mattianuk

We have them, no complaints

I can understand that logic, but was always told that its best to keep a physical DC, has this changed with 2012? As my main school is a 2008r2 failover cluster, with both the physical hosts being DCs

Hi Im taking over some primaries, doing new domains etc with new server hardware as they are massively behind (one doesn't even have a domain) I am going down the route of having the physical server just being a PDC and HyperV Host. I do windows server backups of the bare metal states, and so back up the AD that way. However, I am wondering if it is worth virtualising a DC - in the hope that if the physical server was to fail, my VEEAM backups of all VMs, including the BDC VM could be restored to an alternative server with ease and, because the BDC would exist, the entire network could then be brought back up quickly and easily on a plain server OS with no links to the domain?

We are moving from GroupCall to Intouch for communications - I have a couple of questions I hope someone can answer, probably quicker then the call I have logged with capita 1) What do we have to set on student contacts to get intouch to text the priority 1 contacts mobile? GroupCall appears to always select priority 1 mobile contact, but the numbers of contacts it reports are a lot more then Intouch is reporting back with - it also informs us that some contacts have no contact method set? 2) Can Intouch translate texts? This is something obviously Group Call can do, and I am fairly sure intouch can do as well - but being that we brought it last year and havent quote got to sorting it out, I forget. Cheers Matt

We have an internal metro style intranet page, with a network status tile we keep updated. It turns red or amber or green dependant on whole network status We also have this for parents and staff and students from home: St Bede's Catholic Middle School » Service Status the ticks ping the server, so if its down down it will auto update. Not fool proof, but we can quickly update website as its WP hosted offsite

Another internet blackout this AM. My current thought is, that as we host exchange internally, the limited applications we would be able to actually use could probably be done with a dongle (IE Texting out and website updating)

Hi Whats the best way to monitor traffic on the network? I can see from our county broadband box we are maxing out our 10mb connection, but even with smoothwall I am struggling to see why - I want to monitor traffic to identify if its say chrome updates, or general usage. I also want to be able to monitor the impact of having 50IP cameras on a flat network with no VLANs - I spoke to a chap from the switch shop at BETT who straight away said I need VLANs, but I would like some physical proof of this - and also just to be nosey of traffic levels etc We have allied tenison switches, some HP, some netgear, so a real mismash. Cheers

Aye, I appreciate its usage may be rare, but you only need that one time We are also going through an ISP migration under county this year, to virgin from their private BT network - so even if we just do it for a year, could come in handy.

Hello, Because of our reliance on net access for communicating with parents, I am looking at backup broadband options. What do people go for? Clearly we cannot afford a second normal connection, but could a standard business fibre connection be useful to provide emergency access to text services and our externally hosted website to a designated PC? What do others do? Is it worth it?

Im just going to take a look around tomorrow, then make a plan for Thursday. Then use that for Friday when head coming.

Ordered me a 12TB one yesterday for a yearly archive

Jay - I have just posted two jobs in Redditch in Worcs http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-jobs/130154-senior-technician-full-yr-mobile-tech-term-time-redditch-worcestershire.html Matt

I would disagree. In the first 6 months I ripped everything out and started again, and its only led to good things for me, people saw what I was about, got excited by the changes and engaged with them. 6 months in and I would have been drowning in a world of sorrow!!

Just set off the backups on my cluster hosts. Worked nicely. Will set it up to do one of them weekly, as they are literally DCs and hyper v hosts only, so nothing else on there. I was going to do this at the primary I support as well, but figured I would wait till the NAS arrives tomorrow and set this going overnight. Cheers!

Like WordPress does when doing updates? It would be great to see this packaged into a general server status page module and tiles.

I use ready nas devices for our veeam backups, never had issues. Ordered another yesterday, and will be ordering another come Monday.

Cool, take it you can schedule it as well?

Yeah, going to look to do a windows backup, but if it's a hypervhost (one of our schools are part of a failover cluster) will it try and backup the VMs as well? Or can you tell it not too?

An update: I checked yesterday's backup I tried that hung on 99% and it had all the files, so then I went straight ahead and rebuilt the array. All working better now... Veeam still hanging - but I have ordered a new NAS for Monday for backups and will sort something then, for now we have backups of all stuff, including emails and the array back and working. Also plugged the server into the battery backup slot on the UPS and not the surge only side. Really should have checked that when we installed the server... But assumed it was already in there!!! Never again! Time to breathe again!

Cheers, sounds like good advice. Only thing I'm confused on is the disks in the server, and risk of failure. The original 4 were brand new in September. They are not old. I brought 2 brand new ones today. Can you explain the risk of failure in the other two, when my belief is the damage to the current two is a power failure this morning, perhaps corrupting data, rather then damaged or old disks?

USB 2 Storage vm's backup with veeam takes 50mins, tried it earlier, but hung on 99%. Exchange takes 50mb. I take it as the OS, which is also the dc, is on a different array, the OS should be fine?

Also, luckily, sims and cms hosted at county, also, disks are less then a year old, infact, only used from September, so when doing rebuild, here should be no reason for them to die. I know at doesn't mean they won't!!

It completed, I did it through the controller bios, so it said it was fine. Disks are 500gb Vm's - largest is the storage at 140gb. Exchange is next at 80. The OS is on a different array, it's just the data array with issues, it def has 3 working drives out of 4 currently. There are around 20 clients, unless laptop trolleys are used. But at the moment, I left the server off over night, and have told staff not to use the network tomorrow, being a small first school that is not the end of the world. Backups would be to local USB HDD drive.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I have kept the head informed, it's a first school we support, he is aware that we could loose everything. Veeam backup of storage server and mail server take about 2 hrs, to get the 4 th disk back about 2 and a half. The network is not currently up. I'm thinking do the final rebuild, then we are back to optimal running? If a disk died now, would we go back to having just the two working disks?

What a day. Server at work suffered no power outage, rendering 2 drives in a 4 drive raid 6 failed. Have put in 2 new drives, rebuilt one, but even with 2 the server was working. At this point, we have three drives working - I had to get home, and the tech didn't feel confident setting the second one off... So I got him to switch it all off. So tomorrow, do I get the last drive rebuilt, then run a backup, or do I do a backup before rebuilding the last drive? Also - how do you back up domain controllers? At my main school, we have 2 dcs, but don't back them up, but in this school, we only have one server doing it all, the dc is the hypervhost. Do I create a vm dc, and then veeam that? So we can rebuild a hypervhost, and launch the dc vm to create a physical one? Worryingly, the backup drive, which I used veeam free to back up vm's, is buggered. It was a buffalo external 1 tb drive, the unit won't turn on, and when I took the HDD out, wasn't initialised! How safe should I feel with 3 working drives??