southhamster

Got one this morning at6:40 ok

Hi, I've used virtualnames. Co.uk and been happy with them. I think they are in Dorset assuming they haven't Feb washed away. ..

Hmm. tons of stuff as I support a few schools self-employed. Had to buy a Toyota Avensis (the stealth taxi) to get it all in. 2 plastic bins of kit and tools + 2 bags of cables etc, toolbox and small rucksack with my lovely HP probook 4340s. Loads of cables, 6 way mains leads, external USB DVD drive, esata/USB3 SSD, PSU's, adapters of all denominations and really useful a non contact voltage detector and LED torch combined. At home I have (ebay specials) 3COM 48 port gigabit switches , NAS, old Intel server, good spec. desktop PC, UPS, fibre connectors and MAC's, AP's, in fact everything needed to get a school working again if disaster should strike. I probably have far too much kit, but then I wouldn't be a geek otherwise would I....?

Thanks Mr.Ben, saves me fiddling about!

The strangest thing I got was a calendar on the shape of an oil well from the Azerbaijan education stand!

But not while you're at BETT please. ..

I'm on the train! Found a nice little bluetooth keyboard to type with; pairs well with my phone. Just enjoyed a First Great Western "breakfast" and all set to geek out at BETT. See you all there!

Hmmm, could improve the nutritional value of school dinners as well as getting rid of a pest.

Hi, long time "lurker" here; finally got around to saying hello to all. My excuse is that I usually look at edugeek on my phone and trying to type on it is like trying to paint a house with a water cannon. I live in South Devon and support several primary schools, 1 part time permanent employee and the others self-employed. As an old geezer I admit to actually using Windows 2.11 for work.... . Looking forward to seeing our glorious leader Mr. Gove next wednesday at BETT. Will try and get to the Edugeek stand to recover afterwards. Hobbies: cutting down trees, working, turnip wrangling.

Always had good experience with ijcannings.co.uk Not the cheapest but done properly and not staple gunned to the walls.......

My cheapskate tip.find an old hub or switch with rack mount. Gut it.take off the lid...and there's your shelf.

I've setup QNAP NAS (RAID1) for several customers and in the last 2 years one had a failed Hitachi and one a failed Seagate, both replaced under warranty. The great thing was of course that the NAS just carried on working. I've used 2 of the 1TB WD RED drives in my own NAS for nearly a year and noticed how quiet and cool they run and with very little vibration. As I understand it, the RED drives don't keep trying to correct errors leading to timeouts and dropping out of the arrray.

You might be able to configure nagios to do something - maybe using the server motherboard/ambient temp sensor? Some switches can also monitor temperature - I don't know if there's some way maybe of using snmp to monitor that, again maybe with nagios or similar. Ideal server room temp - I was always told the lower the better although aircon costs can make it very expensive. Lateral thinking is, locate the server room on the North side of the building, possibly using louvred but secure vents to the outside with an extract fan on a temp sensor. It always amuses me to see schools who have installed an extract fan in the (completely sealed) server room with no inlet vent. How does that work? Which reminds me, it's so annoying to see brand new schools (BSF PFI) with IT Suites on the south side of a building, massive non-opening windows and then aircon installed afterwards to remove the heat. grrrr. Do architects do it on purpose? I'd be a bit concerned about temps above 20-25 deg C. 30-35 sounds a bit much! I'd also think about humidity - I'd assume that drier is better to avoid oxidising contacts and increase heat dissipation, but low humidity does increase the effect of static electricity.

I've seen this problem connecting to a QNAP 219 Pii from a win 7 client.apologies if you've tried it, but using the server IP instead pg the name fixed it got me