siuko

The 2 biggest times when we get CPU spikes is... 1) When I am running Database Diagnotics (so this will only happen if you are running it). 2) When the admin staff delete a student from Sims - This stops anyone logging onto Sims and lasts about 20-30 mins on our system.

ooOO!!! Me Me!! Nod32 Here as well

Yeah I had thought of that too.... but didn't know how good it was at keeping history etc. I can also setup Categories on a sharepoint blog site which might help them find the info relevant to them easier? I will do a few test announcements to see what its like... thanks

I have been thinking of trying to implement something (at the moment its a sharepoint blog I've just added to the VLE) so I can record changes to the network and ICT systems for staff to read. For example we have updated Sims to the December release (7.114) and I would like staff to know that as the load screen has changed a bit and I don't want them thinking something is wrong. I would also like to be able to let them know that it has been updated so any workstations I've missed if they have issues with updating it themselves to let me know. How do people go about keeping staff informed to changes on their networks and computers? PS. I don't go to any morning briefings etc - and the few times I have passed info through the ICT coordinator (teacher) for morning briefing it seems to fall on deaf ears. So it seemed better to provide some place for them to read about changes if they wish too. Any ideas?

Oh Dear Well if its anything like the Derby City IT Technician meeting (I'll ignore the fact that I'm not a technician) you will just get your questions answered with rubbish generic answers like we did. It was just a case of pretending to keep us in the loop when really they were just wanting to keep us quiet so every single IT support staff in Derby schools doesn't just decide to get other jobs and leave them in trouble. Since that meeting no more information has been given to us - and worst of all I have seen members of SMT going to BSF meetings every 2 weeks (but who knows what for). Well if they want to stonewall me and decide their IT vision by themselves they are welcome to what they get from it! I've seen what comes from them deciding IT projects without my input and its quite funny what we got.... nevermind....

Hehe first question is which 3D programs As unless your running some VERY high end graphics apps you wont need to speedy 3D Graphics card. Unless they want to play Crysis2

Hehe indeed I hadn't fully registered what had been said... sorry

We use Dban here. It is supposed to be able to wipe data to MoD standards and you can download a bootcd image. Takes quite a while if you set it to the MoD standard wipe as it does multiple passes.

We use a mixture of iTalc so the teachers and IT admin can view what the students are on. If they continually break the rules about games they are then banned from accessing the internet using the Dansguardian filter groups. (The filter groups can be setup in such a way that the internet is banned but certain sites can be made available to them - samlearning etc) All free - as our budgets like that

Well if they start offering IT support staff the same £10k to work in those schools I'm ok with it

I have just noticed.... On page 2 of the Dell configure website That I can add 39320A SCSI Internal PCI-X Controller Card to the server. This would mean that besides the 4 SAS Hard drives connected to the on board SAS controller I could add extra SCSI drives to make up the storage amount. Silly me

Yeah the £10k is a little steep - but that does include Server 2008 Software + 500 CALS + UPS for 3 servers etc. I have already mentioned that at the moment server space is running at 1150Gb so I would like to be at around 1500Gb or more if possible (yeah its because I don't limit user areas... hehe I know its silly). I also do not want raid if possible.

Thanks for the info about raid. I know its crazy of me to say this but I am not to worried about the redundancy aspect of using mirrored drives (especially considering how much more the extra hard drives would cost me). With the money I am given I normally try to get the maximum (but without any redundancy). Its scary but I run without any raid mirroring, BDC or UPS. The school will just have to wait a few days for me to rebuild from backup tapes if they aren't willing to given me budget for redundancy! If I did what I know I should do my budget for this server would be more like £30k rather than a much lower £10k.

Hehe you aren't being nosey - I'm just not too knowledgeable about Raid - and I don't really trust raid systems. I would personally just rather go with lots of separate drives and know that if one dies I can just rebuild from backups. (Might sound old fashioned.... hehe probably is). Also about lowering the ram and cpu spec's - you are correct - I just thought if I can buy better and they say yes I may as well (just incase...)

The server will be used for: Main DC DNS App Share (for about 30+ apps that are able to run easily from a network share) So yes you are probably correct about it being overkill. Well except for the hard drive space which is a requirement. I did look into a lower spec server for the main DC with just 2 x 73Gb OS drives and then attaching a Dell MD3000 Direct Attached Storage to the DC. The problem with this is even before adding hard drives to it - it comes in at £5000+. I could spec the server in the first post WITH hard drives for about £4500! So it seems silly to get the MD3000 separate. I just really require more space on the Poweredge 2900 III (and I would like them on the number of drives I mentioned - rather than on say 4 massive drives).

Hi all, Just been given the job of getting a new main DC for the school. Our present servers is a Dell 4800 2 x Xeon CPU, 2Gb Ram and approx 1150Gb of SCSI hard drive space (in 7 physical hard drives). This server is becoming more and more unreliable (crashes quite often) and I cannot seem to find the reason. So I thought a nice new shiney Dell 2900 III might do the trick. I spec'd it for 2 x Quad Core CPU, 16Gb Ram. And this is were I seem to either be losing my marbles or I cant seem to add more than 4 SAS hard drives without having them as RAID. So my questions are: 1) Is it correct that the onboard SAS controller will only allow 4 internal hard drives? 2) If so can I have an addon raid controller but still use the drives as separate physical drives (rather than in a raid array)? My plan would be to have 1 or 2 73Gb 15k RPM SAS drives for the OS and 6 x 300Gb 15K RPM drives for the data. What are peoples thoughts?

Doh! You are correct.... my memory is very bad! Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Compare Features

I'm going to be very vague with this post - as my memory seems to be useless today.... But from what I can remember the biggest performance increase that would probably help is that SQL Express 2005 has something like a maximum of 8 user connections. Whereas the Enterprise edition should allow you to set the number of connections you require. If your old SQL Express 2005 was hitting its connection limit it would queue the requests and cause slow down. So vague answer might be to check how to configure for more connections.... Or it might be nothing to do with that....

For all useful EEEPC related stuff check out EeeUser.com ASUS Eee PC 701, 900, 901, 1000 Blog Forum Wiki Community. The Wiki has a lot of install info - especially for XP. And the forum is also very good.

We are running a VERY old version of success maker here and we just run a file called CONFIGUR.EXE to install on the clients.

We block Google images (along with many other image sites). They just don't seem to filter inappropriate images quite as well as needed in schools.

We have 4 of the EEEPC 900 models that we have just purchased. They are running WinXP Pro and we have purchased them specifically to use with Sims .Net and registration through SIMS. As they run WinXP they happy sit in the domain as a normal pc would. Only staff will be able to access them and hopefully they wont get stolen - although with how small they are they are an easier target. No further details as we haven't used them for very long.

Hostpapa.co.uk seems to be ok so far. The above link is an affiliate click thru link so if you dont like that or it isnt allowed on this forum then I can remove it.... Or just copy the link and go straight to hostpapa.co.uk instead I have Help fixing your computer hosted on it at the moment - I've only been on it a few days but it seems good so far.

Edugeek - The Website the proves that being a Geek isn't all bad - but being a geek and having your photo taken holding a small plastic red horse certainly is!

I must be doing something silly then as every time I click download file it asks me to logon to a slideshare account.