flyinghaggis

I guess the blu ray drive is pretty much essential if they want backwards compatibility. Plus not everyone has the internet bandwidth to download 50gb plus games. Also, Microsoft still probably want to keep brick and mortar game stores on side for as long as possible. The whole 8k thing sounds a bit like a marketing pitch though as I doubt even in a year's time 8k will be anything like commonplace or affordable. Nor is it likely that many games will run natively at that resolution. SSD should make for some big improvements though as loading times have been getting a bit ridiculous in some games this current generation. Excited to see what they bring out in 2020. Hopefully they finally announce VR support as well. I'd love to play Forza Motorsport/Horizon in VR.

https://www.playexpoglasgow.com/ Just wondering if anyone on here is planning on going? I went last year and really enjoyed all the 80s/90s arcade cabinets and old consoles/home computers. I'll be there on the Saturday

That's what I'm thinking could be an option. It's not as convenient as Veeam Cloud Connect but I don't see us being provided budget to do cloud backups through that. I'd wondered if @localzuk 's suggestion of using Cloudberry might be a cheap workaround given that, as a school, we already have potentially unlimited storage through Google Apps.

Thanks for the suggestion. We got a quote from them however the school is looking at ways to save money so we've been asked to investigate options for backing up to cloud storage like Google Drive/Azure/etc.

Which Cloudberry product are you using to backup Veeam backups? Are you just copying the Veeam backup files themselves directly to cloud storage?

The valve index sounds good but it's kind of expensive plus I'd also need to buy a new video card to run it! Whilst the base station tracking is the most effective method it pretty much means you need to devote an entire room to your VR setup! I'd also really hoped they'd manage to include wireless functionality (given the near four figure price tag) as the tethering cable is awful from both a safety and immersion viewpoint. I think I'll probably wait to see what the next Playstation 5 / PSVR 2 brings to the table before I consider any PC VR alternatives again. That's at least another year or two away though.

I'm excited to see how this turns out!

Ultrawings is great. I'll probably buy it again for the Quest! One thing I found that made massive difference for my use of Playstation VR was to double check the IPD setting. It basically adjusts the image based on the distance between your eyes. This varies between people and can make the image appear blurry if the default doesn't work for you. https://www.vrheads.com/how-manually-set-your-ipd-playstation-vr?_ga=2.182574758.1277116644.1557384289-1013135567.1557384289

Decided to pre-order the Oculus Quest as the initial reviews have been really positive and I love the idea of a fully featured standalone VR headset

We've also been asked to look into implementing a similar type of system. With NetSupport Notify how do you create the groups of users to notify as we'd like the ability to send a notification to all Teachers. Can you sync this with Active Directory so this list is automatically kept up to date?

The 3rd episode had me on the edge of my seat right until the end. Some seriously impressive direction, effects and production. However, and without mentioning any spoilers, I felt the way it ended was a let down.There's an awful lot of very un-George RR Martin stuff beginning to happen! Hopefully there's something I've missed and it'll make more sense in the final 3 episodes as things play out. AngryJoe's latest video kind of sums up my feelings about the end scene.

It's worrying that this seems to have happened to so many people on this forum where the drive/stick won't accept the password or recovery code. It makes me wonder if it's an indication of a deeper issue rather than just hardware faults with devices. Even if it is a hardware fault surely this wouldn't render the entire device unusable unless the boot/file system part of the drive failed or became corrupted? Weirdly, even though Windows wouldn't accept the password, the M3 Trial recovery appeared to be able to read the USB drive file system when I entered the password to run the demo version. I never found out whether it would work as we never purchased the software in the end? That's what also made me suspicious that there's some kind of issues with Bitlocker rather than just faulty memory sticks? Cheap old memory sticks can be very unreliable though so maybe that is the cause when combined with the increased overhead of encryption

We've had this happen to a member of staff as well. They encrypted the stick using bitlocker and neither the password or recovery key would unlock it. As other have said we assumed there was somekind of hardware fault with the USB stick. It's annoying though as when this happens the finger of blame tends to be pointed at IT even though it's likely a hardware fault and they should really have a copy of the data stored elsewhere.

https://www.roadtovr.com/simple-guide-oculus-quest-rift-s-valve-index-hp-reverb-comparison/ Quite tempted by the upcoming Oculus Quest standalone headset. Anyone else contemplating getting it or any of the other VR headsets out this year?

I suspect that like the SNES, NES and Playstation mini it'll only take about a week after release until someone finds a way to add your own games! But yeah, hopefully they can get EA on board with stuff like desert strike and road rash!

What annoys me is that most of the time Windows will complain that "the device is in use" and you end up wasting time closing down all your apps then retrying the "safely remove hardware" option several times before it eventually works!

Just to confirm after checking you do require the paid version of the Workstation/Server agent if you want to backup directly to a cloud storage repository.

We're currently running the free Windows Agent for our physical servers which seems to work well other than the fact you can't manage it fully from the console. Quick Question : Does anyone know whether free Windows Agent for Veeam supports backing up to cloud storage. We've been testing cloud storage system however I can't see a way to backup the physical servers to our cloud repository? I've tried version 2 and 3 of the Free Windows agent but neither gave me the option to backup to cloud storage I've seen in some of the guides online? I'm wondering if Veeam might require a paid licence if you want to backup a physical server to locations other than the default local storage repository (eg. Tape Storage, Cloud repository)

I use one of these at work and home which I find far more comfortable than a regular mouse (which was causing me wrist pain). Anker® 2.4G Wireless Vertical Ergonomic Optical Mouse

We ditched tape for a NAS stored in another building on the site a few years back and have recently switch to Veeam (from Microsoft DPM!). We're also investigating using some kind of cloud/offsite backup as well in case anything happens to both the main and backup server (eg Ransomware, etc). Cloud storage seems like the logical option as an alternative to tape.

That was pretty much our thoughts about it as well. We don't want staff starting to use email, Onedrive, Sharepoint, etc. Most wouldn't bother but I know a few staff/departments who've used it at previous schools before and would likely start migrating across if they could create accounts!

We've encountered this issue as well with staff signing up for Office 365 (we use Google Apps) so have disabled users from signing up with school email accounts. One unfortunate side effect of this is that several other schools and companies we deal with use Office365 and this has prevented our users from accessing documents shared to them. We've also had the opposite where companies we've shared Google Apps documents with couldn't access them as their Office365 based and their IT dept has disabled Google sign-ups! Perhaps we're being overly draconian but, like the OP, we really don't want our staff to actively start using Office365 and for the school to end up responsible for managing, supporting and funding both an Office365 and Google Apps environment for our teachers? What's everyone else's thoughts? If you're using Office365/Google Apps in your school do you generally disable user sign-ups for the other platform?

I agree with you regarding keeping things simple. Other than Simplivity (which is what HP are trying to sell us on) our lower cost plan B was to do exactly what you've suggested (several standalone servers clustered together with speedy local storage)! Part of me wonders whether it might make more sense just to save the money and go with the more straightforward option? As things gradually move cloud based systems our requirements for onsite storage/processing seem to be diminishing each year

We're in a similar boat and are looking to replace our, now 5 year old, HP blade server and SAN setup which is currently running Hyper-V. As others have said we're finding the Blade Server and SAN setup overly complex, expensive and difficult to manage for our needs. We've been steadily moving services into the cloud so are actually finding we require less onsite hardware than we did 5 years ago! We'd considered just buying several standalone servers with local storage to run our virtualised environment but our re-sellers are trying to push us towards Hyper-Converged solutions and Simplivity is one that came up. We're also considering whether to move away from Hyper-V to VMWare as we've encountered problems with instability which appear to be linked to compatibility issues between Hyper-V and our SAN. What's everyone's thoughts at the moment when it comes to replacing server room hardware? What do you reckon is the best performance/value compromise for schools? Also, has anyone tried Simplivity?

I'll be buying Mario Maker 2 on release! The first one was great and this looks even better with the added features. Should be a great fit for the switch as well.