teejay

Have had a break from mine as getting a new puppy intervened and have been so busy at work with some difficult stuff that it really has been the last thing I've wanted to do in my spare time. Just started having a quick nosey again this evening and have just downloaded Raspian as I was still on the old Debian. Also, have back ordered the new Gertboard as that looks really good, although it'll be a real test of my long lost soldering skills as it comes in kit form and has some surface mount components.

Emailed this to Mrs Teejay, think I'm going to need a new SatNav...

Prince 2 foundation and then practitioner are always good ones to have on your CV for manglement jobs, virtually all I look at ask for this. Other than that, it's looking at things like an MA in business management.

Basically you need to put each side in a separate VLAN and set up routing betwenn the 2 VLANS on the L3 switches. Don't set an ip helper address as your DHCP server you want to use will be within the VLAN.

We use it quite a bit for servers, but not for desktops. However, with the mess that is Windows 8 it's looking like it may be back as an option for our next desktop OS upgrade.

This is one thing I don't understand and is something we changed here. If departments have to buy stationery such as pens, exercise books, paper etc from their department budget then why is printing a special case requiring a special budget?

When you start charging their department the full cost of printing from a little desktop printer they soon start clamouring for better options

The easy way is to buy printers on a contract that are charged at cost per page rather than buying toners and other consumables. The real life way, most printers will record their page count over time or use paper cut to record this, you then record any consumables you use over that time, get their cost and divide by number of pages. Don't forget to add in extra for long life consumable items like print head, imaging drums etc and also things like electricity etc. I would also look at adding the cost of the printer by estimating lifespan and using an estimate of the total number of pages used. If that's too much work, look at the costs of the consumables, divide by manufacturers stated number of pages and then double the result as their stated number of pages are always much higher than real life. If printers are shared between depts, then add in the cost of paper plus an overhead margin for people removing paper from the printers for other use. if for sole use of a dept then you have the option of the dept buying their own paper.

The backup strategy and therefore the software you use really depends on what the expectations are in your Disaster Recovery plan and also your archive requirements. Different products have a different focus, for instance Veeam is great for fast restore of servers from a server failure, but is rubbish for long term archiving of files as it doesn't support tape. Offsite backup looks good, but there are issues of speed, data protection issues for confidential data or if they get hacked (it does happen) and also you'll have fun and games trying to do a full site recovery from it. Traditional backup software is generally great for archival backups, but a pita as a complete DR solution for quick restore of data, also don't forget you need a way to test your tape backups. So, the way to go is to look at your disaster recovery and archival requirements, get an idea of expected disaster recovery times from SLT and build a solution around those requirements, don't just go and get a piece of backup software to tick the box that says 'we do backups' as that will bite you in the backside big style when the brown stuff hits the fan.

Can I just say you want to be careful saying that it's a redundant solution because it's not. You are relying on a single SAN, a single UPS and have you sized it correctly so that the servers can be run on one server if the other one fails? You also need to look at your disaster recovery plan and discuss expected recovery times. Look at your critical infrastructure services such as Domain Controllers, File Storage, Email, MIS and get maximum downtimes for these systems and acceptable amount of data loss. You then need to provide a solution based around these times and don't be over optimistic on the speed it takes to recover as it takes a lot longer than you expect. For instance, what happens if the SAN fails, what if you lose the server room to fire/electrical problems, what if you're run over by a bus? Hardware fails, software has glitches, expect the worst. As I have commented on another thread, we've been bitten badly 3 times in the last academic year, with some large outages due to fire, hardware failure and a SAN/Switch software glitch. We are now installing a full blown High Availability solution across 2 server rooms which is costing us a serious amount of money, but SLT/Governors were prepared to spend this to get the required recovery times.

PM'd you

Cracking job by Wiggo and the whole of the Sky team, now for some Olympic Gold Must say I have seen an increase around our area of Lycra clad posers this year, each to their own.

Stick that by the window and you'll have 'punters' knocking at your door Mines had to be boxed up for a little bit due to our new dog, puppies and electronic components just don't mix.

Judge rules that Apple must post adverts in papers and a statement on the front page of their website stating that Samsung didn't copy Apple - Judge: Apple must run ads saying Samsung DIDN'T copy the iPad ? The Register It's about time Apple put some of their slush fund to good use rather than spending it feeding lawyers...

Homeplugs work great, just make sure you spend a little bit extra and get a decent brand like Devolo, I've tried the cheap n cheerful ones and they're pretty rubbish in comparison.

I would say the opposite, what you need when camping is long battery life (unless you're cheating with an EHU:p) and if we ever get decent weather the ability to read it in sunlight. You can get clip on lights for ebook readers which solves the light problem.

One thing I would say is that you probably wouldn't need anywhere near 75-80 AP's with the Ruckus kit. We are a large site and our survey showed we only needed 28, although due to finances we could only buy 7 to cover main areas and we actually find those 7 cover about 70% of the school!

Will Windows 8 be the kickstart for Linux to gain traction on the desktop, it's certainly something I'm beginning to look at more seriously now.

If you read the story, it says they 'plan' to ban them, all I'm suggesting is there is a possibility that 'plan' may suddenly be put on the back burner for certain reasons, just being my usual cynical self:p

So basically some San Fransisco officials want shiny new iPad 3's, Macbook Pro Retina's and a free upgrade to iPhone 5's when they come out...

I have to say if Microsoft continue down the route they are going with Windows 8 in future versions, then it's going to start getting tempting to look at Linux on the desktop and something like this will just make that move more tempting:)

What do you drink? You could also try drinking by the glass rather than by the barrel by the sounds of it:p

That's fantastic news! Hope the final stages go smoothly:)

Go ask a nurse who has worked in A&E...

I know, I have a flogger for every time I have to do that Or should that be