Wilderbeest

We have started to see GCDS failing as it's trying to remove OUs from the G Suite domain. For example, if the AD OU is removed, the G Suite OU would normally have been removed automatically in the past, but we are getting this error in the logs: [2020-09-03 14:49:16,792+0100] [swingWorker-pool-2-thread-6] [ERROR] [plugin.google.ApiaryRetryPolicy] Retry attempts exhausted for Deleting orgunit uk/sch/herts/xxxxx/School/Users/TEST, with attempt # 0 [2020-09-03 14:49:16,792+0100] [swingWorker-pool-2-thread-6] [ERROR] [plugin.google.ApiaryRetryPolicy] Last encountered exception: com.google.api.client.googleapis.json.GoogleJsonResponseException: 400 Bad Request { "code" : 400, "errors" : [ { "domain" : "global", "message" : "Invalid Customer Id", "reason" : "invalid" } ], "message" : "Invalid Customer Id" } In this case, it's a test OU created in AD, which GCDS is happy to create in G Suite domain. Remove it in AD and GCDS can't sync that change. Has anyone else noticed this behaviour? It seem to be affecting multiple sites and is a recent development. Any ideas?

We have just started looking after a school that has an Aerohive WLAN. The school, the previous support company and the original installers have no details of the login details to manage these APs. Does anyone have any experience with taking over management in this situation? Aerohive says there is nothing they can do as the school is an end user. (I must say, it doesn't say much for Aerohive end-user support!)

That's good to hear. I guess the other thing that is worth mentioning - longer HDMI cables are always a problem with HD. With 4K it's potentially even more so. Also, as the 6065 only has one HDMI input, other devices such as visualisers need to support HDMI pass-through and at the 4K resolution. Choose and test graphics cards carefully - we found that some units (e.g. the USB3 adapters from Star.tech worked, but audio was terrible, regardless of the resolution. On other HDMI monitors, the audio was fine.) Make sure HDMI cables/splitters/connection components are suitable. The price of the cables doesn't seem to correlate with 4K success! We have used this graphics card successfully at 4K - MSI AMD R7 240 730MHz 1600MHz 2GB 128-bit DDR3 DVI HDMI VGA LOW PROFILE FAN PCI-E GRAPHICS CARD.

We've had problems with the 6065's we have installed. There is a firmware issue which makes them pretty much unreliable/unusable - Smart has NO IDEA when this will be fixed. The 4K feature is more of a problem than a help. Nothing has 4K capability as standard, so you will have to add in some extra hardware to make it work. £45 PCIe cards work well. Then the 6065 image will be beautiful, but is an extended desktop - unless you have a 4K monitor on the teacher station, allowing you to mirror. You will need to get some software to add the command bar to the 6065. (Something like display fusion). After all of this, the icons are too small to be usable. You can scale up text and icons, but it's system wide, not display specific and applications such as Sims do not like scaled text. So, we have ended up a) using them as expensive TVs until the firmware fix finally materialises b) using them at lower than 4K if we are brave enough to attempt an interactive lesson. We will probably not be getting any more 6065 units. Nice idea - they just don't deliver the exciting Bett promise.

We've had problems with the 6065's we have installed. There is a firmware issue which makes them pretty much unreliable/unusable - Smart has NO IDEA when this will be fixed. The 4K feature is more of a problem than a help. Nothing has 4K capability as standard, so you will have to add in some extra hardware to make it work. £45 PCIe cards work well. Then the 6065 image will be beautiful, but is an extended desktop - unless you have a 4K monitor on the teacher station, allowing you to mirror. You will need to get some software to add the command bar to the 6065. (Something like display fusion). After all of this, the icons are too small to be usable. You can scale up text and icons, but it's system wide, not display specific and applications such as Sims do not like scaled text. So, we have ended up a) using them as expensive TVs until the firmware fix finally materialises b) using them at lower than 4K if we are brave enough to attempt an interactive lesson. We will probably not be getting any more 6065 units. Nice idea - they just don't deliver the exciting Bett promise. (If you are a Mac user, the 6065 does at least support multi-touch, which the E70 doesn't.)

They are all big an heavy. At least the 6065 has handles making mounting easier. Make sure your walls are solid or properly prepared with a suitable pattress. We've had problems with the 6065's we have installed. There is a firmware issue which makes them pretty much unreliable/unusable - Smart has NO IDEA when this will be fixed. The 4K feature is more of a problem than a help. Nothing has 4K capability as standard, so you will have to add in some extra hardware to make it work. £45 PCIe cards work well. Then the 6065 image will be beautiful, but is an extended desktop - unless you have a 4K monitor on the teacher station, allowing you to mirror. You will need to get some software to add the command bar to the 6065. (Something like display fusion). After all of this, the icons are too small to be usable. You can scale up text and icons, but it's system wide, not display specific and applications such as Sims do not like scaled text. So, we have ended up a) using them as expensive TVs until the firmware fix finally materialises b) using them at lower than 4K if we are brave enough to attempt an interactive lesson. We will probably not be getting any more 6065 units. Nice idea - they just don't deliver the exciting Bett promise.

E70 was indeed terrible! Got to "maximum" volume at about 25% of the adjustment range then no louder after this. Terrible design - no analogue audio output, so hooking up external speakers is not easy. I believe the same limitation on the 4065 etc. The 6065 is better sound-wise, but we installed with the Roth Sub Zero II sound bars, which are really good. Teachers love the sound bar, even if very disappointed with the 6065s!

We've had problems with the 6065's we have installed. There is a firmware issue which makes them pretty much unreliable/unusable - Smart has NO IDEA when this will be fixed. The 4K feature is more of a problem than a help. Nothing has 4K capability as standard, so you will have to add in some extra hardware to make it work. £45 PCIe cards work well. Then the 6065 image will be beautiful, but is an extended desktop - unless you have a 4K monitor on the teacher station, allowing you to mirror. You will need to get some software to add the command bar to the 6065. (Something like display fusion). After all of this, the icons are too small to be usable. You can scale up text and icons, but it's system wide, not display specific and applications such as Sims do not like scaled text. So, we have ended up a) using them as expensive TVs until the firmware fix finally materialises b) using them at lower than 4K if we are brave enough to attempt an interactive lesson. We will probably not be getting any more 6065 units. Nice idea - they just don't deliver the exciting Bett promise.

We've had problems with the 6065's we have installed. There is a firmware issue which makes them pretty much unreliable/unusable - Smart has NO IDEA when this will be fixed. The 4K feature is more of a problem than a help. Nothing has 4K capability as standard, so you will have to add in some extra hardware to make it work. £45 PCIe cards work well. Then the 6065 image will be beautiful, but is an extended desktop - unless you have a 4K monitor on the teacher station, allowing you to mirror. You will need to get some software to add the command bar to the 6065. (Something like display fusion). After all of this, the icons are too small to be usable. You can scale up text and icons, but it's system wide, not display specific and applications such as Sims do not like scaled text. So, we have ended up a) using them as expensive TVs until the firmware fix finally materialises b) using them at lower than 4K if we are brave enough to attempt an interactive lesson. We will probably not be getting any more 6065 units. Nice idea - they just don't deliver the exciting Bett promise.

A little update... We are finding that the sticky tape solution on the back of the B5400 touchpads (as fitted by Medion/Lenovo) does not fix the problem. We have some schools that are now seeing a 100% failure rate on the touch pad. There are may reports of teachers losing an evening's planning when the touchpad locks up and they don't have access to a mouse and can't remember the keyboard shortcuts.

A general point about the B5400's. Nothing impressive about the wireless performance on these. Probably slightly below average, but not a "problem". Biggest problem is the touchpad, which fails on over half the units we have. Lenovo are particularly helpful about this (haha - that was a joke). Lenovo continue to sell this shockingly poor quality stock, knowing the high failure rates and expecting customers to put up with the several week delay while they are being reworked. I often think the true worth of a company is shown in their response to problems. Lenovo's is WOEFUL!

Just a word of warning about the B5400s. They have a design fault which means touchpads are very erratic to the point of being unusable. Lenovo will rework them through Medion in Germany, but this process takes about a month. At one school we have more than a 70% failure rate. Very strange that Lenovo are still selling these knowing about the very high failure rate.

We have quite a lot of Ruckus kit and it is generally very good. We were stung by Kerberos stopping working on XP clients (or rather for random users) and I was very disappointed that Ruckus knew about it and didn't own up to it. It would have saved us hours. It's definitely a Ruckus bug, but I wouldn't hold your breath, as the workaround does work. There is a GPO ADM Template that can be downloaded and used here (Using TCP for Kerberos Transactions) to update all your XP clients. W7 and above uses TCP already, so doesn't need (or want!) the fix. We have also found that the version of driver on your network cards makes a huge difference. Low reported speeds normally means the driver is out-of-date. Intel seems especially sensitive, but at least they have an update checker. As previously mentioned, you will need to select AES to get the full N speeds, that your clients are capable of. (Generally, we see most laptops connecting at 130mbps with Good to Very Good signal strength. E.g. not excellent signal.) It's always worth a quick check with inSSIDer to see if there is channel conflict. Even if the Ruckus kit is good, it will only work well if it has pretty clear channels. Old wireless should definitely be turned off. I wouldn't chuck the Ruckus yet, as in general we see it perform at least as well as the rest and the educational deals at the moment are excellent.

Thanks for the clarification CyberNerd! I've played around a bit more and this is what I've found: 1) G Drive sort of works with the home drive set up through the AD user object, but not on a mapped network drive. 2) The MSI installs but won't run unless you also have Visual C++ 2008 Runtime SP1 installed. 3) G Drive syncs, but then fails to monitor the network location, bombing out with a "Sorry, Google Drive needs to quit. Error:(1784, 'ReadDirectoryChangesW', 'the supplied user buffer is not valid for the requested operation.')". This seems to be a well known issue, to which Google responds, "Typically we recommend setting your sync directory, the Google Drive folder, on a local, internal disk. The application was designed for such use and while some users are able to install to network drives, it may result in unexpected errors." (Google Groups) 4) Settings don't appear to be scriptable, GPO'able or MST'able. So users have to go through the advanced setup. 5) Settings for a user are not part of the roaming profile, so users have to go through the advanced set up at each new system they log in to. Perhaps, I've missed something. (I'm not normally quite this dull!) But, this hardly seems like a production solution for schools.

Sorry, still not sure I get it... :-( I understand that it's possible to sync the home folders share on the server with a single Google Drive account. My understanding breaks down after this. 1) If we have 300+ home folders on the server, does that mean that all users' data share one user's 25GB allowance? 2) Does the sync operate as a service or does the server have to be logged in? 3) How do the pupil accounts access this shared G drive? Do the iPads all authenticate to google drive using the same account? If not, then how is access from individual accounts to the correct folder in the shared G drive enabled? Manually, one by one?