cheredenine

We've had a bit of an audit by some colleagues from a neighboring school and one of the recommendations is to upgrade our fairly elderly core switch. This device has some ethernet ports which would then benefit by an upgrade to gigabit, but it also has gigabit fiber links to the other switches around site. We would also then upgrade these other switches so that they could provide gigabit speeds via copper to the end user. Once upgraded as per the recommendation we'd have a situation where the switches are linked by gigabit fiber to the core switch, but are then also connecting to the end user by gigabit copper. I can't quite reconcile how this would work - unless I'm missing something it would seem that we'd see no benefit at all up until the point where the fiber link becomes the bottleneck between core switch and end user. Upgrading the core switch would also allow us to increase capacity in future (site-wide wifi infrastructures are planned, for example), but it seems to me we'd need to upgrade the fiber links between switches to 10 gigabit or start pairing them to improve performance, or leave the switches around site as they are. Any thoughts?

Hello! I'm doing a little fact finding exercise and am curious. How much data are people backing up to off-site cloud based services and what sort of price are they paying? We currently use MS DPM to do our backups, with the backup server located in a different building across site from the server room. Whilst I'm happy this is sufficiently separated, it was raised in a recent governors meeting that this might not be enough, specifically in the context of having an airfield near-by and being over-flown by light aircraft occasionally! Thanks!

Hello, hello. Bit of a toss-up where to post this, but given the wifi side of it is working I guess the internet section is the best place to start. I'm doing some testing with iOS devices and have successfully link a couple to our network through a RADIUS implementation managed on NPS on a Server 2012 box. I've used the iphone configurator to create and distribute a package of settings that allow the iOS devices to find and connect to an access point and authenticate against our RADIUS server. This part works fine. The problem comes when accessing the internet. The distributed package of settings includes the IP address of our filtering proxy server and it seems the Safari browser works nicely with this. Other apps seem to ignore these settings completely, however - for instance the built-in mail app on an iPad Mini can't retrieve mail at all, as if it is ignoring the proxy settings. Our proxy set up involves a Protex server running in a VM which forwards traffic on to a Cachepilot box, which then forwards traffic on to our broadband connection and Norfolk County Council's systems. I can't set the devices to connect directly to the internet (we don't have this option and it wouldn't be wise, anyway) so must look for a work around. Any advice on the best way to resolve this issue? Cheers!

I think my better half might prefer me paying a professional, but i want to play with the car and save on the labour! Will be attempting an oil change on both soon and will work up to the bigger jobs... One last tip - if performance is a sluggish around 2000 rpm, it might be your MAF sensor has failed. This sits on the pipe from air filter to engine, measuring the quantity and temperature of air flowing into the engine. It is notorious for failing, but is easy to test by unplugging the sensor and taking for a test drive - if it feels a lot more pokey then the sensor has failed. Quality replacements start from approx £70 (there is a Vauxhall one that fits and is cheaper than the equivalent Rover unit), though i've been driving mine with the sensor disconnected without much issue - the car wont rev over 4000rpm in this state, but all the performance you need is available below 3000rpm anyway...

Not sure if this is too late for you or not, but check out the MG Rover forums, particularly the Diesel section for advice on cambelt change, etc. This job on the L-Series diesel is a DIY-able job without too much bother, apparently, and would save you an awful lot of money. One for the chaps on that forum has opened an online shop for Rovers, for example, and does the cambelt kit for £90 and the necessary tools to lock the crankshaft and fuel pump and release the belt tensioner for about £7. The clutch job i know less about, though have read about people getting a decent clutch from a third party, then just paying for it to be installed... Got two diesel Rover 45s myself, one each for me and the missus. Depending on average journey length, they do between 47 and 52 mpg....

Thanks for the feedback everyone - sounds like one full day or two half days would work best, maybe on a rotation depending on candidate. I am mindful that even part-time jobs can be tricky to fit in to your schedule; my wife has found that when looking for part-time jobs and all the employers want someone for 1.5 hours a day! Will look again at apprenticeships, but still mindful of the extra load in training them up as want to do it properly...

I will be the first to say - 7 hours a week is not ideal, but as Ben said, some help is better than none. Especially as its just been me here, in a school of 600 kids, doing all the IT. And covering large chunks of a sick data manager's job. And getting to do the tricky bits of the timetable I'm thinking 2 or 3 days a week and the hours divided equally is probably going to be best. Ideally i'd have someone on site every day, but i don't think it reasonable to expect someone to work just an hour and a half at a time. Also some jobs are inevitably going to take a while to complete and aren't conducive to dropping tools part way through. Job role i'm thinking is going to be mainly the 'can't print' and 'projector don't work' jobs, but i also want someone who will patrol the ICT rooms and proactively sort problems. we have trouble with ICT rooms being neglected as they're bookable resources and don't 'belong' to anyone. We did think about apprentiships, but it wasn't a good match. If we were to do t, it'd have to be done properly and i just haven't the time to train someone up from first principles. The external support company is an interesting idea, but i suspect we'll want to keep it in-house. There has been a history here on relying on external bodies (the LEA) and its become clear that the services levels offered aren't amazing...

So our business manager has managed to squeeze in a bit of money for an ICT technician in her recent budget, no mean feat considering the drop in cash coming from the LEA. She has asked me to consider a job description and a pattern of working as we can only afford 7 (or 7.5) hours a week. So - people in a similar situation: what pattern of working do you have your technician work? One day a week, two days, etc? What sort of use do you put them too? I'm mindful that 7 hours a week isn't much to fit in significant amounts of training nor get stuck in to anything meaty, but i want to make best use of the time.. Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions! We're looking at a very small quantity to buy at the moment and so i don't want to spend any time setting up for a single Win7 device knowing that i'll be going Win7 site wide sometime (hopefully) soon, thereby avoiding the profiles issue completely. Plans may change, however!

We do have roaming profiles for staff, unfortunately, so this is a concern!

Hello all, I'm trying to get a quote for a laptop that is still compatible with WinXP and so has drivers readily available. This is causing my suppliers some trouble, however. Does anyone know of a make/model that fits the bill, whilst still being reasonably good value and not over specificed? We're planning a move to Win7, but for the moment i don't want both on the network causing profile confusions, etc. Cheers!

Thanks for the info - so good things to ponder on! I had wondered if it was possible to do a DIY SAN device, but having heard that some of the software link OpenFiler might struggle under load i was a little put off. Interesting about Win2012 - i'm presuming i could spec up a suitable server with plenty of storage, set up Win2012 and have something potentially a bit cheaper than a dedicated device? I'd just need to worry about providing sufficient NICs and maybe having a dedicated switch twixt it and the other servers...

Having second thoughts a little based on cost issues - i'll not rule anything out, but i suspect we'll not get the go ahead to buy new servers to run VMs and then £6000 t0 £10,000 of storage as well. Might have to think again and spec up any VM servers we use with lots and lots of storage!

Thanks for the reply. So basically the set up i described, or one similar, is basically possible and has no immediate show-stopping problems? Assuming so, i would just need to find the best configuration for us, i suppose.

No replies? Have i posed an un-answerable question?!

I'm pondering server upgrades and am formulating an 'ideal situation' plan for how i'd like things to go. I'd like to use virtualisation, but have a question about this in relation to file shares and file storage. In my initial draft plan i envisaged a host server running several VMs, one of which would be a file server VM and does nothing but manage file shares. This would then be the virtual server staff and pupils connected to to provide their network drives, etc. Storage is the next question and i had thought that an external storage device would be a good plan; maybe an iSCSI device which the virtual file server would connect to. So the virtual file server has one or more drives for data storage that are actually hosted by the storage device, and these drives are then shared out to client computers. Makes sense? My queston is, however, whether this is a good idea? I'm aware that a virtualised server can be set to access or even run from an iSCSI device, but i'm not knowledgable yet to determine if this is sensible solution. I'm concerned, obviously, about reliability and performance, etc. Any opinions? Thanks!

Hmm... Think i have this resolved - or rather i've got a work around, but no closer to finding out why it was happening. I could not get the GPP thing to work - it throws up an error on our 2k3 domain controller when you run the GP modelling tool against it, and never works on the client machine. Wierd. In the end i saw that the correct policy would be applied if i ran gpupdate whilst the user was logged in (students don't have the rights to do this, so was done remotely using Impero). Soooooo i added the gpupdate command to the end of the login script and it works now. Thanks for the help!

Going mad with this. Pushing registry settings out with a GPP appears not to work; checking it with an RSOP gives a 'group policy registry' failure. Can't see any conflicts. I can delete the particular registry key that holds the proxy setting and run a gpupdate and it then works, but not much help...

Hmm.. Getting an error on the 2k8 server when running the RSOP on this with the registry settings enabled - have applied a hotfix, but needs a restart over night to activate it. Think i'll revisit this tomorrow!

Thanks for the hint - i've added the extra settings but to no avail. A student logging in on the computers in question still sees the old settings. Feels like the computer just isn't applying the policy at all! We've a mix of 2003 and 2008R2 servers - the main DC is 2003. I've made the GPP changes on a 2008R2 DC and i'm assuming this will still work?

Hello all! I'm having some problems working out exactly whats going wrong with group policy application in one of our ICT rooms and i hope someone can help! We have a new filtering system that is set to apply different filters depending on which port you route traffic through. Student users have a user group policy set to route traffic through a particular port, thereby getting the correct level of filtering. This works fine all over site apart from one room where the old settings continue to apply irrespective of what I do. The old settings in question point directly to our cachepilot proxy server, by-passing the new filter, and referring internet traffic out to our broadband conection - since taking on our new filter our connection is no longer filtered at LA level, so this means that students are getting unfiltered access to the internet! I've run an RSOP test on a real student on a real computer in that room and the result gives what i'd expect to see - the proxy address set to our filter. This behaviour is not what happens for real, however. I've been through the policies and can't see any discrepancies; the settings are identical for all intents and purposes to a student logging on in one of our other rooms and getting the right proxy. I made sure that the Internet settings in group policy were tidied up when i first rolled out the proxy changes; so browser customisations on all policies apart from the one containing the proxy setting were reset. I've tried this again, with no effect. I've cleared all profiles from the PCs in question, so no old settings can be effecting behaviour; i've also edited the student mandatory profile to include the correct proxy address. Nothing yet has worked. I get the impression that something is blocking the computers from receiving the relevant user policy but can see no errors or behaviour that would explain whats going on or indeed give me any hints as to how to fix. Any ideas, please?

Thanks to all for comments, especially SchoolsBroadband comprehensive run-down, very useful! To answer tmcd35's question: there is a distinct anti-county feeling at our school based on issues we've had previously in terms of mediocre support, lengthy drawn-out projects not quite reaching fruition and, at times, just outright bad-management. Consequently we've been looking to move away from county's services pretty much across the board. We're a school of approx 600 pupils, so last weeks news would make things cheaper for us; though the fact that the money was always issued and then top-sliced made the actual figure pretty much irrelevant. Other news about broadband funding i heard from our business manager is more significant, however, specifically that we can no longer be forced to pay the fee for the county broadband connection even we don't use it. Previously, if we wanted another service, we'd be given and topsliced the fee for the county service, then have to find £££ for the connection we wanted to use. Soon we'll be given the money and if we don't use the county service we keep the cash...

Filtering we have - bought a protex license and are running it as a virtual machine. Firewall we'll need - any recommendations? As to picking the ISP, are there any requirements we need to take in to account? Any service standards that a prospective supplier must adhere to? Cheers

We're a Norfolk school currently using the local authorities connection. Previously the funding was arranged so that approx £28000 was given to the school then immediately top-sliced in order to pay for our broadband connection. We had no say in this; county's opinion was that schools must put up with this arrangement as it subsidised the provision of internet access to smaller schools in rural locations who wouldn't be able to afford the £250,000 required to run fibre to their location. Things have changed now, however, and moves are afoot to alter how we're charged for broadband; this also now means that the funding we get can't be taken away from us if we choose not to use county's services. Hurrah! So; what issues do i need to be aware of when looking for alternate providers? There is a good chance that our cluster primary schools will also be interested in moving and i suspect i'll get roped in to advising them to an extent, to. Becta used to have some advice i believe about what to llok for, but as they've now gone, i'm not sure where to look. Cheers!

Hello all! I'm having this random problem on a few newly reimaged PCs. If you start IE8 Impero decides you're trying to disable it and will log you out. We're out of our support contract and, having reimaged the PCs this summer, I've only got version 2.2.4 to put on our computers - they did have 2.3.6 on, but following a server OS reinstall and other drama, i don't have an install file for 2.3.6 any longer... Any clues on how to fix this or otherwise get round it? Otherwise our pupils wont be going on the internet.... Thanks!