the_quick

I'm on the break for now , after around 5 years playing. X-13 be careful it is very addictive, I played in hardcore guild a year, my raid days were always about r4aid in the evening - so quick journey home from work, fast dinner - go in wow gather pots, bit of money here and there, do dailies for rep etc -> raid. Finished between 11 and midnight. Wife was not impressed . But was fun. But last half a year I barely played, so account frozen for now. I have played every single class fro some time, druid used to be great healer - easy to play with HoTs, and hunter used to be easy dps. it all have changed now after Cata and DK is quite nice and easy for casual player.

We use here Vison speakers system, two speakers with small amp which is a size of network socket box, it act as well as volume control and comes with remote control. I used to use Pulse speakers from CPC but very often built in amp blows. Vision it is for use, but not cheapest, price for set is around £150

Another thing would be to created general image without license key, use sys prep and something to deploy those images, something like FOG (free and really good).

enjay, sorry no, can't afford it. But seen it working and could compare to cc3 which I have and it gives so much more freedom in comparison.

Few things play role: 1. Budget cuts, not only harnessing technology, but general school budget shrinks 2. RM network is not cheap, at least in school view, so many will find it cheaper to run vanilla network with some additional tools to replace RM tools 3. More and more Network Managers in school are now proper IT professionals, when in old RM CC2.4 and beginning cc3 days, there were lot of ex teachers/science technicians etc.

Yeah squid sounds like best option, you just need to know a bit of linux, which is not always easy - both smoothwall and RM SmartCache (Part of safetyNet plus) use it. There are lots of other pieces of software, but the price usually is quite high - Bloxx come to mind and Securas.

I think CSE is best management network for schools these days, as it is based on Vanilla, and does not change much on AD, so it is much easier to transfer to Vanilla domain, if there would be a need. If I would have money, I would go with them. These kind of tools save lots of time and just make life easier, maybe you learn more with pure Vanilla etc, but if you don't have time and hands - CSE looks perfect. Go for it mate ! And RM services are getting worse, 5 years ago I could get solution to the problem from them in a day, now it takes sometimes 2 weeks to solve something (main problem with RM software and how it is working) and I believe they are more expensive. Best of luck

I had a problem with restoring system state from USB drive, it was win 2003, it worked but not fully. I had to restore GPO replication, as it did not replicate properly.

I had working test domain here , but because I needed desperately space on SAN I had to remove it , so starting again from scratch. On virtual environment we have CC3 domain and test domain. RM did not said anything when I told them we are virtual and don't need hardware support for servers, they still support software side of it and whole system works better than ever now. Of course few problems here and there with domain, but there are so many forums etc. So I would say changing to vanilla is good thing and you learn on the way, you gain additional skills etc. Only small problem I have now is kind of small management console for some IT teachers. They would like to be able to change passwords, allocate more space for students etc. With vanilla you don't get anything like RM management console, I hope i will be able to find something on the net. Good luck to us all who want to free them self from RM

OK, problem solved. It was problem with vmware, some time update of vmware tools does not go as it should, vmware is aware that it happens, from time to time. In the end I used standalone vmware converter and cloned this virtual machine. And this replaced old one, work without any issue

Few things I have already done. I have test domain environment, have working so far users with right GPO for their tyep - Students and Staff - still polishing a bit exchange, WSUS and now will focus on SCCM for workstation deployment, still got FOG servers (which is brilliant) that I can use to re image workstation. My biggest problem now is to move all the users to new environment, will try to do it with some test users. Regarding moving from CC3 to CC4. At the moment we are paying almost £4,500 for so called secondary support - in last financial year we made 3 calls, which only one was resolved by RM, two remaining ones I managed to fix my self. This makes it very expansive call . Of course we had RM with quotes, but paying for another batch of licenses and installation almost 26 grand makes me uneasy. In last few month working on test domain I learned so much, that I feel more confident with AD than ever before. Still I have contacts with companies, who can help me when I'm stuck - rather than paying for support contract, I can pay them per call. I already talked to guy from school near me and he can help us with move as a private consultant during the summer, for very attractive fee. So for me no for RM. In response to primary school, if you don't have technician on site all days, I would stick with some kind of management services, maybe contact CSE, their quote was cheaper than RM and their solution is closer to Vanilla - for example you can use WSUS, rather than wait for RM to test new updates

Hello everyone, I hope no one mind that I dip in the topic. We are in very similar position, CC3 and want to move to something different. We had look at costs for both CC4 and CSE network toolkit - both costs more than £20k for migration/licensing - we don't have that kind of money. So I setup test domain myself, created few users, created GPOs etc. All works fine with new users on that domain. But now how can I migrate pupils and staff to new domain. In normal environment, you would just move forest root from 2003 to 2008 and it would be easier. But I don't think I can do that with RM CC3? So how can I import users to new domain from old one? ADMT 3 would do it? If some one would share how they did it, it would be really great.

I think this is related to vmware, noticed if I disable the network card is coming to almost 0, main problem arise when students login , so begging and end of periods. Happens after vmware tools upgrade, nothing else was changed.

Last week I have update to newest version of Vmware esx, it is now 4.1. We have 3 DC running CC3. Upgrade went fine, last week (half term) no problems there. Yesterday the server where all pupils are stored have very high CPU usage, in task manager shows only as system, it can go to 90%. It slows down login process for pupils, really badly. Only this server is affected, other server is for teaching staff and no problem there. Just to test it I have uninstalled vmware tools and restart it, just to check if it was that. But running without did not improve much. Today was fine till period 2 and it went again - so it is really spiking up when users are logging in. Event log does not show any major errors. Can't figure it out, bit lost here. Does any one have ideas what could go wrong?

I just installed it on my test domain, what a pain. Apparently worth it. I seen it in working environment, they mostly use it for windows deployment - which look great.

Joined

But bacon and danish will be going soon and amounts of meeting as well. Cuts are reaching NMF as well

I have RM network here as well, and started testing new vanilla domain. Setting up a domain on windows 2008 is really simple, just install it and run dcpromo, but later becoming bit more complicated. You need to create right GPOs, so for example all your users got right proxy, get my documents redirection for it to go on the server, rather than on local machine etc. It is all doable, takes a bit of time, but practise gives you best way to learn. If you have virtual environment, it makes all even simpler. For package deployment you can use GPO based deployment with MSI, some thing can be used with Cameyo (Cameyo | Free Application Virtualization) and you can use MS System Centre Configuration Manager - it is bit a bitch to install, but apparently it is worth it (it is used for more things than just package deployment). IMO the best to learn is to try it

Nope, the one I bough worked strait out of the box, scan bar code and it appears in selected cell as number, simples !

PM sent mate. Kris

We did ours with help from 3rd party. I did research what I need, server wise, memory and storage. We need to replace our servers, either do it old fashion way, 1 server 1 os or virtualization. Of course we did second. So we asked for few quotes for equipment licensing and labour. We choose the best option and I think we paid £3,200 for 5 days of engineer work. He did every thing for us from unpacking boxes to setting up all vlans and SAN network. I would love to do it myself, but first I would need at least 3 month to run as test and play with learning on the way - time I did not have and with my normal everyday work I would not be able to give it more than few hours a day. Now after almost a year most of it I think I could setup on my own, but there still few bits where I'm not sure. There is lots of documentation out there and people willing to help. But if you need to do it in short time, there is no time to wait on forum for answer or learn from online documentation. I'm very happy with my setup, would never go back, it is easy to manage, give tons of new options etc. Option to go on course is brilliant as you keep knowledge and certificate, you can use it in later date. If I could do it at the time I would, but time was an issue, old server were causing problems almost every week, it was just disaster waiting to happen. Virtualization is all the way forward and I would recommend it to every school, but how to do it always depend on ones circumstances.

We are in E.Sussex, 1066 region - vmware view with RM cc3 here. More than happy to show you around.

Agreed and can confirm, USB plug and play works without a problem with Alice, no configuration is needed. Same scanner will scan to any other application. I used mine with MS Access

I'm in exactly same position. Still with CC3, would like to move to Vanilla or something better than CC3. Moving to Vanilla would not cost me anything apart time, got all licenses in place already. But never managed domain without any support tools, like RM has. As budget cuts are already in plans (ICT budget cut by 70% from April) I can't clearly afford to move to CC4 or CSE. So two options, stay where I'm or move to Vanilla by my self. Second option is very tempting for me, I would love to do it, but really afraid of the problems which might come up. My line manager is not total convinced with dropping RM and have no support on other side of the line. We pay for support 4,5K a year. If we move to vanilla and want support, we can get probably third party company who would do it, but after few quotes I can see they will charge similar amount as RM does. New system with win2k8 and Windows 7 is tempting, but amount of potential problems discourage me. And if I would do it, Head would want fully working network in September, no one wants whole school to be testing ground. At the moment playing with test domain, but recently did not have time to test new ideas, as very often is the case - there is always something else to do I'm sure you would agree. Really not sure what to do

Seting up XenServer is really easy. Works great as well. I have test domain running alongside my RM CC3 domain, I even use DHCP and DNS of a CC3 domain, and it works fine so far. Your GPO have no chance to interfere with RM domain, unless you establish trusts and design GPOs to work on different domains. Of course the test domain need to have different name. That's how big companies out there do that. They have big forest with different domains for different branches/offices - sometime they have to exchange data between domain, but other set-ups have domains independent of each other. If you really want to be extra careful, you can setup your domain on different IP range, with own dns and dhcp, but I found that I have problems connecting new DCs to internet (router on different IP range).