ITGURU

ours is with TSO hosts all free, although we don't use the .sch.uk domain officially anymore, its there if any old email contacts still have the incorrect details or needed.

As part of our next deployment we will be looking to deploy windows 11 with office 365. I gather KMS is no longer an option for office 365 and uses online activation or shared computer activation? Are there any offline activation methods available i.e exam laptops which dont have internet connectivity, and if the machines had no internet access does that mean users would be unable to use office on the machine until it was restored?

Gamma here also

based on readings of sims connected issues this week which is not surprising, ive informed our trust we will not be moving any time soon. its just another external service where everyone will come running asking you when it will be resolved and out of your control. what's wrong will local data locally managed and 100%, control over availability. same with any service.

No, in the end i just did the standard sysvol adsiedit flag edit to resync all from one of the dcs and started working again.

I've just discovered that the SCRIPTS folder is not replicating between my 2dcs. Active Directory and Group Policy objects are replicating fine if create new objects, they appear on both However if i create new files in the SCRIPTS folder they are not replicating. Anyone advise how to resolve this as event viewer says DFS is ok? thanks

Setup an internal IIS SMTP server which delivers to your 365 onmicrosoft SMTP server, then point net2 at your internal SMTP - its how we do it.

I have primary hyper-v hosts and then a replica server of the VM. I paused the replication from the primary server whilst I crashed and rebuilt the replica server upgrading its OS. Once reinstated with the hyper-v role, how I do i resume replication with the existing data on the disks without doing a full sync? I tried importing the replicaVMs into the console but replication just shows as not applicable and if i try to resume replication it won't carry on? When rebuilding replicas do you always have to remove the replication, delete all from the replica server, and then re-setup replica sync in full from scratch for each vm?

Did this myself a few years ago, spun up new Hyper-V DCs moved the roles etc don't convert Vmware to Hyper-V DCs, fine for all file servers/member servers but DC's always do clean. If you must re-use same IPs/Names, demote one of them, bring up a new one on Hyper-V , test test test, then do the second one. Had no issues myself, but definitely upgrade from 2012 - there is no reason not to?

Just installed an HP expander to increase storage from the initial 8 bays to 16 bays. Is it better to create the second box of 8 drives as a separate array and drive letter so if the expander were to fail or wanted to move the single box to another physical server then I could or do I just expand the array to include both boxes and all drives and have 1 large drive? It's a hyper v host so wondering if for performance I set up the second 8 bay box as a separate array and drive? any thoughts from anyone as seems splitting box boxes into 2 arrays gives me better redundancy in event of any failure ?

had this come through too..so essentially they are reducing the amount of onedrive storage for the free licenses?

It seems to be that eveything is URGENT these days and everyone expects everything to happen immediately or lastminute.com despite how many times we try and tell them we need notice or its not that simple i.e last week of term office moves new desks staff want to move but we need to run network cable as just one example. From new term want to look at sending out response/notice times/SOP document to all staff so its clear in black and white. does anyone know where I can get a decent template/example from for this? thanks in advance.

Shodan will find you all the internet connected nrvs and cameras!

Not an issue with Censornet. Basically on proxy/gateway failure, you can block internet, so isn't allowed and the only IPs which are whitelisted as unfiltered are the Gateway IPs. Any device on the network without a proxy won't get out to anything unless a firewall rule has been created with external provider for the source IP/subnet. One site has in-line before, when the box failed it meant we lost site-to-site access also as had to traverse through the box, and don't want that situation which is why moved away from on-site boxes.

Making an early start on looking at alternatives to our current web filtering product Censornet due later this year. Looking for a solution that is VM/Cloud based and not provider specific hardware on site. Censornet works for us as can spin up multiple VMs for redundancy, and used for Captive Portal guess access, with all the filtering rules, reporting on a cloud platform. Also allows use of CASB reporting and rules. Does anyone know of anything which does similar. NOT looking for an in-line box, agent based, or a box on-site that if fails requires provider to send out a replacement, so that we have HA. thanks.

I assume doing it that way would still allow management but remove the need to use create remote mailbox for new AD users and just let them sync to azure AD with the sync tool and automatically create the email addresses/boxes?

Does anyone has any official guidance on removing the last exchange server? I believe that this is now possible? I've migrated all mailboxes to 365 and using powershell to remote enable mailboxes, but could do away with having to do this now to make setting up new users easier.

osticket is free, we used to host on-site but now host online with our websites with krystal uk, ssd hosting.

where possible we enable on both student and staff accounts. only 2 so far we've disabled so not disadvantaging off site. It only takes one account without 2FA to be compromised and it's almost always we find it's student accounts being compromised when issues arise.

Eagerly awaiting for the option to ungroup the taskbar grouped icons in windows 11 which I believe is coming soon. I have both a laptop and a desktop both on windows 11 version 22H2 22621.1778 I notice on the laptop the new 'display seconds on the clock' is missing as an option, but on my desktop its there, as shown in both the screenshots below. Are some features only hardware specific as cannot see why else there would be any difference?

CCTV notifications does NOT require NVRs to be accessible from the public internet. All our NVRs are on a private VLAN with no internet access. Notifications use SMTP server on the network to send email notifications to me, no open inbound ports required and we do not use Hik-connect.

I've never used the suggested frameworks, however i was forwarded an email the other week about the IT frameworks. I got quotes even for the likes or Microsoft agreement, and other items, and they were all more expensive than my other normal education providers!!

VLAN it off and dont expose to the internet. I've been advised by a supplier (and seen evidence) of hik systems compromised with messages on the screen of which this is the article. CCTV hacked by Faxociety : r/homesecurity (reddit.com)

Normally i would clean install servers, but as SCCM is quite well setup, I thought i would do an inplace OS upgrade as its the last server I have on 2016, so did an inplace upgrade to 2019. The only thing which doesnt work after the upgrade is the WDS Service, It won't start with the error 'an error occurred while try to initialise multicast manager. If i open the WDS console its got a red x against the server. when boot a client, it gets an IP but then fails to load the WDS./TFTP I've reverted back the VM from a backup and see that the service is normally started and everything works as normal. Anyone else come across this or can advise on solution? Online says that inplace upgrades are supported on SCCM servers. Alternatively if i have to do a clean install, where can i find the best guide for this? thanks.

Why is there still no option to ungroup the taskbar in windows 11. This is the most pointless change they made which is preventing me from deploying windows 11. When have multiple instances of a program open, its so much easier to click between the windows on the taskbar, and not hover and determine which window is needed... I know this would be a bugbear if we upgrade.