bossman

@john: Thats the reason why I ditched our last ISP for one with flexibility and that was BT so we can go up in stages of 10mb a time.

@elsiegee40: Ooh! Err! Missus! I have just re-read what I have written and...............well it could have a double meaning but only if you have a mind to be thinking like that in the first place, its not like you @elsiegee40? Must be something in the water.......................or have you been reading those books..................what are they called now................."50 shades of grey" Mmmmm!

@witch: I always like my portions of a size I can manage without over stretching myself, I always like to fulfil my needs and that of others with a portion that suits that persons requirements don't you think?

@witch: hehe! no not really just a red hot blooded male hoping that some lovely lady will take pity on him Are you taking up that mantle? How are you this fine evening?

@laserblazer: Nice but would prefer nudewoman clock, not that I am being sexist but would find it much better to look at from my own point of view.

@Edu-IT: The more you put out to the cloud the larger your bandwith requirements and that is why I have kept everything in house for the moment.

If they were doing the above then I would expect to lose my job for being totally incompetent and actively encouraging the students and staff to break the law.

We host all our own services which include: e-mail Remote access Website VLE Run Youtube througout 350 clients and over the past 4 years have never been above 6mb so we run 10mb on a 100mb bearer for future proofing. We don't have voip as yet, all our phones are still analog but looking to go down the soft phone option in the near future, this may mean an increase in bandwith but will measure this beforehand. I would think 40mb is fine for what you require.

@gmj: Wish I had seen this post when first put out but missed it, I had the very same problem but solved it by just manually copying the patch1.cab off the disc and into the already created package and then imported via the RMMC as CC3 package worked like a charm. Pleased you got sorted though

It is really painful believe me, used to suffer from this every weekend after Wigan Casino all nighters, 8 hours of non stop northern soul dancing would leave me in agony once home in bed when the muscles used to relax. I have very large calf muscles and this still happens to this day after five-a-side football sometimes.

@SimpleSi: I totally agree with what you have stated in you recent post and if you are happy to do this as a respected member of the staff and all is above board then I don't think anyone would disagree with you, the things that get most people's backs up are when they are asked to do things at a time when they are most vunerable and that is usually when they are tired from working 60 - 70 hour weeks trying to keep systems running 24/7/365 with very little preventative maintenance windows to work in and SLT putting more and more on top of an already overloaded team without any due recognision of that teams effort and remuneraton. We all go to work for money to pay for our lifestyles and from what I read on here some people are below the poverty line and this is not fair when they work hard and have a good skillset with which schools sometimes exploit for their own benefit and to the benefit of just a few, performance pay for Teachers and SLT members is far more than for support staff believe me we all agree on this I feel. Just to be treat as other professional people within the school would be a step in the right direction but so often you hear that support staff are part of a two tier system within education and until we are recognised as having a unique skillset and that we are professionals in our own right then this kind of thing is going to carry on. A fair day's pay for a fair day's work has always been my working ethos and I would do anything for anyone within reason to help the teaching and learning within our school because let's face it, we all feel very passionate about our school and where it stands within the community don't we? I think I have put my side across without stating that its being a jobsworth which couldn't be further from the truth as many people on here will tell you. Thanks for listening or not as the case may be

@speckytecky: Printer is networked and mapped to all the computers in the exam room and at a certain time of the exam it is turned on to allow immediate printing of the exam material.

@john: I have a defined user template which has no internet access and can only run the required software for the exam as for spell checker I have reg keys which disable this which I can allocate out to the ICT suites which are being used for the exams. Defined user gets no access to any drives except their own work area which they can only access when they log on and these workareas are cleared after every exam. 1.25m between exam users and no use of USB drives or anything else for that matter except the computer they are accessing. We can add and detract apps from this defined user template as we see fit and it has served us well, good old RM MMC for ya John worth every penny

@SimpleSi: @CESIL: Please don't take my post the wrong way, I am in no way condemming what you do for the school what I am condemming is the way in which the schools use and abuse their position by utilising your skills and re-embursing via a lower wage scale instead of regarding what you and other technical people do in a proper teaching manner and have the decency to pay you the going rate for teaching as if they were paying a fully qualified teacher. I have a technician who at this moment has not turned his hand to any technical IT work in over 6 weeks due to the fact that part of his role is PR using his skills with Adobe Indesign to promote our school, he does the application work and an ex teacher does the wording on a contract basis being paid by the hour. What has clearly been defined is the huge difference in pay scale for this, the technician gets his rate of pay according to his payscale and the ex teacher gets his according to the going rate which is approx 4 times my technicians rate and he does all the application work photo taking etc etc even down to utilising the printing off on our reprographics machine. This in turn creates a vacuum which my other technician has to fill with my help also on jobs that he has to move up. This means that I sometimes cannot fulfil my job role which impacts wholeschool on both students and staff which they sharp let me know about. Schools will and do put on their technical staff as they see fit and don't often see the conscequences of what they implement as they usually have no idea about what it takes to keep all the services running sweetly 24/7/365, basically they have a knee jerk reaction to anything that they see as their priorities without thoughts of what impact it may have on the wholeschool. Educators do not necessarily make the best managers and leaders in schools and that is why proper business managers of a very high calibre are often sought after by large academies rather than headteachers as they understand leadership and management far better.

@googlemad: Have a look on here Home | Adder Technology We have had an 8 port with usb support for over 2 years and it just works perfectly, depends on what you define as cheap though.

Having run on 3 different RM systems over 10 years I find it always comes down to the initial commisioning of the servers and also the network switching and backbone setup. RMCC2.4: Full of backdoor holes for the students to climb through. RMCC3: Brand new install worked extremely well and logon times were quick lasted 8 years RMCC4.2: Fresh install on our own hardware, again very quick logon times, actually quicker than our CC3 fractionally. As with Vanilla networks it all depends on the initial setup and how the network switching and backbone is configured. I would definately hassle your managed service provider to get their finger out as it is not fit for purpose giving them examples, they have a duty to sort out under their SLA and there will be KPI's attached to this which will cost should they fail to meet them.

@john: Which boxes do you find hard to tick where workstations are concerned may I ask?

Done!

I feel that there are 2 sides to this, 1. is that the school requires teaching of IT and not ICT and the difference is that, 2. a teacher can and will teach ICT as it is quite a lot easier than teaching pure IT which involves coding and networking etc which most teachers cannot seem to grasp and that is why they turn to the people who not only manage the systems on the cheap but will also teach the students on the cheap. It would only happen in the education sector as ever the SLT do not understand the mechanics required and how the process works, we run a homework which really is a cheap form of childcare so that the teachers can have their lunch in peace not that it matters whether the technical staff get theirs. Its really a one way system and those of us who embrace the teaching of students especially those who have it timetabled should change their profession to that of teacher and let someone else have the job of technical staff. I really don't understand why the SLT at most schools still don't understand the difference between technical help and actually doing other professionals job's for them. If this sounds a little bitter then please understand that we as technical staff should only do what is deemed technical and not teaching young students or doing teachers work for them, like creating powerpoints and the like because they are too lazy to learn for themselves. They always come with the same old story that they don't have enough time or they don't know how to do it, b*lls**t it's because they are lazy elitist's who think it's their right to lumber technical staff with their work. I also realise that their are decent teachers who do work hard and learn about using applications for themselves but I find as the years have gone on that these type of teachers are getting less and less prevolent. Anyway if I have upset anyone by these remarks.......................................tough!!! get over yourself as I am totally right in what I say and the more that people let schools get away with the more our profession is going to be diluted and made trivial by the very people who request your help every day of the week.

@danboid: hehe! RedHat is your tool of choice then, they like MS have a walled garden do they not and they too can tie you into services if they feel that way inclined. Yes I do like Xenserver but then some like VMWare and Hyper-V alomg with many others and there choice is built on their preferences like so many others on here, there is never a solid one choice for all and that is what makes the choosing so difficult in cases of this kind. I admire your thinking in going forward and as you have been using Linux since 96 then I, like you, would definately stick to what you know best, good luck with your choice, no doubt that there will be another open source hypervisor to compare as there seems to be plenty out there.

@danboid: As your opposed to using IE then perhaps this maybe of interest if you consider XenServer: http://www.xvpsource.org/ Then you can be comfy in your totally closed view of the computing world according to unix Xenserver might not seem so much of a joke then

@danboid: Been running Xenserver 5.6 for around a year and a half with a mixture of linux and MS server types, 64bit 2008 plus SQL 2008 for our MIS system. To date I have only had to reboot the hosts (3 of them in a pool with HA) when I upgraded from version 5.0 to 5.6, their uptime at the present is getting close to 400 days and to be quite frank it just works. Reasons for choosing Xenserver was principly on the cost and then the extra's which to date have only cost us £400 per host and these include the HA and when I next upgrade to version 6 it will allow me to schedule VM snapshots automatically so I will not require a third party backup system. Performance tools and dynamic allocation of memory etc etc is free and as for connections to SAN storage it couldn't be simpler especially with the SUN now (Oracle)SAN's. As for the CLi interface this can be used to many of the day to day stuff plus more powerful configs if required, I am a total newbie in essence to your skills with Linux and the CLi but I would definately consider Xenserver above the others even KVM with it's CLi interface. That's just my penny's worth for what it is worth, good luck in your decision.

Wow! the staffing structure looks pretty, Seems like everyone is more than ordinary, just wondering where on earth the ICT manager would fit in amongst such an able bodied crew, Are there any ordinary day to day teaching staff at the school? Just an interest in Academy structure is all.

Look at it from a different perspective I was 26 by the time I could afford a car which was then 10 years old and needed lots of work done which cost me more than the car was worth. I then moved on to an even older car when I was 28 which cost me £200 quid but lasted me another 2 years until I decided to get a bank loan for 6k which after I had paid it off (nearly 8k) the car was worth a little over 2k and then some dumb sh*t pinched it and I only just got my 2k back. A good friend of mine once told me that the only car he would buy was one that had a years MOT and Tax and that he wouldn't pay any more than £200 quid for it. I look back on that with a kind of realisation that he alway's had a different car every year and they were all top models although old and in all the years I knew him he never had car trouble. Morale of the tale is........................................ITS ONLY A BL**DY CAR don't lose any sleep over it believe me its not worth it, there is more things in life to get wound up about.

@techie211: Have you set the cisco switches on static IP's and have you been into the setup express via your web browser and configured the smartports? As default STP is configured on all ports so it may have something to do with this as to why ports are constantly up then down. Its just a thought