Jamman960

I was the Network Manager for a while then pushed for a change to IT Infrastructure Manager which is essentially the same but with more strategy/projects involvement.

I imagine you could hire a decent fluke tester to do it, I’ve been tempted myself as I’m sure some of ours is a little ropey - found a cable joined with electrical tape a while ago!

I’ve not had a chance to try it but will give it a go on Monday, thanks for the heads up - could do without that kind of headache

We’re still using TSOHost for DNS despite no longer paying for hosting, they are also our registrar I’ve been meaning to switch though as they still don’t offer 2fa

To be honest it sounds like you should be looking at a couple of machines for what you're doing, one for day to day work and remote management and another for what I assume is a lab environment? I use a mid range laptop for my day to day work and then VM's on our VMware hosts to run other bits/testing etc

Thanks again for all your help today, I managed to get the ZD upgraded to 10.0 as it refused to upgrade earlier leaving our R610’s unsupported but as soon as 10.0 was on there everything kicked into action and all the R600’s provisioned and connected. I’m sure the R610’s will be sorted once I upgrade further or restart them.

Thanks again I've recieved the ZD and am having to reset each one, when I SSH into them the default login won't work - what would it be if they've connected to a ZD? I'm currently having to manually factory reset them

Ah thank you, would they swap it out with the licences in tact though? The "new" ZD will be on 9.12.3.0 while the faulty one is likely to have been on 10.4.1.0.214 Thanks for your help with this

Fingers crossed! the firmware version is lower than our existing ZD but from what I spotted earlier the AP's will auto downgrade? out of interest if I were to try upgrading the firmware without support would I run into issues if I already have the firmware files?

Thanks Net-Ctrl - We've ended up buying a replacement ZD3000 from ebay for now and are having it couriered across to us, unfortunately we're well out of our Ruckus support. Out of interest how much would Unleashed cost us? We're using R600 and R610's edit - thanks for the info on the virtual controller, I thought that was going to be too easy would have lasted us till August if it was 90 days and included enough AP licences

Hi all, Our Zone Director 1200 fell over on Saturday afternoon and I managed to get it back up and running that evening however it fell over again at midnight last night, I've come in for 6:30 to sort it but this time its not coming back up. Does anyone by any chance have a Zone Director I could purchase(with ~35 licences assigned ideally)? prepared to drive to collect It would normally boot up and beep but at the moment its just coming up with 2 solid green lights and the lan is on solid also Currently downloading the virtual smartzone image in the hopes I can get that up and running easily on a trial but not holdng my breath Kind regards James

We currently use fresh desk on the blossom paid plan but they’ve Since moved features we used into higher tiers, I really like fresh service but it’s not cheap, managengine service desk plus costs a lot less but isn’t quite as pretty/user friendly

I would have seriously considered Arbor if they supported independent schools, notably they don't offer Fee's billing

Cloud hosting prices will no doubt rise at some point to account for the rises, I imagine their margins aren't big enough to absorb the increase even if they wanted to.

You actually read the T&C's? it was all a blur to me

We really like the look of Engage, it has everything built into it and seems to surface relevant pupil data well via a newsfeed. One of the major things for me was reducing the reliance on 3rd party systems that has led to parents being given 4 different systems to use of which a couple of them are rarely used so they always forget the passwords, the parent portal gives parents the vast majority of things they could ever need from fee's to clubs and homework. iSams can do pretty much everything except the clubs/parents evening and trips as well as homework side of things. The admissions system offers a portal for applicants to submit data including supporting documents straight into the MIS along with the option to pay registration/deposit fee's as part of the forms - the registration form can be set to only allow submission once the payment has been made for instance. I was surprised by how much manual work goes into making our admissions processes work smoothly, our registrar said she was "Excited" after seeing what the new system could do for her. The end of year reporting looks great, staff can easily see the previous entries and assign grades as they enter the comments, its easy to jump straight into a tracking screen to see previous grades for that pupil, the output can include graphs and colour coding etc, iSams is equally as good at this I think. Emerge comes in 4/5 packs which contain all the modules, Schools will need at least 3 of the packs as they contain critical modules where as iSams is far more granular once you have the core pack, at the same time Emerge include training in the setup/migration costs which are fairly competitive. Once we've costed in the savings from the systems we'll be getting rid of the cost is very similar to our current Sims outlay. At this stage I'd be happy with iSams or Engage although Engage seems to be taking the lead in some areas, after a car crash of a presentation from ESS on how Sims Next Gen will be released in slices and eventually be as functional as their competitors already are I'd have trouble convincing our head to stick with Sims.

We're nearly at the end of our selection and testing process and are looking at going with iSams or Engage, We've just had ESS inform us that we won't be forced into a 3 year contract as apparently the norm for competitors in the State sector is 3 years while the norm in the Independent sector is 1 year (Think someone realised they hadn't bolted the stable door and hoped the horse was still inside!) We don't need to confirm our renewal until the end of June - are other independents in the same boat?

Sorry missed the Satellite in the title - can confirm that Nova can be licensed separately We're looking at moving to iSams or Engage, unfortunately Engage doesn't support Nova so we'll probably need to switch to Timetabler

You'll be able to use the satellite version of NT6, worth checking with ESS/Capita how much they want for future support/updates though I've got a meeting with a rep shortly and could do with knowing the same, will ask if I remember.

Event 4740 should list the computer that caused the lockout - are you getting these?

I'm currently evaluating ManageEngine OpManager, its working really well so far and includes pretty much everything I'd want inc event log, syslog monitoring - currently have it setup to alert me when a user gets locked out, it was a bit daunting at first but having labelled all of our switch ports its giving some useful information. Its not too expensive although I'm awaiting a final quote.

Its the project management side of this which makes it more difficult - we use Freshdesk on the blossom tier(~£360/yr for 2 techs) but this is purely ticketing, it does a fantastic job. I've been looking at managengine servicedesk plus but you end up looking at the enterprise edition when project management comes into it.

Apple tend to be pretty good with their service, in the past we've booked an appointment at the local "Genius Bar" and they've swapped the device after a brief inspection. If you've engraved them the process may be different though.

We’ve replaced ours with touch screens, I attempted to give a load away without any success, ended up loading up the weee collection with them

I’ve recently started buying 29” ultra wide screens, think they were £149 each Take up far less space on the desk