Norphy

It took me a while to wrap my head around that one as well. I still occasionally get it the wrong way around when I'm configuring ports on a switch. Glad you got it sorted!

Yeah but that requires actual effort AND it stops them from being able to pretend that they've forgotten their password, spend half an hour wandering around the school with two of their mates before eventually making their way to the IT office to say "Sir my password don't work innit". I always used to wonder why it took three kids to get a single password reset when I worked in front line IT support in a school.

The way the trust I used to work for used to work things was to create an account for a student as soon as they entered Year 1. The school then had the option of either using it or using a generic Year account. Most of them used generic accounts up to year 3 then started using their personal accounts from year 4. The idea was that account names where generated thusly: {First letter of the school cluster}{Year of Y1 entry}.{First Initial}{Surname} That account then follows them around for as long as they're a member of that school cluster, right through primary school, into secondary then into sixth form. However, the pandemic changed that; once remote learning became a thing all students from Year 1 were issued with their accounts and simple passwords generated using three simple words. I think their parents were given the student's passwords and told to guide them logging into Teams. I don't know how successful that was, but it was what we were told to do.

@ZyxelNetworksDaniel, the post you're quoting was written in 2017! I think you may have missed the boat on that one. Also, you don't need to make essentially the same post three times in a row...

Are the current hard drives in hot-swappable caddies or do you have to take the lid off the server to get at the hard drives? If the drives are in caddies, just swap the drives while the server is on and let the controller handle the rest. That will be fine. If you need to take the lid off the server to get at the drives, you'll have to schedule some downtime and turn the server off.

Syndicate Plus and Syndicate Wars, along with a couple of Ultima games are going for free on GOG until Friday https://www.gog.com/promo/rerelease_ultima_underworld_and_syndicate?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=20210830_nl_Games_Festival_EN&utm_term=EN&track_click=1&link_id=C_section_CTA

Even ADFS isn’t worth the faff these days. You can use Azure AD Connect to handle transparent authentication for Office 365 stuff and use Azure AD to handle federation for external services. The less stuff you have exposed to the Internet on your local network, the better.

That’s nonsense. Hyper-V Server is just Windows Server Core with only the Hyper-V and Failover Clustering features available. It still runs on the same patching schedule so the number of reboots is going to be the same. Security is going to be the same as Server Core. Yes, if you’re running Hyper-V on Windows Server with a GUI then you might have a point, but even then a bare Windows Server GUI install is fairly minimal these days.

It makes sense. The thing that’s always confused me about Hyper-V Server is, who is it meant for? I mean, if you want to run a Windows Server, you’ll already have a Windows license of some description to run Hyper-V. Hyper-V Server is pretty much identical to Windows Server Core with just the Hyper-V feature enabled, so why bother it for that? Windows 10 Enterprise/Edu also includes Hyper-V and a license to run a virtual copy, so it’s not really worth it for a dev environment. That just leaves open source operating systems and frankly, there are better choices to run those, which are also free. Hyper-V is ok for a couple of distros but if you’re only running Linux/BSD, you’re better using ESXi, Xen or KVM. The only time I’ve ever used Hyper-V is when the servers it was being installed it on didn’t have internal storage and the only supported version of Windows Server at the time to run off USB storage was Hyper-V Server There’s a tiny market for Hyper-V Server and I reckon Microsoft have decided it’s not worth the development/support resources any more.

The free Salamander utility spits out a series of CSV files which are relatively easy to read, if that’s what you want to do but AFAIK, there is no preview function either the Salamander utility or in SDS. One of the CSV files will contain the teams that SDS will generate and/or update

Meanwhile, in FreedomLand™️: https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ivermectin-deworming-covid-mississippi_n_612061bfe4b0ff60bf80dc14?ri18n=true They don’t want to take a vaccine that’s successfully been given to millions of people around the world with mostly minor side effects but they’re quite happy to poison themselves with medication meant for cows. Genius.

According to the blog, it’s run as a startup script, which are executed as the SYSTEM user iirc. It should still work.

Just contact Salamander with your requirements. I asked them to follow a precise naming scheme with Teams, they happily followed it. It’s easiest, I found, to treat Salamander as a block box. Any alterations, ask them to do it.

Out of curiosity, is CC still being actively developed outside of bug fixes etc? I seem to recall hearing somewhere that RM were sun setting the product and moving more towards support of vanilla based networks.

Looks like they're getting away from that market in general. I'm slightly surprised Apple didn't get it, considering that For All Mankind is made by Sony as well.

Certificate based authentication: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/exchange/app-only-auth-powershell-v2?view=exchange-ps

Indeed. I had the BCG and MMR in school, as well as polio. Would have had tetanus as well but I’m allergic to that one.

I think with switching it depends what you want from it. If all you need is a bunch of bog standard L2 access switches, the Unifi ones are probably adequate. If you need L3 functionality at the edge, you’re probably best at looking at other brands like Aruba, Cisco or Ruckus. As I understand it, L3 functionality is still pretty weak on UBNT stuff so definitely look elsewhere for your core if you need to do routing. You don’t need support contracts with Aruba to use their hardware; once you’ve bought one, that’s it. You get all of the hardware functionality out of the box. What you do have to pay for is if you want to use a service like Aruba Central which is cloud management. You can buy a support contract for the hardware too, which you may or may not want.

Pikachu

Well, it's simple. If that's what you want, buy that. Dell Latitude and Precision laptops are still repairable, there are laptops from plenty of other manufacturers which are as well. If you don't want a thin and light laptop which isn't repairable/upgradeable, don't buy one. No-one is making you. Yes, it's a bugger if the manufacturer you want to buy from doesn't offer that option (Apple) but if they don't sell what you want, don't buy from them. What you want isn't necessarily what someone else wants.

Like with all things, it's a trade-off. What do laptop manufacturers gain by having soldered SSDs and RAM: 1) Reduced PCB size - you don't have to have your RAM/SSD in a socket or a set form factor, meaning you have more flexibility on how you place components 2) Reduced thickness - you don't need to have a space in your computer thick enough for 2/3 stacked PCBs 3) Reduced support costs - with soldered components, the company knows exactly what is in the computer and they don't have to account for or certify components from third parties 4) Reduced construction costs - two less things to bolt into the chassis 5) With a smaller PCB taking up space in the chassis, they can use that extra space for other things - most likely the battery. 6) They can also make smaller/lighter/thinner laptops What do they lose? 1) The ability to just replace the RAM/SSD in the event of one of those components failing - they have to replace the whole logic board. 2) Not much else From their point of view, it's a no-brainer. Sure, customers lose the ability to upgrade but do your marketing correctly and they won't care. It's also worth bearing in mind that people who actually want to change the components in their computers are a tiny minority and that minority is getting smaller. If you ask the average laptop owner which is more important to them: A longer battery life or the hypothetical ability to upgrade their RAM in the future, I think the majority of them will ask for longer battery life.

Congestion

Crossing

Things are easy when/if you know what you’re doing. Setting up a ChromeBook might be easy for you, but it sounds like Mike’s old school doesn’t have anyone who knows where there any key is. It’s inexcusable that they haven’t got someone in to do this for them, but just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean anyone else does.

Somehow, we've been lucky. I had a big order of Aruba 5400Rs, modules, power supplies and some 2540s delivered yesterday and our supplier are getting access points delivered for the middle of August, supposedly. We did have some help from Aruba themselves with that though.