Gongalong

Thanks localzuk, fixed it for our 64 bit 2008 R2 session host server

9 (specifically 9.0.8112.16421 on both PCs that I've got here to test). It's started to get muddied though, because I've just tested with an administrative account on the student network and emails are printing correctly. Could there be a setting somewhere for students and staff that's preventing the body text from appearing?

Hi folks, I've got an odd problem with Office 365. When printing emails from IE on our staff network all is fine. When printing emails from IE on our student network they are missing all the content (there's still a header and footer with page number and filename). I've tested printing to two different types of printers, and also to the Adobe PDF printer. The results are always the same. I've tested several PCs with the same results. I've removed Ranger on a test student PC and still get the same problem. I'm at a loss as to what could be causing it. Any ideas where I can start troubleshooting? TIA

We only keep 30 days, and all teachers are aware of that. Tough cheddar unfortunately if it goes beyond that. A pertinent item in El Reg about storing data in the Cloud, not that the ICO probably give any clear guidelines about what is required: ICO: Data blunders by your cloud provider still YOUR fault ? The Register

Are there any county or UK-wide requirements in terms of protecting student data? Whether SIMS, student coursework, or anything else? I'm a little surprised that there isn't some mandatory requirement... or perhaps I shouldn't be surprised On a similar level, are there any county or UK-wide requirements in terms of where data is stored off-site? I know some have already mentioned using a strong box at home. Good points about division of data. Student coursework is probably around 1TB. Teacher resources are probably several hundred MB. SIMS is tens of MB. We'd still be close to 2TB for the absolutely crucial stuff. My feeling is that the cheapest solution would be 3 rotating backups (2 kept offsite) keep on HDD, with the backups (no doubt slow) taken at the weekend.

What particular type of offsite backup though?

Do you store at home?

Good point! We have around 4TB.

Hi folks, Of the three classic offsite backup types what good and bad experiences do you have? What would you choose? 1. Tape. 2. HDD (if viable?). 3. Internet/Cloud. (Am I missing any?) Is it possible to store these at someone's home, or does it have to go somewhere secured? I'm guessing the latter for data protection reasons. Do you consider offsite backup a necessity with a school? Interested to hear your thoughts! TIA

Sophos wasn't that cheap for us, that I remember (ironically we renewed for 3 years a month or two ago). It was around £6k for 400 users for 3 years (£2k/yr). Aside from the recent issue it's been OK. For admins the key issue really is the ease of using the console, which for Sophos is OK. It could be more straightforward though, and if anything suffers from information overload. McAfee I would avoid like the plague. This is the one provided for us cheaply by CC. I'm relatively new here, and my predecessors opted to avoid. I've used G-DATA previously. Despite getting good scores in independent testing it missed viruses, so would also avoid like the plague. Also the console was less than brilliant. I've heard anecdotally that Forefront has at least missed a couple of viruses e.g. Conflicker, albeit an old virus.

Thanks. I did just that and all seems OK. That explains why some servers have the tools already and some don't. We had to use 2008 rather than R2 for SIMS, so hopefully this will improve the performance.

I've taken Sophos off the hosts for now because the BSODs continued. These hosts never get touched by anything other than running VMs, so virus infection is very unlikely.

Hi folks, Two questions relating to network adapters: 1. I have spotted our SIMS server is running on a legacy network adapter. Is replacing it a case of installing integration services, shutting down the server, adding a normal network adapter, and then removing the legacy adapter? 2. This Technet article ( How to Configure Network Adapters for a Virtual Machine ) refers to network optimisation, but I can't figure out what dialog it's referring to. I see no mention of this in the properties of a running or shut down VM. Anyone know where this is, or have things changed? (the article is 2009) TIA

Hi folks, Would running Sophos AV on a Hyper-V host be problematic? I installed this on Friday afternoon, and have had a handful of VMs BSODing on and off since. Event Viewer is not much help, just stating that the VMs became unresponsive. Only via the VM viewer did I spot the VMs BSODing. In any event I have uninstalled Sophos in case this isn't coincidence, but would like to know if it would cause an issue. TIA

Just adding in this case, as we don't restrict the desktop. I'll try the latter, thanks!

Hi folks, What's the best way to add desktop icons and favourites to an OU of users? I'd prefer to use a GPO rather than scripts, if possible. I've found an area of GP relating to the desktop, but it talks about adding "web content items". TIA

SNMP from iLO to the server itself all appears to be enabled (I didn't set the server up, and my knowledge is a bit spartan, hence I'm having to "reverse engineer" a lot of this). I spotted there was an issue with iLO coincidentally (a broken network cable) via the Insight Manager, so it appears to be working also. Email alerts still has me foxed though. Edit: Ah, spotted something! (via a bit of googling) Start > All Programs > HP Management Agents > Event Notifier Config. I'm just stepping through this now, but it's asking for SMTP servers etc.

Yes, we have access. The level of iLO we have has a number of things e.g. System Health, Server Power. I've just spotted it's described as "Standard license" in the overview page. We also have Insight on the servers, which monitors a number of things (including iLO, as the Management Module). I can't spot any email alerts there either though.

Any further detail as to where it is? I've had a look through everything I can think of, both on the iLO setup and the HP Insight Management, but no mention of email alerts I can spot (surprisingly!).

We can't enforce punishment, and the students need the filetypes available to do coursework. Frustrating, but that's what we're told. The problem is they are working on these files within their own home folders, and the file screen is individually folder specific. Even then they find workarounds e.g. we've locked EXE's down to a specific filename prefix, so they've just renamed the games with the prefix.

Intel, Samsung and Crucial are the makes I hear with the better reliability rates. Unless anyone's heard different?

Hi All, Is it possible to get email alerts from HP iLO? This is running on an HP ProLiant DL385 G7, although I don't know if iLO is essentially a separate piece of hardware (card) to the server itself. I also wonder if this is a licensing thing, so we may not have the license to do it. TIA

Hi folks, Just to warn anyone considering OCZ Octanes, we had over 30% fail in a batch of around 70 PCs we ordered. They've been replaced with OCZ Agility 4s, and we've already had two of those fail. A bit of Googling turns up that OCZ failure rates are some of the worst, if not the worst. H2H

Hi folks, Anyone know which area of Event Viewer the file screen events go to? Apparently they use an Event ID of 8215, but I can't see any in the security log. TIA

Thanks all for the replies. 1 & 2. We have Ranger, and can monitor for and block specific EXEs (if added), but it doesn't seem to help with files. 3. We have these implemented with Ranger. They are fairly large for Year 10 and 11 though, and I discovered when checking through current Year 11s and previous years that some even had a film in their directory! 4. Good idea. I'll try and press that home if I get pushed back on enforcing any policies. Ultimately teaching need comes first though - you know how it is. This is why EXEs and SWFs are unblocked, along with most AV formats. 5. One of the technicians here often suggests this :-D 1. we have via Ranger. 2. I'm not sure how to do, but sounds Linux-y. 3. We're stuck with unfortunately. Ah yes we use the free version, and also their other free tool UltraSearch. The latter is infinitely better for searching, even on a supposedly indexed file server. The problem is there are so many files (a) it's actually quite tricky to discern what's genuine and not and (b) it takes so long, I just don't have the time, even when things slow down. We've had a spate of Minecraft, which has been resolved via Ranger. I do feel sorry for them. Well, a bit :-D