Kineas

Thanks for your response. I've just tried blocking the 172 IP range on a server with Windows firewall, as doing this on each of our servers would suit our needs. However, I'm still able to ping and browse shared files on the server. Any ideas about this?

I'm looking at creating a guest wireless network that allows guests to connect their devices, as well as staff members phones etc to get access to the internet but restricted from everything else. We currently have 4x Netgear WNDAP360's in standalone mode. I've initially created another profile with a guest SSID and password set. I've noticed there's an option for "Wireless Client Security Separation" which Netgear's website explains is: Enabling this does indeed stop wireless clients communicating with each other, however they are still able to access network resources. I've noticed however that with this enabled, the wireless clients get an IP of 172.16.16.*, rather than getting a 192.168.*.* address from DHCP. I assume the point does some routing so that the 2 separate networks talk to each other? I did notice this feature is explained differently for a different model of access point from Netgear: So I'm to presume it doesn't work the way I want it to on my model. Is there anyway I can utilise the 172 addresses to prevent them accessing resources? Or would this also prevent internet access? My points do support VLAN's, and I'm able to set a different VLAN in the guest profile, I'm just not sure what I need to do on the switches for this.

Solved. Thanks for the help.

I've got a TP-Link TL-WA901ND access point used to connect a single computer to the network for use in the school kitchen separate from our HP managed wireless system. It's setup using POE, it uses WPA/WPA2 Personal. Initially it will connect and work fine. However, after the wireless point has been running for a while and the DHCP lease expires, when it tries to connect, it just shows "No Internet Secured" and has a self-assigned IP address. This also happens for other devices that try to connect. If I connect it to the main school wireless network, it works straight away. The only way to get it to work is to reset the point. I've tried a few things, such as changing the channel and security type, but it's always the same outcome. There's no walls in between the point and the computer, nor anything in the kitchen that would affect the wireless signal such as a microwave etc. This laptop is owned by the catering supplier, so they won't provide me with any administrator passwords for it so I can't set a static IP locally, which does allow it to work on my laptop when the issue arises. I've tried setting a reservation in DHCP but doesn't get it assigned because it's not reaching it. If there was anything major, I'm guessing it wouldn't work at all? Rather than working, and then randomly stop allowing it to talk to DHCP until a restart.

Google Drive (or equivalent) is definitely the easiest way for staff to get their photos off. Just install the app, they log into it and they can upload whatever they want and then access it from their PC's. If you don't have Google Drive, you get unlimited storage capacity for an educational establishment. If I ever need to get photos off, I use Image Capture on OSX.

You can download a Microsoft Server OS free trial, think it's for 30 days. Definitely get it setup at home, only thing you won't be able to do is run Hyper-V as this needs a server grade processor to run, that is if you plan on installing it on a spare PC. Doing this is all well and good, but you need to have additional computers to add to the domain you create, whether these are virtual or physical.

I have this exact same setup. Depending on the size of your backup, it may be easier to just backup to a share on the NAS. If it's a big backup, then definitely a VHD to allow incremental backups that run quicker. Only problem I have with this setup is that I have to manually delete old backups every few weeks, usually it manages space itself and deletes old backups to make room for new ones, but it seems it needs minimum amount of space on the VHD to perform this which some backups run and don't leave it with.

Just make sure you push it out to the entire domain and ensure that all policies that set the proxy to enabled are definitely removed.

I had this problem when moving internet providers. I removed all of the policies that applied the proxy settings, but they were still on the workstations. I solved it by pushing out a registry value with group policy that disables the proxy. User Config > Preferences > Registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings Then set the value of ProxyEnable with a REGDWORD to 00000000

I'm using an AMD Radeon HD 5450 graphics card, which has DVI-I, VGA and HDMI: I've purchased a DVI-I to VGA adapter: When using the adapter with a standard VGA cable into my monitor, I don't get anything. When using the HDMI or VGA ports, they work fine. I'm tempted to just blame the adapter and buy another, but I want to narrow it down before that so I know it's definitely the cause.

I just install the drivers for printers manually, and then use WGM to set the users to connect to the printers by IP address. Never had a problem.

Rise Vision! Free if you avoid their file storage and use your own. Uses a Chrome plugin, so it works on any device that can install Google Chrome.

Thanks for that! I don't intend to presume that every secondary school is the same, hoping for someone to give me an insight and expect a secondary school I could potentially go to would be the same. I can see that a larger school may operate the exact same as a smaller school fundamentally but a school who prioritize IT higher may spend more to introduce more/improved hardware to create a "better" environment and those who think less of it and have everything running slowly off a single server. Not having experience in a larger network, I'm just wondering what there may be that I haven't experienced in a smaller network. Multiple domain controllers? VLANS?

I have only ever worked in primary schools and due to this, I feel I haven't been exposed to or had experience in areas that may be a requirement if I was to ever apply for a position in a larger environment such as a secondary school. So currently I work with 1 physical server running 2 virtual servers, a domain controller that has also has all the different roles, DHCP, DNS, file and print server; and a SIMS server. All workstations and printers are connected to a single cabinet and everything works great. The main differences I can foresee are the amount of users and workstations so instead of having a single server running all the roles, to have separate servers for print server, AD, DHCP etc to accommodate the increased requests. Using an IP address that supports the required amount of devices. Having a wireless network on a bigger scale. Potential separate buildings being linked with fibre. An increased amount of files required to be backed up. Requiring cloning solution other than clonezilla and a USB hard drive that operates over the network (such as FOG). Can anyone share any wisdom with this? Or am I just overthinking it

Our licensing is already in place. We have licenses for 2 Windows servers, as we currently have 2 physical servers. I have checked with our supplier who informed me that each license allows 2 virtual servers. I could replace the drives with larger ones, but that requires purchasing them whereas I have everything in place for the virtual servers, I just need to do the process of converting.

Well the documentation on HP's website for the SIMS server is dated 2007. The DC was of a similar age, but before I started my position here, they were advised to replace it and had the LA do all the work. I have spoke with the LA and they have said they didn't setup the server to host 2 virtuals, the DC and SIMS server, and instead just made a new DC as this would have been additional cost which the school opted out of. Now I'm in a position where I'm trying to implement a solution for the SIMS server before the current one decides to die.

Just double checked and the SIMS server is running 2x 72GB HDD's, set up with RAID 1. And yes, 52GB RAM on the DC.

The reason behind it is because the DC has a 1TB HDD, the SIMS server has a 60GB HDD with about 4GB free at the moment. Yes I could just create a vm of the SIMS server and run it on the DC, but the LA installed Server 2008 R2 Standard on the DC so out of the 52GB RAM installed, only 32GB is usable. My plan was to install Server 2012 to run both as virtual servers so I'd then be able to use all the RAM and expand the SIMS server HDD.

I'm in the planning process of converting our 2 physical servers to virtual servers. The problem I'm having is that the server the server I plan to use as the host is one of the 2 current physical servers and is also the domain controller. Once I have created the vhd, I need to store it somewhere until I've wiped the server and installed the new OS. I'm feeling a bit nervous about having the vhd potentially stored on a USB hard drive while this is done. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

Just another update for anyone with a similar problem. I found somewhere online that spoke about running processes and handles. If a process is using more than 5000 handles to investigate it. I found there was some Yahoo Search software installed, for some reason, and was using 15000 handles. I've uninstalled this and I'll continue to monitor the server.

Thanks for that, I have downloaded the driver and waiting until the end of the day to restart the server. I did a little more digging and something did turn up in the Event Viewer. There is an error with event ID 2020 occurring every minute over a period of 24 hours over the weekend leading up to yesterday morning. I've had a quick Google and found a hot fix for this but it's for Server 2003, but I'm running Server 2008. I also had a look and what this error means, and it may be affecting the graphics driver when it occurs.

Came into school today to discover that none of the computers could access anything on the network. Had a quick look to discover that none of them had been assigned an IP address from DHCP. Had a look at the DC, which was turned on, but had some weird graphical glitches on the logon screen. When tying in the username and password box, the cursor moved across but I couldn't see any text. Tried logging in anyway but it kept bringing me back to the logon screen with the same issue. I decided to force the server to restart. It booted up, did a CHKDSK which was fine and then booted up fine and everything is now working. I've had a look in the Event Viewer but I can't see anything that stands out and I'm not too sure what to Google for this.

We are currently running Lightspeed Rocket for our filtering. This requires a small piece of software installed on each computer that can track what user is currently logged in so that it can apply the correct filtering policy and also link the user to any entries in the reports. As far as I'm aware, there is no OSX version of this software so our 30+ Macs all go through a default filtering policy. In the filtering reports, the only information I get about these computers is their IP address. Obviously if something flags up on a report I'll get the IP address of the computer in question and the date and time, but I need to link that to the user that was on the computer at the time. Our DHCP is set to lease an address for 24 hours. Is there a log or any software to keep a log what computers were assigned what IP addresses over the last 7 days? I don't need to look at the previous 7 days from now, I just need something in place going forward.

I have a user trying to use Clip Art at the moment, shocking I know. When she's searching for something in clip art it's showing a mixture of results both from Bing and pictures that are saved locally. When she uses a local picture, it inserts fine. When she's trying to use an online picture, it doesn't insert. Instead of displaying the image, it just inserts what appears to be an icon of a html file displaying the icon of whatever the default internet browser is, in this case Google Chrome. I have tried right clicking on the online picture to make it available offline and it's still the same.

How do I check whether the database is full?