, but this all depends if I can get another public IP address from our ISP... at the moment we only have the 1. Its either that, or I wait until we move from Exchange to Office 365 and then I can use 443 for RDS. James

I had a feeling you was going to say this. Smoothwall support told me, I quote "Reverse proxy will work sometimes and not others"... the problem is I don't have more than 1 public IP address, so I can only port forward HTTPS to either the mail server or RDS. The mail server has been here for ages, I just wanted to introduce RDS recently.

Hi Guys, Just wondering how many people are successfully using Reverse Proxy within Smoothwall to use Remote Desktop Services and Exchange? I have it kind of working, and I can get to the correct pages for https://remote.mydomain.co.uk and https://mail.mydomain.co.uk. However, when using RDS, once the RDP file has been downloaded, it hangs on "Initiating remote connection". Has anyone had this issue before? I have the following rules setup in Smoothwall. External Address: https://remote.mydomain.co.uk - Internal Address: https://IPOFRRDSSERVER External Address: http://remote.mydomain.co.uk - Internal Address: http://IPOFRDSSERVER External Address: https://mail.mydomain.co.uk - Internal Address: https://IPOFMAILSERVER External Address: http://mail.mydomain.co.uk - Internal Address: http://IPOFMAILSERVER External Address: https://autodiscover.mydomain.co.uk - Internal Address: https://IPOFMAILSERVER I have both HTTP and HTTPS for HTTP redirection. Can anyone see anything wrong? Kind regards James

Hi Guys, I posted a similar thread about a month ago regarding getting MSI packages for the Sherston Mega Bundle, however I was unsuccessful with that. I would like to make my own, however I have just got around to doing this, and discovered our media is damaged so I can't actually use the software any more. I can get bits of it that may be still kicking around on old Staff Laptops locally, but the majority of the programs I have lost. I have tried to get in contact with Sherston, however I realised nobody answers their technical email anymore or the phone. Can anyone suggest anything as I am really stuck here! Best regards James

** BUMP ** Can anyone advise me?

Hi Guys, I apologise if this is in the wrong thread. I have just taken over a site that has SCCM. They have updates for Windows 10 Configured as it should be, however they use Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016, which has never been updated. I am a newbie myself to SCCM, and this got me thinking. I normally create computer collections for Windows Updates, I have various ones for Windows Server, Windows 7 and Windows 7 using a WMI query for the Windows NT version, example for Windows 10 I believe mine is Windows NT Workstation 10.0. How can I achieve this for Office 2016? Now, all machines get Office 2016 deployed to them when a machine is built via SCCM, could I maybe create a collection for Office 2016 and deploy the updates within SCCM to that collection? Maybe I am missing something here, like I said I am new to SCCM so I will look forward to the replies. Best regards James

Hi Chris and Everyone, Just as an update, I have managed to increase the performance slightly. I ended up installing VMware as a test over Hyper-V, and I was getting exactly near enough the same speeds as I was with Hyper-V, this told me that clearly there is an issue with the SAN itself. I managed to find the culprit (I think). The cache on the disk volume had a status of "Cache is enabled but currently suspended". Now, because the SAN I have was disconnected for a couple of years, the last battery recharge cycle said it was 2 years ago. I managed to find this command from here: https://www.dell.com/community/PowerVault/MD3620F-Cache-enabled-but-currently-suspended/td-p/5085397 which the command was "set storageArray learnCycleDate daysToNextLearnCycle=0;", this started a battery relearn cycle straight away. After 2 hours, the status changed to "cache enabled". Seem to be getting a solid 60MB inside my VM's now instead of 22MB. Still got stuff like Flow Control and Jumbo Frames to play with so maybe I can increase the performance. I have decided anyways I am probably going to stick with VMware, using this as a test made me realise how much I miss it. Just a big thank you to everyone's help and advice, I am probably going to leave this as closed now. Best regards James

Hi Chris, Thank you for this, just applied that command and rebooting the host now. Ah, well its interesting because the iSCSI network doesn't show at all in the Cluster Manager on both hosts. I never disabled the bindings you mentioned either, I will also do that. Best regards James