CAWJames

Hmm yes, I did see that, and it was still clear as mud, it says "they must purchase a user CAL", then says we purchase the CAL or buy an external connector. So do we FTE count for student CAL's, or really one per physical student, or do they pick one up at Tesco? I assume external connector is the way to go, but does that cover all devices connecting, and is it hellishly expensive as it sounds? Thanks James

Morning all, Still trying to get my head around RDS licencing after playing with a simple setup. I have set up a couple of virtuals one with RD Web Access and RD Gateway in the DMZ, pin holed it back to the LAN so it can be domain joined and then set up the rest of the roles on another virtual in the LAN connected to our 2012R2 Hyper-V cluster. I have then setup a pooled W10 virtual collection, and it works very well just opening 3391 and 443 in the firewall. Now the question, we licence the enterprise desktop in EES, and from what I can work out we need FTE for RDS/TS licenses to cover the connection to the server, we are going to use normal OEM licenced desktops for client connection, so I don't think we need VDA for them, but what is the best way to license for student devices on-premise, ie if a student wants to use their ipad to get a VM? Do we need an external connector or do we need a VDA for that device, or does the student need a VDA as it wouldn't be organisation owned(can of worms springs to mind, "for your course, you need to pay our fee, then the royal college fees, oh and don't forget to contact a microsoft rep to get your VDA licence!!")? If its EC vs VDA, what's the best option? and what does an EC cover in this scenario? If we go with this, we would be looking at 2 pretty hefty servers, one in our HQ and one at another centre to load balance and DR over a 100MB line, multiple procs, 256GB of RAM, dual Grid cards for RemoteFX, fully SSD, etc as we need video to work(or are we beating a worn drum with this and its never going to work?) Apparently Server 2016 updates RDS quite a way, anyone tried it yet on the technical preview? I am trying to find an alternative to paying for a very expensive extra broker(Citrix,VMWare, etc) and putting the money in hardware instead, and EES and a flat MS RDVH approach could work for us. It's not about the cost savings(if any)that this type of VDI would give us, but the extra benefits like for our homeworkers to be able to work on something local rather than SSL VPN, and the ease of updating the template for updates. And if I can strip out fees and licences we don't need, then all the better. Sorry for all the background to go with a basic question, but it all helps! Thanks James

Evening all, We are evaluating VDI solutions, and I am currently looking at 2012R2 RDS. It does everything I want it to do, apart from SfB Online, no camera passthrough and sound leaves a lot to the imagination. There is a Lync/SfB plugin that apparently works with SfB on-prem, bit not for Online. Anyone in the same boat, and have come up with a solution for this? We use SfB quite a lot these days and it is a deal breaker If I can go RDS, then a lot of cost on licensing(Citrix, etc) is not needed, and I can put my budget to sh*t hot hardware and just need TS licences on our EES(VDA should be covered as we are going to use our licenced desktops as thin clients) All help appreciated? Thanks James

I have started using the Remote Desktop Connection Manager, and while not as shiny as the "metro" app, I do like it, thanks for the recommendation

Does RemoteInstall already exist? maybe with old files? I would remove the DP completely, confirm all pertinent folders are deleted, then once all removed as shown in the logs, recreate it and see what happens.

check your user for the DP, you may need a stated user rather than just SYSTEM, make sure it has permissions for the DP. and make the computer account an admin on the DP, then as @glen_j says untick the pxe option, then wait for it uninstall, watch the distmgr log, then tick it again.

I know, but I like the metro one just that it now doesn't seem to multitask between sessions which was the standout feature for me

Hi all, Loved the old Remote desktop App, being able to jump between multiple windows and generally make my RD experience much more fluid. I now have the updated version, and I have to disconnect each RD session and open a new one and log back in each time The blurb states it should still multi-task between sessions, but I can't find any option to do this now, just disconnect. Is there a new swipy thing or key stroke? Any insight or help appreciated, its amazing how little things make our lives a little easier James

Win 10 and Office 2016 for us when we refresh the student's PC's, also default ClassicShell in Win 7 mode. Big shiny boxes in the start menu may overload the helpdesk Personally, the button in Outlook for attaching files to emails that remembers the files you have been working on, is my standout feature

Morning all, I am thinking about setting up RADIUS for a)our Wifi with a captive portal and b) so I can also have a portal on the PC's for anyone who doesn't pass SSO to authenticate before they use the internet. Now the rub, We keep all our student's login details in an MS SQL database, usernames, hashes etc, so no student AD. Is there anyway something like FreeRADIUS can look up those details in the MS SQL DB and authenticate? I realise the password hash may be a can of worms, but need to see if this idea is a goer before I start looking more into it Don't know much about RADIUS, so asking for your learned help Thanks James

Woo hoo, powershell. Hammer that Check for Updates button

Ubiquiti nanostation M5 bridge, a couple of hundred for 2 units, including cable We use it here to connect a storage unit to our main building, never fails even with waving branches. Been up with no maintenance 3 years now

Yes, we have student accounts in O365, but all our staff accounts are on prem. This seems to affect those mailboxes on the Ex2010 server. So I suppose the solution is move everyone to 2013 and decommission the 2010! Flow is from FOPE to the 2013 box and then on to the 2010 via the connectors Thanks James

Nope, flow is O365 FOPE to Ex2013 and then on via connectors to Ex2010

Afternoon all, We run in a coexistence hybrid, single 2010, single 2013 server and O365 All works very well, but occasionally we get the error in the title, for internal mail. Any insight into this? I can't see any problems, apart from the system just juggling the email between servers! Thanks James

Hi Steve, I didn't they would, we are upgrading middle of next year when our subs are out on the main boxes, but as you say not yet, and we aren't buying at the moment! I have pfsense on one of the WG's actually, I had a play about with it ages ago, might dig it out and see if it has enough to keep us going. thanks for jogging my memory! James

Evening all, I need to swap around 2 of my Sonicwalls, as we have upgraded a line and the NSA2400 will now be more suited to our new 100 and the TZ215 more to the 20. So the problem is, these are a few hundred miles apart, so not feasible to unplug one and rush to the other site and back as we would lose a site for a day. I have some old firewalls, a couple of watchguards and a TZ210, so I could bring one of them into service for a week so we can get everything done, but we have the full security package, and obviously the old firewalls are out of their original subs. I know there are trials available for some services, but does anyone know if I can get a trial for all services to keep me going for a week, on these old boxes? I did think about knocking up a smoothwall to keep things going, but that's time and finding an extra network card to fit in a computer, finding space to put it, hoping its reliable, etc, but then this idea came into my head! Any ideas people? Thanks James

Same for me on a windows 10 new build, works fine from command line, just hangs the task sequence when used as an app in the workflow Might just have to install it manually and capture it

I do the PS scripting, she does the SQL I mean by passwords in that if we export the accounts manually out of O365 and into AD, won't that reset all the passwords?

What is this SIMS you speak of? we use a bespoke web based system written by our IT Development manager, she has some mad skills! But good idea though, didn't realise O365/AD Connect SMTP matched, that makes thing a lot easier Not sure about passwords though?

We already script all our students to auto add them to O365 as users, so that can be adjusted to auto add them to AD, so going forward its not too bad. What I dont want to do is start with fresh accounts, the students use them, so whatever method I use to move them has to keep their accounts intact and keep them linked to AD, if that makes sense? Export sounds like creating new accounts. Thanks

Afternoon all, We have all our staff in AD synced with O365, and all our student just in O365. Is there anyway to sync the students into AD, say into OU by a property with their course code? Thanks James

We made them ourselves, and I used the linux release station included with PaperCut on a kiosked Raspbian. Although I have since found out that they have an image for this already, you just need to request it from support.

We have 10 Ricoh copier on the normal version of PaperCut, but our release stations are RaspberryPi's and touchscreen units next to the copiers. Ok it doesn't track the photocopying, but it has saved us a truckload in just having the release stations. We have the normal 500 user licence for edu and 9 release station licences(you get one with the original licence, so 10). We also have it across 4 geographic sites, from the one central server(and one print server at each site). Love the name and shame reports, for high usage, people really think twice before they print

Current licensing, is Windows Standard server gives your rights to 2 VM's, if you only run hyper-v services on the host(as soon as you run other stuff on it, you will lose the right to run the second VM). Having said that that limit applies to Windows Server VM's, so you can run as many little linuxy ones as you want on Standard. Datacenter on the other hand will allow you to run as many VM's as the proc's and memory allow, the sky's the limit! We run a 2 node cluster with 170ish GB of RAM and dual Xeons on both. with a PS6000 Equallogic SAN with 14TB useable. We run around 30 production VM's and they are stable and saves us a packet in having physical servers