maark

I would go vanilla - depending on how much active directory/native microsoft experience you have it may be worth getting a third party in to help setup but you will still save money compared to RM and will be running industry standard stuff so be able to choose from a large variety of support options. Software I recommend - impero, papercut/pcounter, dovestones AD bulk users, Ghost/WDS to replace RM tools.

I would also like to hear what problems you have - saying it is pants without any specifics. It seems a lot of FE colleges and universities are using it so I can't believe it is that bad?

one reason to go over is 10GB mailbox - and 15GB storage - looking at moving exchange from 2003 to 2010 but a mail server and backup for 1500 students to match that would be very pricey.

support was ok for edu via email for me got it working with test domain - gonna test google next to see how it compares. integration with its learning appeals to me with live@edu.

Tapes expensive and struggling to cope with capacity needed now. When tape autoloader died I went to NAS box then copy to 2TB e-sata drive for off -site.

Did it myself but used now-how of suppliers - if you have a big supplier get in touch with their server specialists - tell them what you want to do and get them to spec servers up - pick their brains. You can then get a quote from them but shop round and see what other quotes you can get once you have the spec.

Don't really see the point of buying 3 more physical boxes - trying to reduce the amount of servers - surely virtualisation offers easier backup and recovery. Less chance of failure as long your host is a decent server - and can restore images to a different server anyway. Also less power and ups to worry about.

Not shared storage but have 2 hosts - also running DPM 2010 so can backup virtual servers and restore them.

Thanks for advice on this - going to get 3 servers going - on different nic's - though it looks as though ram is the more crucial factor.

good point - staff can't be without sims to take registers.

Have trialled running sims net as a TS remote app on a server 2008 terminal server - virtual server in hyper v. All works ok with about 10 users. Now want to scale up to whole staff - probably about 90/100 concurrent users. Should I setup 3 servers in a farm with load balancing or just have make sure the one server has loads of ram etc devoted to it? Have heard reports of problems with schools trying to do the same with a lot of staff. We are currently using an ancient citrix system based on 3 aging servers and they want £11000 to update licences so I need to replace it. Any advice appreciated as strugglijg to find an answer on the web.

I have one physical DC and one on hyper v. Never had a problem with hyper v one but as pointed out if your whole hyper v setup went down you could find it tricky to get AD back up.

We have had this before - try renaming "my sims documents" folder (inside my documents) so it creates a new one. Edit - for that particular user.

Hyper V is straightforward - you need right hardware - enable virtualistion in bios - is cheap if you have MS schools agreement - setup server 2008 datacenter edition which will allow unlimited virtual servers with no extra cost. Not tried other solutions.

2 things dpm 2010 has been good here but you really need firestreamer to get data to external disks - I am using it but have not raised domain level to 2008 yet. If you have exchange 2003 be careful - search other threads as there is a warnng about effect of raising domain level to 2008.

We have been using impero v3 for a while here and found it very good - also works on wireless laptop trolleys ok - don't think you could reproduce all the features with cheaper software. Once you have bought licences then support/software assurance is £1000 annually if you have 700 machines or less which is not bad. Also logs come in useful for child protection type issues - can flag keywords and take screenshots automatically.

Per day rate is reasonable - a lot of firms charging £600 a day a while ago.

On a slightly different tack - anyone noticed how little Apple stuff there is at bett this year? Are Apple making too much money from ipods/ipads and consumer stuff to bother with education?

You have to seize them - more information here How to view and transfer FSMO roles in Windows Server 2003 Also you have to think about DHCP and DNS - DNS can run on both but DHCP runs only on one usually so that would have to be setup on the other. If you have a decent spec new server with Raid hopefully you will not have problems - install crucial roles on that.

You can run both as DC's with automatic replication. Some Master roles can only be held by only one DC (best to use your newer server) but these can be transferred to the other DC should the one holding the master roles fail.

We had this a while back - turned out to be sophos - had to alter a setting - tick exclude remote files. You could try safe mode with networking and then try disabling different services to try and narrow it down. Another possibility is a log off script that is not valid.

we use truancy call/ call parents - seems to work pretty well.

Hi, not sure about earlier questions - still testing full capabilities of dpm but have got firestreamer - cost £497 from MR ICT Ltd | IT support, services and consultancy in Leeds, York, Yorkshire - works ok backs direct to e-sata drive connected to nas. Also using qnap nas TS419U - backing up exchange and sharepoint as well as hyper v servers.

IT support - depends how much in house knowledge you have and what system you are running - if it is standard microsoft then there are a lot of potential companies but can be hard to find a good one. Can do without one if you have the know how. Sims - look at licensing costs - it would cost us as much to buy the licences from capita as it does from the LA with support included. Direct support from capita was not very good last time I used it but that was a while ago - may have improved.

We have been using it for a while now - agree the support is very good. We had a few teething problems but working on all student machines now - including a load of wireless trolleys with no problem. Very good for keeping students on task - also useful for bullying, child protection type stuff as logs of sessions are kept and keywords flagged.