notsogenius

Wiltshire's a big place - can we be a little more specific on the location, otherwise it's applying on the chance it's commutable.

Hi there, We've always downloaded the suite as individual packages e.g Photoshop, Premiere Pro etc just so deployment is a little more granular. Looking at the screenshot your ZIP file doesn't look anywhere near big enough for Photoshop, i've not got round to the download recently but it's usually substantial. It's not something odd like you're out of space in the download location or something like that is it thats preventing the download? Try downloading to another location so to like a c:\temp directory or similar or even with another browser?

I've used home labs before - for slightly different circumstances for example whilst studying for my MCSE a few years ago (or a few more), AZ 800/801 more recently as some of the technologies are more on prem focused. On a different tangent I've got a fair old lab which I used for my CCNA. I've configured it up previously with an MDT install that allowed me to deploy a Windows server instance, throw on a few apps and patch it with some downloaded windows updates. The guide here on edugeek I found pretty useful for that setup. I've been meaning to update that so it uses MCM (MECM/SCCM) so it mirrors my workplace so I can use it for experimenting. I've used an old HP Z800 stuffed with ram and disks with a pair of hex xeons which was lovely for alot of the above but is definitely long in the tooth now (not even Win11 compatible). In hindsight I should have configured my home gaming PC with alot more RAM and more disk space which has tended to be my limitation with virtualization. I am lucky to an extent as I'm encouraged to tinker around in virtual machines at work (I run a Hyper V host to test bits on my own station at work) for varying uses - app deployment for example. With the above the only cost has been the hardware, i've generally used free eval copies of windows (definitely re-arming some servers a few times) I think as much as anything I'd have a think about where you really want your direction to be, say for example (and using some of my own circumstances as part of that) you wanted to work with some hybrid infrastructure, some of the Microsoft certs have a good path for stuff you should pick up (not saying all mind) so even if you're not looking to take the exam, following along with a course or two (udemy has some good ones - John Christopher has some good varying courses on there). Think about what you want to achieve and then go from there on how you'd go about it. Hope that's helpful - I tend to throw myself into a cert from time to time to give me some variety and because they align with my job I can justify some work time for that.

Apologies for the copy and paste from my thoughts on another post advertising a similar product (and for a little bit of abruptness). This sort of make do and mend attitude stops schools staying up to date - oh we can pay for another company to support it - well lets run it until Windows 11 expires (or until a Windows 11 bug/feature breaks it anyway). If a school doesn't have an immediate need to replace a product being eol'd (Windows 10) then they're going to have any number of other issues going forward. I have to ask just why? You're basically pushing the can down the road making it a problem for future you (or some other poor network manager finding this in a school they've just arrived in). As a CC4 customer (which the school i support is) you're gonna have to migrate away from it at some point so its time to face the music and get plans in place to do it. I know it's hard and budgets are tight but CC4 is rapidly reaching its end and getting support from a third party developing CC4 packs is frankly daft. You'll be paying money to support an outdated system and basically holding your school back from moving to a more modern solution. Time to close the CC4 loop - i know not everyone is a fan and that's OK. But considering this is such a bad idea.

Anything useful here ? - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/fundamentals/security-defaults

I wonder if this offering is to try and avoid the massive haemorrhaging of customers going away from CC4. I expect we'll look at it - we haven't locked into our plan post CC4 but it's poor how late in the day its come. We were badgering RM with what was going on prior to the summer and none of this 'development of a cutting-edge platform' was mentioned. Looking at the dates in their roadmap - It feels a little too late - given any remaining schools will be planning to migrate next summer (well maybe in the middle time if you're a small school i guess) it really doesn't give you time to make a decision - at least in favour of the 'cutting-edge platform' September 2024: Announcement of the platform launch date and features overview. - Lets just call this 'cutting-edge platform' - CC5... November 2024: Distribution of a sample installation schedule and commencement of customer scheduling. - I suspect migration to 'CC5' to be chaos if they're taking bookings in November.

I'd suggest in 'industry' you may not have an environment where the users are actively trying to mangle or change every possible setting available. Say for example I setup a system with Linux desktops on ancient hardware then departed for pastures new. What happens to the next person managing the system? Is it going to be straightforward to employ someone with that skillset? (I don't have the answer there) You also have to consider the users of the system - our staff. How many would be familiar with it? How much training time would be involved. How much does that all cost. How much development time is involved. I don't have a horse in the race so to speak - I work on a CC4 network (boo hiss). It's mostly about whats best for the school end of the day and running a random bespoke Linux system doesn't feel like it has much longevity at least in the environments I've seen over the years. Back on topic - I'd lean heavily towards Chrome OS Flex - I can't jump on the LTSC bandwagon (I wonder if Microsoft will slam on a big licensing cost at some point to force the point to stop the 'general' usage - I don't blame people for doing it though). I've used Chrome OS Flex on some pretty ancient devices with varying success. However the danger with that situation is you're encouraging a school to keep retaining old kit and showing them its 'OK' to do so. If a school wants a decent IT system it does require regular investment.

We used the Teamsbootstrapper.exe from here -https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-bulk-install-client with the -p switch which seems to be working well for us.

I found the update process for us stopped working after a period of time and then needed a new installer downloading. If you didn't update then the application would stop working after a period of time. We saw other issues if the graphics driver wasn't updated regularly (admittedly not a big deal mind) Then they introduced issues with the sign in screen which stopped sign ins. This was after all the initial issues we had with having to register accounts using headed paper etc (which I think we've finally got past). No support whatsoever from Autodesk. The solution to the sign in issue from an Autodesk help page is Reset and Repair fusion using their service utility - which funnily enough even after trying manually still didn't fix the issue. When it works I can definitely see the value of the application, but having no support from the provider combined with a program that is fussy to get working made it hard to justify the continued use of the on premise version. I won't go into detail on how messy the install seems to be. Good luck if you can run the manual install and keep it working - we have enough stations where its in use where manually running the install each time (and per update) would have been impractical (not a dig by the way - I found it fussy even when manually installing/working on it when we were trying to get it working ) We're using the web version now - which once the correct filtering rules were in place seems to be working OK.

Hi there, I'm not sure what RM will offer yet - we're in a similar boat and i'm waiting to see what they're going to offer our school. I think personally you've got a couple of core options 1 - Removing CC4 from your network but keeping the domain 2 - New domain - migration - either to cloud or retaining on prem - or a bit of both in some sort of hybrid setup. Every school is going to be different - I'm not 100% sure which way we'll go yet. I'd imagine there are plenty of known providers (I can't vouch for anyone personally) who'd be able to perform option 2 (you're basically asking them to setup a brand new domain and migrate your data across). Personally I'd swerve away from option 1 above as i think it could end up messy and if its not RM removing it you could end up with RM bits still hanging around. Best of luck!

I have to ask just why? You're basically pushing the can down the road making it a problem for future you (or some other poor network manager finding this in a school they've just arrived in). As a CC4 customer (which the school i support is) you're gonna have to migrate away from it at some point so its time to face the music and get plans in place to do it. I know it's hard and budgets are tight but CC4 is rapidly reaching its end and getting support from a third party developing CC4 packs is frankly daft. You'll be paying money to support an outdated system and basically holding your school back from moving to a more modern solution. Time to close the CC4 loop - i know not everyone is a fan and that's OK. But considering this is such a bad idea.

It's a P2 thing - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/microsoft-entra-pricing - under identity protection

How is the functionality on the web version in comparison? I've been tempted to push the browser version as an option but didn't know enough on how it compared.

At the risk of going off topic - i heard alot about the bad early times with CC4 - ours was pretty stable after patches - it did take a while to get to that stage though! My former role we swerved CC4 from CC3 and went Vanilla after hearing about the experience of other early adopters. Back on topic though - looking at replacements for the functionality of the Management Console - application deployment is one that stands out a bit - I know there are a few options out there like PDQ deploy, Group Policy is doable? Any that others would recommend? Something that shows installed applications within a single application would be a bonus.

I've found their support less than useless - we're using the free educational offering but generating the user accounts is painful for our D+T staff. I think if you generate a team you don't necessarily have to use it - I seem to recall doing it on my original setup and haven't done anything with it since. Can you just generate the team and basically ignore it afterwards? As an aside generally I've found when it doesn't work its either its out of date or the display drivers are out of date.

We had much the same conversation when we asked about Windows 11 support that it wouldn't be supported beyond the Windows 10 22H2 eol. We're planning to go vanilla in one form or another before the deadline. We did suspect something might be coming given that there haven't really been any CC4 upgrades in a while. I wonder if their Connect on Prem subscription didn't pick up like they hoped and they couldn't afford to support it. I've not seen any official announcements yet either which is odd but maybe they're hoping to get people signed on for a few more years of support even if the product isn't supported. It's a shame - I've worked with CC3 and then CC4 for a fair number of years now (and some vanilla networks on the side) but it has felt like the writing has been on the wall for a bit given RM seem to be pushing their Intune offerings. I won't miss the random CC4 bugs though! To answer the op - 1 - Is the general consensus still to start again with new DC(s) rather than try to remove CC4? - I think RM offer a CC4 removal service but I expect it'll be expensive. I suspect we'll be building a new domain as ours has been around since the CC3 days. 2 - What is the current best practice to build a school network? - I'd imagine it'd be some form of hybrid network, we're looking at options at the moment. I get the feeling that the cloud offerings are there but perhaps not as full featured as on prem (more experienced heads will be able to tell more than me!) 3 - What is the best way to build a PC? Depends on the above, on prem i'd imagine it'd be MDT/SCCM (I know MDT is unsupported with Win 11 and SCCM is MCM? MECM?) Or provisioning the device into Intune - again more experienced heads will know more. 4 - What is the best way to assign applications? Either deploying via Intune/cloud console or via local methods e.g Group policy or the myriad of other options

I think it's harsh to describe it as mickey mouse and a rubbish interface - it does work and whilst your experience may not have been the best it certainly works for some schools.

I've seen similar you, the process hits a certain point in the install and freezes. I just import the MSI from the Admin install into the RMMC and pop the install switches in - which used to always work. If I end the msiexec task it bombs the install out but I can't do that for every installation. Even though it looks to be installed correctly. Smart Support weren't particularly helpful as below after sending the Smart logs over to them - "It seems that the SMART software has finished installing although access to one or more Gallery folders is not working. Errors you are still seeing could be due to software conflicts between RM Management Console, Schannel and SMART software. SMART has no record of other schools, customer or our Channel Partners reporting issues with either RM Management Console or Schannel. There might be flags or warnings about SMART when using RM Management Console and you would want to follow advice from RM Management Console about what to do next" I would note the Gallery folder is in exactly the same place in the Smart install folder as it downloads in as part of the Admin install. I did wonder if there was a conflict in software somewhere along the lines. It's good (bad) to see someone else has similar. Have you raised it with them yourself?

We've been seeing similar to this recently with some HP 450 G8 laptops. Some of them have built totally fine others repeatedly fail at Joining the Domain. Only started happening over half term. Other machines dont appear to have been affected. I built 80 odd stations over the break and didn't see it on those.

Well the idea of the management console is to simplify the management side of things, hence the dumbed down comment. The RMMC works pretty well in my experience, which is the current CC4.5 version. I'd agree it used to be fairly poor, I know my first exposure to CC4 wasn't a great experience, but as a mature product it's not bad - although I appreciate there's a price point to that. I dont personally have a preference with or without. I'd also add that RM wouldn't normally recommend to do stuff through AD/Group Policy as that would break aspects of what the RM system does.

That'll be the one - i'm wondering why I didn't just provide a link now!

I'm not sure I quite agree with this statement. If you can work out stuff in the RM Management Console if you go down the Windows Server route (like I did!) then you can transfer the knowledge/skillset across. The concepts are mostly the same but just in a different packaging. I work on a CC4 network at one site and a Vanilla one at another. I'd say the CC4 network is just a dumbed down version of Windows Server. I'd also add - you also need to make sure you're bringing in the right solution for your school rather than for your career. Apologies if that seems a bit abrupt - genuinely not trying to start an argument!

I think Professor Messer(spelling?) does some good stuff for the Network + course on Youtube that would probably go into some good detail.

Am I too late?!?! Clearly not paying enough attention to sock related posts!

I go round most summers at my school and I find usb cables regularly that don't work even though they look immaculate. Although we've got wall boxes in the mix that sometimes get broken as well. First point of call for us is generally to replace the cable from wall box to laptop. We have had some issues with Ryzen HP laptops where the Smartboard wouldn't work correctly if the lead from board to socket and from socket to laptop was beyond a certain length. Presumably a power issue on the USB port themselves?