CAWJames

We have a hybrid coexistence: 2013/2016 on site and O365, we use Exchange Online Protection, which if I remember rightly has a nil cost. All our mail flows into O365, then scanned, then sent onto the on-prem setup and then outgoing email makes the same trip. Gets rid of most things, and has a quarantine section in the O365 admin center

What is your email system? Exchange or something else?

In this world of weird licensing, you buy either a standard license for lightly virtualised and datacenter for highly virtualised per server you want to cover, and you get all parts of the system center suite. We buy 1 datacenter per Virtual host, and a standard for each normal server we want to cover(mostly for DPM purposes). We use SCCM and SCDPM, and it's still a good price point on OVS-ES. Especially remote control of computers, dameware licenses begone! Also for AV if you don't want management and you have a OVS-ES cal pack, you are covered for non-SC managed endpoint protection, plenty of guides on the net to do it. We used to spend a small cars worth of money every few years to cover our computers with Symantec, not any more!! That saving paid for System Center with money to spare.

Jebus, nice! but $700!! Don't want that phone call, I've lost the big marker, can you get another!

That was an option that was poo-poo'ed but never actually tried due to people thinking it would be too dark or not good enough quality, but I think I may just test it, might be a simple solution, dual encode screen and camera, job done

Thanks for that, but I am not looking for a capture solution over all, we already use eStream. We are looking for a method of capturing live writing on the board, without selling a kidney

Morning all, Bit of a strange one(or not as the case may be) We are lecture capturing everything done on screen with an audio track(lecturer mic'ed up) and we now have the requirement that we also capture what goes on the whiteboard. I have tried the wii whiteboard solution, but it was deemed too techy for a lecturer to handle(calibrations etc). I then looked at interactive whiteboards and interactive projectors, but budget... Anyone come across any cost effective solutions to get content from board/projected screen to screen for porpoises of capturing? Thanks James

Morning all, As the title says, we still have some public folder calendars, and one of my users has just created a new one and wants all lecturers and managers to have it attached. Is there any powershell/other way to automagically attach these to the users who need it, or is it still the case of issuing instructions to find it and add it to favourites? Exchange 2013(on WS2012R2)/2016(on WS2016) coexistence, but most users still on Ex2013 mailboxes. Outlook 2010/2013/2016 mix on W7/W10 Thanks James

We use a software called Therefore marketed by Canon, a complete document/information management system. Everything is scanned via photocopiers to email or on personal desk scanners and then uploaded by category to the system for retrieval by anyone who needs it and has permission to view. It has workflows, web access and lots of funky stuff like OCR and barcode recognition on the scans. This is a commercial product and as such has quite a high price tag, but we have been using it whole business/college since it was called ADOS in the 2000's. For example we have a Student category where we can basically view any documents pertaining to a student by a global search, from application forms to change of circumstance or anything uploaded by admin or lecturers. As an IT person, I can access any invoices, warranties, correspondence for any of my suppliers going back to year dot. We also archive all pertinent emails into it too, for a complete student contact trail(again in the student category). Workflows are good too, for new user, you upload a doc or make a form, then send it to the workflow and it automatically at the alloted time, sends the IT team an email to create the user, then admin to create a student record, then once that's done, it emails to say badge needed and VLE access given. Each step of the workflow is claimed by a staff member then completed and processed before it moves on to the next workflow step. We also have similar workflows for approving invoices, expenses and anything else where we can remove an admin job to organise whatever the workflow is doing. Not for the faint of heart, but integrated into a "paperless"* office, amazing! James * by paperless, I mean paperfull of course, being an educational establishment.

OSTicket here osTicket :: Support Ticket System | osTicket been using it for ages, and works really well as a standalone helpdesk with AD integration

Have you thought about the Ikea LACK range as a rack solution? Perfect 19" wide and insanely configurable, I have the coffee table bolted to the wheeled cube, houses all my amps and hi- fi gear, also have one at work, which is 2 coffee tables foot to foot, so one base is on the floor, then some cheap castors from ToolStation, and I have a double height mobile rack for lesson capture (fitted it out with rack shelves) https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack oh and lots of colours too!

I can go one up on that, they shelved it half way between us deciding to buy and buying. They came cap in hand, apologising, and would we like to buy Citrix instead...

Afternoon all, Stuck at work, no students but we work a normal 9 to 5 So we have a new Dell 730XD sitting up at another centre. Dual E5-2620v4, 96GB RDIMM, 2 x 300GB 15K 12GB 2.5" SAS for OS and 6 x 2TB 7.2k 12GB 3.5" NLSAS. This is to replace our DR server which, while working great, has now hit its 7 year ProSupport deadline, so that is being re-purposed as a test VM host. I now have choices, obviously the 2 300GB will be RAID-1 for the OS, but what to do with the 6 2TB drives. This server, as meaty as it is, does nothing apart from host a single VM running DPM and only a off-site DPM replica system at that! It comes into its own when we are in a disaster situation and we need to get all the backed up VM's out of the DPM storage and get going again at the DR site. It will likely run Windows Server 2016 DC with Hyper-V. So, do I RAID-10 and get 6TB useable or even RAID-50 for 8TB as I don't really need a mirror as data is transient, then ReFS the lot? Or do I allow Windows to apply Storage Spaces to the raw drives and just do its thing? eek: What would you learned people suggest? Considering it lounges around using a mere soupcon of it's capacity most of the time, but needs to Spring into Action(obscure Topato reference)when needed. Thanks James

KMS all the way, we haven't used MAK's in years, apart from one off activations for testing purposes. Although for some products you now have to ask for the key for KMS activation, whereas you used to get it automatically

I looked at the EDU for PA, but found it was mostly app based and couldn't, for instance hook it into our sip system so a desk phone could connect to it.

If someone was running scripts and adding their own equipment to "my" network, I would be going ape and ripping it all out and making sure it went to the top that this can't happen. If he needs this kind of thing for work purposes, then he should be working with the IT department to find safe ways, in terms of network security for him to do this.

DPM is our go to for full backup of VM's and DR. Clustered at base, and a DR system offsite 120 miles away: We don't run SIMS, but the bulk of our servers are virtualized, massive project 5 years ago. We run 2 R710 hosts, that were originally standalone 2008R2, now they are clustered 2012R2, both with 140ish GB RAM and dual Xeons and connected to a Equallogic SAN with 21TB of which 14TB is useable. This is backed up by System Center DPM 2012R2 to a physical server with a PERC connected drive shelf, it backs up the complete VM's as well as drives and exchange mailboxes, this is then replicated to another VM running DPM 2012R2 on our DR Host at another site(over 100MB leased line), which is a single R710 with a PERC connected drive-shelf(8TB in a JBOD of 2TB drives) and 70GB of RAM. This does nothing 99% of the time apart from running the single DPM VM. In the case of a DR scenario, we can instruct DPM to restore the VM's in storage to an alternate location, the VM host at the DR site, and then bring them back up, so we can keep going. We decided we could survive for a day, so we dismissed expensive redundant leased lines and instant failover solutions. Taking restore time into account, actually our email and MIS and critical servers will be restored in half a day, but if we had truly gone dark at HQ, finding somewhere else to perch will take longer! We test this, once every 6 months, where we restore the servers to a sandbox(isolated VM network basically) along with a basic DC, and haven't had any problems yet, email, MIS, moodle etc all useable once restored and IP's changed. In a real situation, we would also have to take DNS into account and swap IP's to the new site(we have 30 statics on our leased line at each end). I have a shiny new R730XD with 12TB of storage sitting at the DR site ready to replace the R710 there, as it now past the 7 year ProSupport limit. Just need to find time to visit and build it up. Not very expensive either

Evening(or rather morning ) all, We are trialing some router and access point hardware where the AP needs an untagged vlan for management and a tagged vlan for each SSID. On the main switch, which is a Cisco Small Business 300, I have the port connected to the router interface designated for wlan with untagged 47 and tagged 8 and 10, and AP's connected to this switch once the port is PVID for 47 and tagged for 8 and 10 works fine, then it gets strange(ish). We then have a 1920 HP switch LACP'ed to the SB300, with tagged 8,10,47 on the interface each side(both BAGG and LACP trunk set to trunk). I have plugged an AP into the HP and set the port to be hybrid PVID 47, untagged 47 and tagged 8 and 10. I would have thought this should do it, but nothing happens and the AP doesn't connect back. Am I missing something here, I tried setting the port on the HP to trunk and still nothing? Any guru's of the inter-manufacturer vlan magic shed any light on this? I wouldn't have thought it was a problem on the AP's side, rather a foible of the connection between switches. Thanks James

We blanket ban it from all staff and students on our systems, the only access is for marketing. No policy apart from it being the word of the principal...

With our eStream, we subscribed for a year to make sure it would fit our needs, then bought it out right with a discount in the second year, and now just pay maintenance, but haven't been told of any price rises, and they are usually very good at letting people know about any changes.

I only use it for the attachment drop down, its the only stand out feature for me!

It sounds like that is what you have achieved, but without a console you won't be able to go any further

I think this is the problem, from the manual 3.1 In the factory default configuration, the switch has no IP (Internet Protocol) address and subnet mask, and no passwords. In this state, it can be managed only through a direct console connection. To manage the switch through inband (networked) access, you should configure the switch with an IP address and subnet mask compatible with your network. Also, you should configure a Manager password to control access privileges from the console and web browser interface. Other parameters in the Switch Setup screen can be left at their default settings or you can configure them with values you enter.

Follow the factory reset, if thats what you want, but it will clear all, and depending on the switch, I know some don't have a web gui until you specifically go in and set one, which means without a working console connection, you effectively have a dumb switch until you can connect. Also be aware if you have VLANS and everything suddenly can connect on the one flat lan, DHCP may go mad, depending on what is connected and how they are set up.

have you been into device manager and checked it is actually COM1? Can you download Putty and use the serial connection on that? What cable are you using? Is it the proper HP one, not all serial cables are the same..