alttab

wouldn't have having hp laserjets actually made that side of things easier, what with the UPD ?

i'm not a pool trick shot afficianado, so maybe what he's doing can and is done by other top players, but i didn't think it was physically possible for the cue ball to pick up speed like that on some of those banana shots [sorry don't know the technical term], seriously impressed

i must say i'm a bit perplexed by the chromebook thing. they seem to be a bit inbetween, better than netbook boot time but not better than tablet instant-on. better than top android tablet w/keyboard pricing but not better on price than a lower end netbook functioning as a web and 'rdp client'. plus you don't have the option of falling back to using the device locally if working via rdp/ica isn't available, as you would with a netbook running xp or win7. although i guess anyone would be hard pushed to find any notebook with those key specs of screen size, weight, and battery life for less than £300 [assuming you ignore the other stuff about it not being an pentium/i3 running windows]. So maybe in that respect it has hit a price sweet spot for those with the right infrastructure to make it work for them.

I think it's gone end of life. Hence the recommended replacement would probably be an msm760 which with premium license required For redundancy possibly explains the increased price. I don't know whether the entry level Msm720 would be an option for the ap's being mentioned, or whether with add unite redundancy the price would still come to a few k, but the route to go down depends on how important it is to have more than one controller in this environment. Replacing with something that just 'works' with these ap's is probably not as expensive as the numbers being mentioned, the hp msm stuff is not by any stretch the most expensive kit out there

if you get more initiatives which drive/fund more of a 1:1 model [and we've had plenty of those over the years for them to have made some impact], in addition to students providing their own devices, and if those devices are good and robust enough for 99% of tasks then it's not so much standard equipment being freed up, but own devices becoming the standard equipment because of the flexibility. I'm not saying where anywhere near that stage at the moment across the board. But it doesn't take much of a leap of the imagination to think we'll get to that stage, particularly if it's something that's going to be more expected of people as they go forward into college and higher ed. to bring their own devices and what with smaller smartphone type devices being ubiquitous anyway.

businesses are doing it because employees aka consumers are doing it. you could say they are reacting, this isn't a case of schools copying what's happening in business. Anyone who works or studies in a school is a consumer also. if anything providing identikit locked-down ict suites or issuing locked down devices with the same OS and choice of applications but in a different form factor sounds like it could be more akin to the 'working drone' mentality, than accommodating folk who want to bring their own device.

the question is whether PC use in schools mirrors that of the growth of PC market in general, do you plan for extending the use of the PC desktop into other areas of the school significantly or do you renew what you already have and invest more in management and usage of BYO mobile devices or school provided tablets and notebooks. Repeat that for netbooks in trolleys, is that something that will grow as fast as it did a couple of years ago or does something else resembling more of a personal plus use of BYOD cover the areas where those would have been used previously. Most of the sales growth and innovation is happening in personal devices, and existing tools will be extended to cater for their usage. And new tools will be sought by IT to manage and integrate. It's here that investment in server-based computing and deployment software can cover a lot of bases by presenting apps and desktops across devices, while not completely taking over what is a personal device. Whether laptop, netbook, tablet or smartphone. So while BYOD will not totally replace the desktop pc, it could well at some point down the line relegate pc's and IT suites to niche use for only those situations where you need the grunt and screen size of a desktop. It might already be doing that in some schools.

the new bezel is very distinctive and looks very kewl. definitely matches the dell's in the looks' stakes now. stuffing the new 2U server with SSd's is going to be cost prohibitive, but it's good from a future proofing angle that the new servers are ssd capable out of the box. The 2u full with 16 traditional SAS drives could be an ideal solution for new deployments of the forthcoming Win8 server OS with the supposed use of local storage for hyper-v clusters. it'll really be a blurring of the lines between Servers + SANs for small deployments in my view. That's sort of already started with network RAID tools like the lefthand VSA. All the management goodies sound good, but the most important thing for any server vendor moving forwards in my view is tight integration with systems centre 2012 which should be a one-stop shop for server management rather than specific tools supplied with the different box shifters. The sheer number of options that seem to exist whether it's openmanage with dell, or the various deploy+manage options with hp and ibm, have always left me scratching my head.

yes, i too am quite surprised by that response. i can only guess that because further out to the edge you go the more your likely to find cheap and cheerful, cheaper to replace switches. But as you say, it still means serious disruption to those on that edge. the previous point about cost of keeping cisco spares, it's a fair point. They aren't cheap devices to keep in the stock cupboard, but then you pays your money (or in this case the msp did). That's what you get when you go cisco, not to mention some killer education discounts, or atleast used to be the case. The cost of maintaining spares and/or smartnet agreements is part and parcel. it's an extremely favourable position to be in to have that level of kit from core to edge.

sorry, i read it as you wanting to apply an acl(s) to a range of interfaces. thought it sounded a bit strange needing to apply ip acl's to 200 switch ports. should have read your first post properly.

the 3750E/G is a very useful switch to use as a core. Earlier 3750G's and later 3750E's can be intermixed in a redundant stack configuration although negotiating down to the slowest stack technology i think. Configuration is effectively shared among members as a new stack master would be promoted should there be that kind of failure....Would keep one or two spares of those for sure. Would also keep spares for the edge aswell, have used all of the models of switch you've mentioned and never had any reliability issues. The only think have had fail in seven years is a shortwave sfp gbic which died. It may be worth speaking to a cisco partner regarding what kind of hardware coverage they can provide for your inventory of cisco gear.

have a look at the int range command. should put a range of interfaces (either vlan, gigE, FE) from within config mode. if you have a range of none contiguous ports you may be able to use a comma to specify all the different ports you want to apply acl to in one command (although have not had a reason to use that before so don't know how well the latter works)

d-ring style cable managers are pretty good. always choose the right cable length for the job. and don't be afraid to move equipment around in the rack to get equipment in the optimal position, that's if you have the time to do that. if it's just a couple of switches then they can be put pretty much anywhere in the cab, but when your doing a complete server rack or heavily populated switch cabinet, equipment positioning takes quite a bit of planning beyond merely organising cables.

space and performance, and even the way some osx apps save, is the issue. not just space. it used to be that you could get away with on-the-fly access and editing of iMovie HD projects if you had gigabit to the desktop, link aggregated GigE ports on your server and a storage array with a few disks, but even then you had limits on how much you could scale that - i wouldn't want to have tried it with more 25 simultaneous users but then i understand iMovie projects changed in how they were saved in later versions, and so on-the-fly to a network location became difficult [probably unsupported] even for the entry level product, and that's before you even get to stuff like final cut or on the audio side logic where you'd need the performance of local disk. maybe some kind of out of hours copy of work is a better option than the syncing back of forth of data using mobile accounts during the day, if there is to be a lot of large media files. but then i'd guess you may have to look at what needs doing to ensure there isn't too much duplication of data with that approach.

what are the options available to those who haven't gone down the schools/EES licensing agreement, as far as getting Windows 7 Enterprise so as to try those 'Ent' specific features like DirectAccess ? Either in small scale deployments or a working evaluation.

yep, unique device naming would be the route to go down. the question is how would you go about ensuring pupils with iPads don't grab priority in connecting to an available atv ?

yep, very good advice. trouble is, not always possible to find even a double socket on a separate circuit in the tiny barely room to swing a cat 'server rooms' your sometimes allocated. in those situations i'd definitely make sure i had the runtime in the form of a slightly larger ups and appropriate usb/network shutdown tools in place. for primaries and smallish schools it's a case of needing protection of critical systems but not being able to afford high availability.

sounds like you'd be good with an APC smart-ups 1500. you might even get by with a 1000va depending on the rating of the PSU's and how hard those servers are worked. although you'd have little scope to add additional loads with a 1000va and three servers. form factor really doesn't make much difference unless you are that squeezed for space and have to go rack mount. the tower models use up very little space. Number of outlets isn't an issue, never plugged a device directly into the outlets of a UPS. always used a PDU the 1500Va model would give you the headroom to add another couple of devices. going with dual power supplies in your servers would actually reduce the load on the individual UPS if you were to plug one psu into the ups and the other into an unfiltered supply or secondary UPS.

the report was very comprehensive by all accounts, and with anything where it's mostly one person's word against another, it was concluded that evra was by far the more reliable witness. what went on with evra previously is irrelevant. the worst thing about this whole incident is how liverpool [in particular the manager] keep digging themselves a hole. Given liverpool are headed by a group with ample resources and experience in running a big sporting club, i'm amazed dalglish is still allowed in front of a microphone without a club solicitor or PR guy sitting next to him. Evidence this... Kenny Dalglish says nothing wrong with booing Patrice Evra | Mail Online where he describes the unseemly booing of patrice evra as 'banter'. keep digging kenny. contrast with the way ferguson has responded to the incident from the beginning, supporting his player and leaving it up to the player to decide what course of action to take without resorting to knee-jerk reactions over the reliability of an opposing teams' player. Ferguson and dalglish are of a similar generation and i would guess backgrounds, but only one has shown that he's a modern day football manager both in team building and on issues that spill out into the media.

The clever touch is a beautiful screen, but it weighs 85kg's!!! I'd rather go for a solution that can project that kind of size without it seeming like such a mission to plan and install. Hence, for me, the short throw would win out. Plus, the software tools that can be used with an iwb come interative projector like smart are well understood and mature.

maybe someone could clarify, but i thought such external connector licenses applied in situations where you wanted to give external users ie non-employees like customers, b2b partners, contractors and the like secure access to services that you intend to publish. NOT actual employees/staff of your org accessing services from outside the firewall, ie from home ? or does external in the case of the external connector license (whether in or out of the scope of this discussion regarding EES licensing) for rds literally mean access by ANY user accessing the service when accessible over the web i.e via some sort of SSL gateway or reverse proxy manner over the web, like when a sharepoint intranet or terminal services is made 'externally' available ?

MDM is a category of product. Usually able to manage the other main mobile OS'es in addition to idevices running iOS. There are loads of products out there now, some of the vendors come from the windows mobile and blackberry-centric world and have added the functionality for supporting android and ios [because obviously enterprise MDM predates iOS], some hosted in the cloud, but most seem to be licensed per device, per month. I don't really know how far the pricing comes down when you start talking large quantities for edu, but it's not exactly a cheap option to go down the enterprise MDM route.

there are examples of some schools doing one-to-one rollouts of ipads for all pupils and staff, whether these are in addition to existing client systems [and hence complimentary] or to replace exist desktops, laptops etc. i'm not sure. but there are certainly some examples of very substantial rollouts. As much as some people want to dismiss them, or keep a lid on the number of devices being purchased so as to relegate them to fad/niche and not have to think about them while they wait for windows 8 tablet vaporware, the rollouts are happening and SLt in schools do seem to be favouring them whatever the merits of the use cases. You already have a significant number of ipads in use. How are your users finding those in terms of accessing resources, connectivity, and from your point how have you overcome integration challenges. If you do imagine scaling up to hundreds of idevices, you'd have to argue the case for the type of rollout - how many shared, how many one-to-one devices and whether you can argue for significant investment in MDM and wireless to help you manage the whole shooting match. Enterprise grade MDM costs alone would probably exceed the cost of an all singing, all dancing wireless upgrade if your talking about 600 plus devices, and that wouldn't automatically be a one-off purchase either. What amazes me is despite the thousands of these things being rolled out, still no update on whether the UK is getting a Volume purchase program for the app store. i think it's desperately needed if schools are to have more control over how the devices are used, and if school IT support is going to be convinced from a deployment point of view.

i personally think the good news is that in that 5-year timescale, most if not all of what is put in from an infrastructure point of view is good for atleast that long if not considerably longer. I can't see a need for more than gigabit to the desktop, and 802.11n with MIMO does seem to do a good job in providing the higher wlan bandwidth to not reduce things to a crawl due to the shared medium. You'd hope that products and new technologies become more efficient for something like VDI to be a really killer app in five years, and not require more and more resources for which there isn't the money to implement. With the server side compenents hopefully able to do more with fewer processor cores, able to more efficiently use available WLAN bandwidth, but most importantly overall the cost of VDI does need to come down for it to be a more cost effective solution to PC referesh cycle or making do for 8 years rather than 5, with the now old hardware. If all that were true highly portable remote access of email and apps with days long battery life at current netbook prices could be the norm. i think the hardware will definitely get there, it's whether the licensing comes down sufficiently. so yes, i think the above is exactly where things are headed,.. might be also the justification for equipping and selling kit with the new 802.11ac wireless standard....the sheer proliferation of wireless devices that can be used anywhere around the school throughout the day, and not just for web surfing. Wireless vendors, thin client vendors, and others will have a vested interest in making sure this stuff works. It presents new sales opportunities that i don't think exist by targeting the traditional desktop refresh model.

My understanding is that a switch designed for 8gbps operation should be downward compatible with lower speed sfp's, my assumption is they just negotiate down to the lowest common speed in switch-to-host or switch-to-target connections. That was the case with 4/2/1 FC switches. although obviously best to consult the documentation for the fabric switch your looking at upgrading to. I'd be really surprised if the 4GB/s was the bottleneck, could be that you've got an entry level array and may need to think about upgrading to something a bit more midrange ? FC disks, more spindles etc.