Primus

I think you will be able to use the existing cluster and add to it. The MS page says: You must create two volumes on each enclosure: one for data and one for logs. Log and data disks must be initialized as GPT, not MBR. The two data volumes must be of identical size. The two log volumes should be of identical size. All replicated data disks must have the same sector sizes. All log disks must have the same sector sizes. The log volumes should use flash-based storage and high performance resiliency settings. Microsoft recommends that the log storage be as faster than the data storage. Log volumes must never be used for other workloads. The data disks can use HDD, SSD, or a tiered combination and can use either mirrored or parity spaces or RAID 1 or 10, or RAID 5 or RAID 50. The log volume must be at least 9GB by default and can to be larger or smaller based on log requirements. The volumes must be formatted with NTFS or ReFS.

Do you mean a stretch cluster such as this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-replica/stretch-cluster-replication-using-shared-storage ?

All ours are made in Google Sites.

A Star Attendance?

It's a matter of personal preference. You do not need to have a physical one now but some might prefer to have one.

We've got loads of stuff on this summer, so busy, but I also can't wait to get started, so impatient now!

That CPU is really weak, it's going to struggle when brand new.

This happened with the BSF builds - loads of new kit with no budget for replacing it at the end of its lifetime and with it all being new at the same time it all fell due for replacement at the same time. You could argue schools should have budgeted for this but lots of schools received bad or no advice from managed service providers etc etc.

It has to be oatmeal & raisin.

HPE/Aruba at the core, Ubiquiti Unifi at the edge.

I'm going to massively jinx our setup here but my team all use multiple WD19S (as we work across several schools) and we've never had any issues with any combination of up to 3 monitors. Now granted we've paired it with Dell XPS laptops so they should both work together but I've been impressed with the fact we've had zero issues with it.

If you have to have the smaller Pro or the Air you can use DisplayLink adapters to power multiple external monitors.

Only if you chose MacBooks that only support 1 external display, ie. a MacBook with the standard M1. If you go for a MacBook with an M1 Pro or higher they support 2 external displays. The new M architecture means that having larger quantities of RAM isn't necessary for most people - when I bought my M1 MacBook Air I ordered one with 8Gb of RAM and a second with 16Gb of RAM. I tested them extensively and even opening huge numbers of tabs in multiple web browsers, running large numbers of apps etc it was very hard to tell which had 8Gb and which had 16Gb. I've said it before but I'm sure Apple will have done their market research - people using multiple monitors will be much more likely to have the higher end products that now ship with at least an M1 Pro. Users buying the lower end products like the Air and 13inch Pro will overwhelmingly not use multiple displays, docks etc etc.

My point was time moves on, you cannot expect to use a device indefinitely, it will always have an end point.

Technology does move on, that CPU is nearly 11 years old now, you can't use the same equipment forever. Your CPU benchmarks according to cpubenchmark.net at 5604 points, the new 12th generation i7 equivalent benchmarks at 34,340. My beef isn't with 2nd gen Intel Core CPUs being unsupported in Windows 11, it's the ones that fall just the wrong side of the generation that's supported.

It’s not that I don’t like the timeline. It’s that there doesn’t appear to be a timeline. They said “soon” in 2018. It might not both you as an individual if the site isn’t HTTPS but it doesn’t look good that our site is being flagged as not-secure when the vast majority of other sites sorted this quite some time ago. I can claim we haven’t had a response when we haven’t had a response - previous responses are from so long ago. People aren’t being unreasonable in their polite requests for an update which hasn’t been forthcoming.

Nothing in quite some time and it is now really poor that the site that is meant to represent a community of people committed to discussing and following best practice isn't doing so with their own community site. People have been very patient, no one is asking for something to happen overnight but AFAIK there's been no update on progress in a very long time and it's poor we're half way through 2022 with a site that most browsers now flag as not secure.

It's a shame there's been no response.

NetSupport DNA is brilliant. You could always use MECM.

I totally understand where you're coming from, but sometimes you can be your own worst enemy. The longer you keep old kit running, the longer they'll want you to keep it running. I wouldn't be going down the route of LTSC at all, I'd be removing kit but only after flagging that this will happen several years before and counting down with further warnings. Microsoft's guidance on LTSC is very clear and I wouldn't run an unsupported configuration. If you tell them they HAVE to get to Windows 11 by October 2025 then they will, if you give them get outs then we know what will happen. Those Core2Duos need to go the distance at this point they're at least 10 years old and potentially as old as 16 - way beyond their useful life IMHO.

There is some truth to this but if you look at the generations that are around the cut off I think 7th gen Intel are the last that aren't on the supported list but they launched in 2016, by 2026 they'll obviously be 10, that's quite a long time to sweat an asset.

Microsoft say you shouldn't be using LTSC for general purpose computing, in any case all you are doing is delaying the inevitable - if your PCs don't support Windows 11 then are they really going to be that useful in 2026, 2027, 2028 etc etc?

Ours are 2019, that fix patch didn't work. We'll look at it again during half term, it's too disruptive to mess with again for now.

It doesn't fix it here, rolling back again!

I'm trying it now.