rom1984

Thanks for all the input people - DC, DNS & DHCP per school it is then!

Cheers Jaminben - so do you have the DNS server that is "on-site" set as the primary and then for the secondary do you just use another schools DNS? Was there any deciding factor that made you go for a read only DC?

Hi, I'm part of a trust of 3 primary schools and over the summer we are going to create one trust domain rather than each school having their own. 1 school is approx 500 pupils and the other two are 400 pupils each. I've planned that each school has a DC on site that is replicated over an IPSEC VPN. My question is, do you think it would be better to have a DHCP/DNS server installed at each site or would it be better to have the DNS/DHCP Server at one central school? I've got in my head that it will be better to have it installed at each school but I'm second guessing my self thinking having 3 DHCP/DNS servers would be overkill? One of the main caveats that the governors and SLT team have said is that an internet failure at the main school would not prevent another school from authenticating/accessing resources. Hope that makes sense!

Does the school have beefy servers and a Microsoft EES licence? If so ask your boss if you could set up a VM of Server 20XX and put SCCM on it - this is what I did at my last school. The school purchased SCCM for me as part of my personal development and through the EES it was dirt cheap, like £10-15 IIRC, I even offered to buy it myself at that price but the school offered. Set it up from scratch and that can be your experience you don't need to implement it into the live network if the NM doesn't want to. If you server resources are good then spin up a Win 7/8/10 client and start testing SCCM, create a install package and deploy it to your test client. Another tip i'd give, search for all the DNS & DHCP test commands (i.e dcdiag etc) and ask your NM if every week/month can you run the tests and report it to him every month. Search and learn for what your actual testing. My most valuable book for learning about networking was CCENT (1st part of the CCNA) , get that and you will learn the foundations of all networks. Download packet tracer or GNS3 for free and you can work through the configuration as if you was building a network from scratch.

I'd check the 2 DC that you want to remove don't have any FSMO roles on it (netdom query fsmo), if they don't then 5 seem's alot (pressuming an arrange secondary school size) so I would reduce down to 3. That's what my last secondary school had. What's the reason you want to pull the 2nd DC out of the cluster? When you say putting it on a hyper-v server I pressume you mean as a VM as having the DC role installed on the actual hyper-v host is not recommended. Cheers

It's basically a Cisco network emulator, I use it to practice configuring Cisco network devices. You basically upload a real Cisco IOS to it and you can then create network topologies as if they are a real network. I pop 3 routers on the GNS interface and configure them, then within VM Workstation I create a virtual network adapter and tell GNS3 to use that network adapter so I can create a test network that looks like my proper school network. Since writting this though I've started having problems with using 64 bit Server OS within VM workstation as the VM Workstation is sat on top of a hyerpvisor already. There was work around's but I ended up spending too long messing about fixing it that I eneded up just using an old server, installing server 2012 and installed VM Workstation and GNS3 on that and its worked perfectly.

When you say Sims (hosting) do you mean it is acting as the Sims Server or are you accessing a hosted version of Sims? How many pupils are on-site and how many members of staff access Sims?

When I said do you have a router on site, I meant does your office not have internet/WAN access? If so then there must be some kind of router that your LAN hits at some point to get WAN access? Could you look at configuring that as what Cisco call a router on a stick. If you put another router on the network you would need to config the existing router to have a static route to the "new router" so when it receives packets destined for your CCTV network it knows what router to fwd them to. I think it would just be more cost effective and less complicated to either configure the existing router to do the above or put a L3 switch in. (or replace the existing router with a cisco router all together if this would be compatible/cost effective for you and configure as a router on a stick) Unless anyone knows of another way?

Do you have a router on site that you can configure as a router on a stick? My understanding would be that you would not be able to access the VLAN that is separate from your main network unless you had a router configured as a "router on a stick" or L3 switches (or an additional network card configured on the same network as the CCTV to get local network connection)

Yeah I don't think it will let you delete the .log file with the printer spooler running. IF you delete the .log without clearing out the \spool\printer folder then it will quickly get back to the same size. It sounds like it's so big because there must be lots of big print jobs stuck in the printer spooler folder. I always though you could manually select the temp folder with disk cleanup but obviously wrong! I'm not 100% sure about swapping out the drives to rebuild the RAID (pressuming that's what you meant). Is this your admin server then? Do you have it virtuliased or is it just a physical server?

If you run a Windows Disk Cleanup I think you can select the temp folder and it will clean it up. If you stop your print spooler, you should be able to delete the networkwizardinsatller.log. Then clear out system32\spool\printer (this will delete any existing print jobs so check that is ok to do first). 136gb should be more than enough I'm pressuming your MIS is not installed on this server? I'd clear up the print spooler, cleanup the temp folder and install Treesize Free to see what else is taking up room.

I've done something similar but I used VMWAre Workstation Pro. I created a VM called Test-Lab and then on that VM installed VMWare Workstation. I then spun up 6-7 different machines and installed GNS3 and connected them together via GNS3. I did it as I'm merging 3 schools together so I had a test server + a client for each school each within its own subnet and used GNS3 routers to connect them. Nothing touches the production network and I can test everything from AD, DNS, DHCP, Routing, IP SEC VPN's etc etc

I use Lightspeed MDM and we pay £5.00 per device. We currently manager just over 300 iPads within a set of trust primary schools and I'm reasonably happy with it, I wouldn't move away from it.

I use Lightspeed MDM and we pay £5.00 per device. We currently manager just over 300 iPads within a set of trust primary schools and I'm reasonably happy with it, I wouldn't move away from it.

I was having some problems with a Cisco Router so had a google around to try and find a solution. Found a Cisco Forum thread and someone had posted a solution to a similar problem, tried it and boom it worked perfectly. Was going to register to say thank you but looked at the post date, 13 years ago he posted it! Yikes hope he's still working in IT Ps - I didn't actually know what a "Necrobump" was until I looked into it but its my new favorite word!

These are what I can think of that might use it... Scanning (access to shared drive where the scan saves) Backup (Backup Software) Text Messaging Services (Think this will just use a Sims account but worth a check) Staff swipe in software (As per text message service but if it uses Sims it might use the admin password to map your Sims directory) Any staff that log in as adminstrator (hopefully not but I've seen it before!) I can't see it effecting your client PC's unless you have some drives that are mapped that specifically use the admin credentails (i.e I've seen some schools map the Sims drive with the admin credentials or if a staff member has a stand alone laptop the admin might have been a bit lazy and authenticated a shared drive with the admin password for them. I'd give your admin staff the heads up, reset it, then check the the above. Then create indvidual accounts for them and document it.

When I started at my place the main thing that used the administrator credentials were the backup. I'd change the password then run a manual backup to see if it backups. If it fails then it uses the admin password. I'd then create a user in AD called backup then configure your backup to use that account. I do this with anything that needs admin credentials so its a good habit to get into. Cheers

Could you be a bit presumptuous and email the head saying that when the new policy/procedure is created on how to log safe guarding concerns could you include the fact that the school has a Sims link set up between CPOMs and the school which updates them with pupil information (i.e student names, contact details, safe guarding details etc) and that has been authorized by the head teacher due to the nature of the data. When we implemented CPOMS this is what we did and we included specifics things in the new policy such as CPOMS should only be accessed on school desktop PC, staff should use CPOMS to communicate about safe guarding issues and not email, it's staff responsible to log out of Sims etc etc. Other than that just send him a polite email double checking that you are Ok doing the Sims Link and put a brief explanation on what the "Sims Link" actually means.

Just out of curiosity why would you wait until the job is offered? I was siding with asking at the end of interview (if I'm invited) so when they come to the decision making on who gets it then at least they can factor in my request and decide for themselves? I'd be easily convinced otherwise though lol

Hi, I'm after some advice! I'm about to apply for a new job in a secondary school and if I am successful I would only be able to take it if I can a degree of flexible working - basically start at 9:30 one day a week and finish at 2:30 one day a week. This is what I do at my current employment and I just make up the time during the week. What I'm struggling with is when would be the best time to ask a potential future employer if this would be possible. I've thought of the following.. 1) Before I even apply just email and ask if this would be possible in the position. If it's out of the question I wouldn't want to waste there time submitting the application. I'm just unsure if this is proper "etiquette" and the right time to ask given then I haven't even submitted the application at that point. 2) At interview stage at the end, if I get an interview of course At least then they have seen me and if they like me then they can decide if I'm worth it. 3) If I'm successful and they offer the position, say it then so I have a little bargaining power. Any one have any thoughts or has been in the same situation?

Done!

I've had two schools that had this setup. One worked fine and the other didn't! With the school that did work you can set up multiple domains within Solus providing that the trust relationship was working. For the school that didn't work we just manually installed the agent and then Solus could see the client and we could then deploy Sims. In the end though, I merged the domains because of this problem and had just one "school" domain.

We paid £2,900 from Broadberry.co.uk which included a 3year on-site warranty. I'm not sure how much the other one was as it was already here when I arrived.

At one of my primary schools which is about 450 students we have the following... "Main Server"... 2 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2609 2.5Ghz 16GB RAM Server 2012 R2 200gb (RAID 1) for os and hypervisors 2TB data storage (of which 500gb is used) RAID 10 We have the following VM servers on that physical server.... DC01 (DHCP, DNS, ADDS) file server help desk (Linux) Foldr (Linux machine for external access of file server) Win 8 test machine Event Viewer consistently shows it uses about 50% of the memory and for CPU performance rarely goes about 10%. If I could go back the CPU is overkill for what I need. We have another secondary server that has he following spec Intel Xeon E5620 @ 2.4ghz (single) 8gb RAM Server 2012 250gb drive On this we have dc02 RDP server (4 people use for external Sims access) Event Viewer normally shows it uses about 80% memory and CPU can go upto 15-20%.

In fairness though they have been hidden and it sounds like alot of unnecessary time wasting went into getting them back. From the teachers point of view, they've spent the time planning to include the laptops, then probably spent a few minutes looking for them because they are not where they should be, then an email was sent around, then they needed to send someone to get them back. All this time should have been spent teaching and learning not looking for laptops. I don't think anyone would disagree with the TS point that laptops need to be secure, its more the way it's been gone about. It just comes across as a bit "underhand" which I'm sure wasn't the intention.