CAWJames

Well learn by doing! Seems Broadcom proprietary SLB/Failover doesn't work but LACP does! 4 crossovers, LACP team with 9000 jumbo frames, all working fine and dandy in 4Gbps just need to see if it works as the heartbeat/LiveMigration network. Thanks for the input James

Hi all, We are in the process of clustering our 2 Hyper-v hosts, and have found ourselves with 4 NICS(5709c Quad port Dell cards) on each host for Live Migration/Heartbeat. I am planning to use simple crossover cables for the connection between them, but am I able to team 4 crossover cables using BACS, and then 2012r2 teaming when we upgrade? or doesn't it work without a switch to LACP/LAG? Any insight would be good? Thanks James

Ok, after some exhaustive searching it seems that I can cluster the 2 as is via SCVMM 2012R2, and then make each VM highly available as and when, by migrating them to the CSV and then tagging them as such in the MMC console. And by all account I should be able to do this live, with 2012R2. Happy days! I have also found that 12 1Gbe ports per server is not enough for our needs, so each host will have 16 1Gbe ports!! What is the world coming to, dual processor, 144MB of RAM and 16Gbe ethernet!! Thanks James

Hi all, We have been running 2 Dell R710's as standalone virtual hosts for a few years now with a PS6100 with 14TB capacity in the back. I now want to upgrade them to 2012R2 and cluster them together. Currently they only have 1 proc and 40GB each and are full with their own VM's. I have now ordered 27 8GB sticks( ) to take each server to 144GB and a processor for each. So that takes care of hardware, enough to hold all the VM's on 1 node, so I can service the host. I plan to in-place upgrade each server, so down all the VM's, then standard disk setup to 2012R2, and then install the integrations on each VM,I believe this is a supported way of doing it. That will give me 2 standalone 2012R2 hyper-v hosts. So what is the best way to cluster with production VM's? We do use VMM 2012R2, is that the best way? Is it as easy as shutting all VM's down and running the wizard, or should I be super protective of the VM's? I will have SAN replicas/backups of the VM volumes, but do I need to make a massive volume and select shared and then call it a CSV and move all the VM's into that? I am not sure if CSV is a necessity or I can still use my volumes? I do want CSV to make growing VM's easier, as its an a*** in a fixed size volume! There are also a couple of VM's in local storage(mainly as they are test servers and don't warrant me making a volume. Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks James

Xmas sprirt arrives on Monday in a big van, usually red with big picture of Al emblazoned on the side

I suppose I'm in, even if it is still technically November and therefore not a month with Christmas in it

In a nutshell, there is now only 8.1 and 8.1 pro, both are eligible! As is nearly every oem licence back to 98, and any Apple licence too. Not sure if that means free bootcamp on intel macs though, or strictly one or tother

False alarm, found a version: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/4/3/9439A928-A0D1-44C2-A099-26A59AE0543B/Windows_8-1_Licensing_Guide.pdf

Afternoon all, Have MS published a new 101 for 8.1 licencing, so we know what operating systems are eligible for academic upgrade? I can only find the old one with Windows 7. Thanks James

What model NEC is it? They are usually card based systems, and will need a corresponding digital port in the cabinet. We have just ripped one out, and I taught myself how to program it(and have a room full of phones, cards, cabs etc!) James

We run AD for our staff, but our students are kept in a bespoke admin database with an SQL backend, which Moodle talks to for their login, as Moodle is the only service we currently offer them.

I think my directors response went something like, "They want how much?", and then "Per year????". So is CS6.5 still available in a student edition in licencing or box form? Obviously still hopefully at the discounted prices Thanks James

Yes it is MS SQL. Probably outside my scripting expertise!!

Nope and Nope! We have a web based admin system that we have built in house, with logon coordinated between our admin and moodle sites. So all students have a 6 digit "Moodle" number and their own password, this is kept in SQL 2008 This is always our problem when we want to use "off the shelf"! Everyone assumes we either user Sims or AD!

Hi all, We use O365 for staff members, mainly for Lync as we have Exchange on-prem. We are toying with the idea of giving all our students email addresses in O365 and as an extension that will allow them Office 2013 Proper, as we licence the desktop for FTE. (Got to love end of month IT meetings!) What options do we have for student import, considering, and here is the kicker, we keep them all in a nice bespoke SQL database and not in any proprietary MS software such as AD. We would like it to be an automatic user add, but we know this probably isn't feasible, so maybe a batch import once a month or so. Any genius scripts out there or DirSync alternatives for non-AD? Any help appreciated, Thanks James

Its not the VPN per say, its more auth problems to the online-archive via Office 2010, when off-site. Seems to be ok when archive and mailbox are both in the cloud, but it falls over when they are in 2 different places, probably something to do with email address authentication for O365 and localdomain\ credentials for Exchange. Not the end of the world, but things seem to be better when it is all in one place! Thanks James

Hi all, Banging my head against the wall on this one! We have on-premise mailboxes and some of those have their archive in the cloud through our hybrid deployment. I want to move some of these archives back into on-prem, due to a few problems with authentication when people are over the VPN. How do i do this? I can get the Remote Remove request for the person in the EMC>Office365>Recipient Configuration>Mail Contact but all the options for where to put the archive in the on-prem are greyed out? I don't want to just do it and then find the archive is lost in the ether, and support needed to retrieve it! Is it even possible, or do I have to export all archive mail to pst and then kill the cloud archive and create a new local one? although this would be time costly! any help appreciated, Thanks James

How are you licensed? Through EES or normal licencing? Or is just a downgrade on the sticker? If so, then as I understand, you install Windows 7 Pro with any working activation code, then you ring the activation helpline and do a manual activation. We used to find a Windows 7 machine with a sticker and just use that for each downgrade. It is a faff, and they don't seem to have any mechanism for ordering downgrade medium or codes, as I said above they told me to use existing discs and codes! Of course if you are licenced then you just use the codes and medium from the VLSC Hope that helps James

Our environment is much like this with SQL and Exchange virtualised. While you don't "need" Datacenter licenses to virtualise, you only get rights to 1 VM and a multi-use host, or 2VM's and a host only allowed to be a hypervisor. You can stack up Standard licenses though, so 2 Standards will give you rights for 4 processors, 4 VM's and a hypervisor host, and so on. A Datacenter license is 2 processor and unlimited VM's, so you would stack Standards until it became cost effective to buy a DC license, all depends on how many processors in your server and how many VM's you intend to run on it. With your setup, a single license of either will cover your 2 processors, so would be just down to amount of VM's We then pay a server licence for SQL, and the same for Exchange, as these aren't FTE, just per server. OVSE SQL Server Standard Licence 1Yr AP and OVSE Exchange Server Standard Licence 1Yr AP respectively. This works just as if you had physical servers. In terms of CALs we pay on FTE for SQL Device CAL's(OVSE SQL Server Device CAL 1Yr FTE) and the Exchange CAL is included in the Desktop Education Pack(OVSE Desktop Education Pack Ent CAL 1Yr FTE) Hope that makes sense! James

What he said

We purchase windows client by FTE, but windows server by server. Each 2012 standard licence covers 2 processors and 2 virtual instances, and if you have both virtuals running, the host OS can only be a hypervisor, no other roles, so 2 VM's and host not doing much, or 1 VM and a host that can do things! DC is not much different in that it is 1 licence per 2 processors like standard but allows unlimited VM's, obviously limited by your hardware. Licences can be stacked, ie if you need to cover more processors, or want more VM's, although for the price of the DataCenter version on EES, we just covered our hosts with 3 DC licences! You should be covered by FTE count if you licence the desktop for all CAL's And your choice of Standard or DC depends on VM use really. Hope that helps, we went through it the last couple of years, and mostly have my head around it! James

Check your 32bit and 64bit drivers, I agree. With our Ricohs, I make sure I have one of each type for each model. Then I put them through the driver editor to add pin code pop-ups, default to B&W double sided. Then I add them to 2008R2 with the 64bit and explicity choose the 32bit I adjusted. Then I deploy them with AD. As long as I follow each one methodically, and make sure I have each driver ready and don't let it auto download, haven't had a problem with 9 MPC's James

Evening all, We have been quite happily running 2 separate Dell R710 single proc, 48GB RAM hosts connected to a PS Equallogic unit, 6110, 24TB RAW. This has been fine and runs well, until we have to update one of the hosts, then downtime has to be arranged, and as happened this afternoon, it took ages for one to update the HIT kit, so downtime went from half an hour to an hour. So I think the time has come to cluster, so we can live migrate all the virtuals to one host while we do updates, and then the other way around to update the other. So extra proc per server and whack them up to 96GB of RAM and that the host sorted, but the SAN is a different kettle of fish: We currently run each VM in its own volume, which I don't think is any good for live migration(we run SCVMM 2012R2) or is it? So best practices please, do I put all the VM's back onto local storage, then blitz the SAN to one big CSV or do I create a small CSV and grow it as I add each VM to it? or stay as I am and give both hosts access to each volume, and let the cluster do its thing? What is the best way of tackling this, I can't be the first to want to move from volume based to shared VM's? Any help appreciated, Thanks James

Evening all, I am currently planning our wireless networks, as in placement, when it struck me I hadn't really thought about 2.4 vs 5Ghz, so I adjusted my plans to be half the AP's serving 5Ghz client and the other half 2.4Ghz, staggering them around, so areas have equal of both. But then I had another thought, wouldn't it be better to put more 5Ghz AP's in high use zones and only a few 2.4 here and there to cover those legacy devices still about Does anyone actually know what the general breakdown is these days for equipment having 5Ghz or not? I mean it must be quite high now, apart from the odd iPhone 4 and behind, all iPads are 5Ghz capable and laptops have had the kit in them for years now. I could be wrong, but in theory I shouldn't see much 2.4Ghz traffic at all, well as long as the device prioritizes to the better frequency of course! So 8 AP's, 3 2.4Ghz and 5 5Ghz, methinks and watch the associations and then help desk calls for lack of wireless! There was a question in there somewhere! Thanks James

All sorted and I am one happy bunny. All I had to do was issue the "no vlan dot1Q tag native" on the 3750 and then change the VLAN state on the ProCurve for VLAN1 from tagged on the uplink to untagged. Now I have 4 SP's happily provisioning and working on multiple SSID's, now for the other 4, then the other 32 around the centres! Thanks for all the help, and I now know my way around SonicPoints, so consider me a mind of information in getting these working with ProCurves, Cisco Catalysts and Cisco small business!! James