FishCustard

I'd get hold of this publication from NARIC (the designated body for qualification equivalence in the UK): https://www.naric.org.uk/naric/organisations/Publications/International%20Secondary%20Qualifications.aspx UCAS also have a list, but the latest version I could find is from 2015.

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Confirmed that this worked for me too.

AIOs don't fail at any greater rate than other units really, but when they do fail they're often harder to fix - this is the issue.

According to our SIMS support team (note - I've not tried this!), this helps:

Echoing the various salient comments about desktop only - if it's a dedicated room, there's no reason not to use desktops, and plenty of reasons not to use laptops. Get the best PCs that @ICTDirect_Dave can give you within your budget. Unless you're doing intensive compute stuff (e.g. GCSE CS, Adobe suite, etc.) you can drop down a Core iX generation or two and save some bucks without sacrificing very much at all.

We check for the presence of the connection in the script - if it's there, the script just exits.

The Transport Sec has announced plans to simplify situations like these by allowing insolvent airlines to be wound down gracefully (allowing planes to fly for as long as necessary to bring people home). Eminently sensible in my view. https://www.ttgmedia.com/news/news/thomas-cook-transport-secretary-hints-at-airline-insolvency-reforms-19439

https://www.data-path.co.uk/ We used them over the summer for some cabling and found them to do excellent work.

That is a massive undertaking that cannot be done overnight when an airline collapses. The CAA has been planning Operation Matterhorn (the repatriation) for weeks. Starting and operating an airline is (rightly!) an immensely complicated process, even for governments.

I seem to recall SIMS Detentions being very... odd, and hard to work with programmatically. The idea of running a daily report of "L" marks that day as a detention register seems eminently sensible however, and should save some time.

Loose tea and a metal strainer/"reusable teabag" thingy!

@mhaddock I would recommend using a contraption that allows you to mount a monitor to the side of an SFF PC - I can't recall what they're actually called at the moment, but I'll try to find a link tomorrow. They allow for the compact footprint of an AIO with the flexibility to swap components around. Pretty sure they work with things like the HP 800 G1/G2.

If you're going to do that, just skip SOLUS3 entirely and deploy SIMS/FMS with PowerShell. https://serenity.uk.net/posts/sims-fms-deployment-powershell/

I doubt my Head will feel the same way if school operations grind to a halt after a no-deal...

I've been doing a fair bit of Brexit-proofing of the operations here (and convincing other department heads to do the same!). I took my foot off the accelerator so to speak when the Benn Act was passed as it looked less likely that no-deal would happen. Given that we don't know whether the PM will abide by the law(!) however, I should probably get back to it. I imagine Office 365 won't be an issue, although I've not found any documentation. What issues does Lord Agnew's letter specify - surely suppliers in the EU won't blackhole connections from the UK in the event of no-deal?

This looks like it'll work: https://amzn.to/2NmdXcy Takes VGA and 3.5 mm in and spits out HDMI. Requires USB-micro for power though. EDIT: Sorry, linked to a version that wasn't in stock!

Using SIMS on an iPad, or anything without a keyboard and mouse is going to be a thoroughly miserable experience. I wouldn't recommend it, regardless of the technology stack you use to do it. That said, if you have to do it I'd recommend using the Remote Desktop Web Client (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/clients/remote-desktop-web-client-admin) as it removes the need for an RDP app.

Use Process Monitor and see what it's doing while/before hanging if possible.

I'm not sure that you can script renames of domain PCs, as I seem to recall it requiring two restarts to achieve (one to remove from domain, one to rename and put back). However, it may be that things have moved on since the last time I looked into this!

We had a problem along these lines - I wanted to just connect the to the PaperCut system, but their laptops were obviously locked down and I didn't have admin rights. I just gave them a USB printer in the medical office which they swapped the cable about from as needed - they were happy as they only needed to print every so often. It wasn't exactly a clean solution, but then again it was only for a few weeks.

This^ It's not the case that more vCPUs = better. It's aaaaall about scheduling.

Oh I got that - I just want to see if it's the fact they're new VMs/Server 2019 VMs or domain controllers that's causing the lag.

If you create a new (non-migrated) VM - not a DC, just a regular Server 2019 install - does that lag?

Possibly articles in The Key (https://thekeysupport.com/) although I've not seen one myself.