Zorba

Hello All. I have read here that some of you are already doing this, so what am I doing wrong? When I associate a SIMS user with their AD account all looks fine. But when I try and save the changes I get an error message unable to find user joe.bloggs (eg). Any help greatly appreciated.

Sorry guys, but can anyone help?

bump

Hi Guys, I am setting up my second school website using the old Edugeek Joomla 1.5 with Rokwebify template (Thankyou SYSMAN). Can anyone tell me how I change the bullet colour for the latest news module. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for all the replies. The more I read it seems that scaling 2010 to provide 1700 mailboxes is just not cost effective. Has anyone out there achieved what I want to do on a schools budget without breaking the bank?

Thanks Steve. Would you min sharing you server spec (complete) and number of mailboxes and cost. I am wondering if I am better of installing 2003/2007.

Thanks for the replies guys. If you have implemented Exchange 2010 I would be interested in your server specs and how you licensed. I would really like to host this ourselves as I think it is important to maintain our skillset and if we outsourced everything it really would be a dull job (see BSF)

Evening All, At my last school I implemented Exchange 2003 and it transformed the way we worked. I am now in a new post and am looking to deploy exchange there too. School is a large secondary and with students, staff and community will be looking at approx 1700 mailboxes. Sorry but I have several questions: 1. Licensing. How have you licensed. I was looking at schools agreement and have been told I need connector license for students to access mail from home. How have you done it? 2. I am considering virtualising. What route have you gone and how much has this cost? What sort of hardware spec have you deployed? 3. Live@edu. Would take all the fun out of it, but would I be doing the school a dis-service by not implemnting this free solution? Would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks Grumbledook for taking the time to write such a long post. You are absolutely right, however with BSF around the corner I do not expect SLT to do much to address the problem and much as it pains me I think I may start looking for work elsewhere.

We used Liberum also but moved to Spiceworks. It could definately be quicker but we no find it invaluable.

Thanks for taking the time to reply everyone. I guess I knew most of the answers already but nice to have a vent and get others views. Just need to bite the bullet and practice saying Nnnn Nnnnn Nnnn oh bu99er.

Hi somabc, PC's are locked down tighter than a gnats chuff. I think we are just too helpful and I should say no more often. We end up burning CD's downloading photos off staff cameras setting up projectors in rooms due to timetable c$%&ups at the last minute etc. We log eveyrthing no matter how trivial so we have a record on the help desk. We have one teacher who will raise 3 tickets minimum every day, title "PC not working". It will invaribly be switched off at the mains or some little darling will have unplugged the network cable, but no matter how many times we show her how to remedy these simple things she just refuses to do it herself. I am sure you have all got one of these. On of the issue we do have is staff laptops on which we were forced to give admin rights, the agreement being that we could bill staff £30.00 to put right any fault that had been caused by them downloading virus/trojan etc by using P2P software or questionable surfing habits. Yet to have a bill payed and they wont let us remove admin rights. Roll on BSF!

Hi TMCD35, We use Spiceworks for our helpdesk and works well. I have mentioned although not officially (CPD not good here) that we are stretched. A lot of issues we have are supporting staff both teachers and admin. Many staff are in need of training but we don't have the time and many just are not interested anyway as it is much easier to ask us to do it. Why do schools employ people in admin who do not have basic computer skills? Feeling a bit disaffected and un-appreciated. Not sure what to say to line manager as money is tight and last year there were redundancies. I do not want to sound like I am whining although when I read this post back I am whining!

Hi All, I am an NM in a smallish secondary school 750 students. I have been in post coming up to 3 years. When I arrived we were running one server. I have very quickly expanded on this and we now have two DC's, File Server, Exchange Server, Web Server (Centos 5 , Edugeek Joomla pack thankyou), Reporting Server (TeAM), ISA Server, VLE (Centos 5 & StudyWiz). We run PCE, WSUS and EPO and have now Virtualised SIMS. We have 75 student laptops approx 100 staff laptops and 360 curriculim desktops and 20 admin machines. Until last year I had 1 Tech (muppet) who we have now replaced with an excellent chap. I go to work each day and feel like I am drowning.When I think about all the things I should be doing regarding documentation etc I realise I am not cutting the mustard. There just never seems to be the time to sit down and plan and document. We need a server we install it, plan to document and it never happens. It now feels like I am more technician than NM and the two of us seem to be running round firefighting, assisting in classrooms, repairing vandalised kit etc. We constantly have approx 40 tickets on the helpdesk and just never reach the bottom of the pile before we get another 40. I end up doing things like the web site and server updates etc from home where I can concentrate and work without interruption. I am just not enjoying it like I used to and am feeling rather stressed which results in me being tetchy and sometimes abrupt with staff when they come to me with more trivia. I know I am not alone in having such a small team. So how do you cope? PS The reason I have the time to do this is I have the day off today as I have annual leave to use as I always seem to have projects on in the school holidays. First thing I did when I got up this morning was update the web site!

Hi, After successfully deploying the agent to workstations SIMS still does not install. When checking the log file on the client machine (see below) we get an error on the digital signature check. This is the third version of the SIMSInfrastructureSetup.EXE we have tried. Does anyone have any ideas? 2009-11-30 16:10:26.1805|Error|CheckSetupSignature(): Digital signature failure for SIMSInfrastructureSetup 2009-11-30 16:10:26.1805|Warn|runSetups(): Installer failed digital signature check: SIMSInfrastructureSetup.EXE 2009-11-30 16:10:26.1805|Info|Check(): Update check complete