HPlum78

Used Lync / Skype quit a lot, there are plenty of phones supported never tried it off prem mind, the auto attendant is an interesting one and I don't know if Exchange 365 can do anything. Here is a wealth of information Skype : Jeff Schertz's Blog for anything UC wise. Maybe helpful.

Oh and @PR-UK I bet that was the issue you had as well. Just before you go switching SMB signing on/ off just think about any other interactions this will have in your environments! Just dug this up https://dpron.com/os-x-10-11-5-slow-smb/ will maybe help.

I will take a punt on a windows share. SMB signing would be the thing I looked at first, the macs have it on and you don't have it enabled on the domain or you have it on the domain and your mac don't either way round your going to hit problems.

where are these SMB shares? On a storage box or hosted by a Windows server?

Built one out of a rPI and made a web site that graphed the history, also mailed out if the upper limit was hit.

Just a note on this, its is highly recommended that the server that you seized the roles from never be turned back on.

The VAT issue I am unsure of but my wife who is an accountant pointed me at this [h=2]When you must register for VAT[/h]You must register for VAT if your charity’s VAT taxable turnover (the total value of everything you sell that isn’t exempt from VAT) is more than £83,000. You can choose to register if it’s below this, eg if you want to reclaim VAT on your supplies. from here https://www.gov.uk/vat-charities/overview Buying supplies via your school and donating them is allowed but would have to think about how that would look... that's all I have been told (she don't work for free! :-P) As for the one domain, yeah sort of makes sense to align them, as you will realise all the benefits of doing so. Without more detail of the setup of i.e. what the namespaces look like its hard to give a more descript answer.

Like @pcstru says and the simple fact is if the data structure changes you have to rejig the .csv anyhow. If you look @ it from where I sit you are already re-inventing the wheel by having to get data into a .csv. oh and I can also automate you with a simple script!

I don't know if its something that you guys get in to, but I have been asked to produce unit tests for our newly deployed servers so initially I wrote a script that tested everything you could imagine for newly deployed servers and VMs. OS version, KMS server, KMS Key, FW info and that the FW matched what was expected, services, software installed the list goes on and on and to be fair on, and has grown over time. So yesterday I was migrating service from 2K8 to 2K12 servers and was asked about how infrastructure would be testing the servers and migrated services. So the first bit was well we already test our deployments against a desired baseline we have a script for that, but what about the services being migrated? I did not have anything built, so I had heard about pester testing and to get to gips with it I threw together the follow tests script together to test DFS, one of the services recently migrated. This is the pester I came up with while in meetings yesterday afternoon. (its only a starter, already adding tests for checking ports, roots and file systems) Describe "Simple Validation of DFS" { [CmdletBinding()] Param( [Parameter(Mandatory)] [Alias('Host')] [string]$ComputerName ) BEGIN { Try { $HostSession = New-PSSession -ComputerName $ComputerName -ErrorAction Stop } Catch { Throw "Unable to connect to host '$ComputerName' - Aborting Tests." } [string]$HName = $HostSession.ComputerName } PROCESS { $SupportHostOS = 'Server 2012 R2' It "These tests can only be run on the on the following OS ($($SupportHostOS))" { $OS = (invoke-Command -Session $HostSession { Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem }).Caption ($SupportHostOS | ForEach-Object {$OS -like "*$_*"}) -contains $true | Should Be $true } It "The DFS Namespace service should be Running" { (Invoke-Command -Session $HostSession { Get-Service -Name DFS}).status | Should Be 'Running' } It "The DFS Namespace service should be set to Auto Start" { (Invoke-Command -Session $HostSession { Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Property StartMode -Filter "Name='DFS'"}).StartMode | Should Be "Auto" } It "The DFS Replication service should be Running" { (Invoke-Command -Session $HostSession { Get-Service -Name DFSR}).status | Should Be 'Running' } It "The DFS Namespace service should be set to Auto Start" { (Invoke-Command -Session $HostSession { Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Property StartMode -Filter "Name='DFSR'"}).StartMode | Should Be "Auto" } } } Probably not something most would consider, but the idea behind these tests and indeed the baseline test I wrote a while ago is that it starts to inform our desired state for servers and desired state for individual services. With the advent of Cloud the ability to manage the amount of servers has gone beyond the capabilities of what Group Policy can do, so DSC is now becoming the de facto way to manage servers on mass (in fact the only way to manage Nano Server) this type of testing is also good for a quick and dirty way to check the status of a server after any change has been made (intentionally or not) I am not saying rewrite SCOM or OMS here but if a service goes down those tools are useful but the unit testing could help narrow the problem even faster and is worth the time it takes upfront if it saves downtime later. Food for thought....

You could cobble it together and like you suggest bypass the SW box, this would be a major risk in a school setting one I don't think I would be prepared to carry. I would guess this would have to be down to your heads appetite for internet access balanced against the risks of implementing that setup! only you guys can answer those sort of questions.

The only issue with that is the potential of direct internet access to all of your clients that in your 11-16 school may not be the best plan. We in the Uni's don't have the same issues and are not bound by the same rules! With what you have just posted it looking more like the SW box is the issue here.

Not being able to connect to the smoothwall device from a laptop plugged in while on the phone to their tech support! I guess that may be the root cause just there......... I am guessing they got you to reboot that box? what was their tech supports thoughts around why you could not connect?

My thinking is down the same lines as @Liam around the config of the smothwall HW or config. And like he says first place to start is direct connection out to the inter web from the router.

Sorry just trying to get the whole picture here, when you say clients have no network has that stopped all connectivity or is it just they cannot get to the internet? when there server(s) took so long to reboot after did your client connectivity improve?

hmmm so much going on to be honest some clients still working but servers and other clients not. Where to start! so you have smothwall that is a filter/ web proxy if my memory serves and could just be unplugged to be fair and eliminated first thing. Could do with knowing bit more detail around servers like OS ver HW and the likes, what is the core network infra makes and models and the like just the broad strokes no need for the finite detail. oh and client os

External access directly on to your AD, surly that is not needed, can this not be done with ADFS? I would tread very carefully opening up direct access to AD from the outside world.

Could this be a network thing? I am not sold on it, maybe worth looking at what the session is doing... still think its an RDP client/ server config issue.

PowerShell - connect to your golden data source for users (your flavour of MIS system) and have it create and disable users based on their status in the MIS system, while you are at it you can then get them injected it to the correct groups and the likes, also get their home dirs sorted out with the same PowerShell script and if the cloud kittens have got your string then kick of the creation and provisioning for O365 and the likes (can also do on prem exchange). You get the picture I am sure and if you don't maybe Jeff will help you https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/WinOps/WinOps-Conf-2016/Jeffrey-Snover-on-DevOps do you live in Denver? I not saying that off the shelf solutions have not got a place as they do, but being able to taylor your own solutions is a far better place to be not only for your organisation but also for you personally, skill up. https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PowerShell-Create-Active-7e6a3978 The above link is just a starter, I know it is not connecting to an SQL data source but use the PS Gallery and PowerShell.org, guess i am saying use the community...

have not seen this myself but a little digging around threw up the following:- terminal server - Remote Desktop Session Black after Minimize - Server Fault https://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/85926/ Running Interactive Tasks in Minimized Remote Desktop Windows - Knowledgebase - AutoMate I also thought along the lines of disconnect idle sessions config on the TS box, I guess that you don't have access to the server setting as they (PFS) are offering it as an PaaS service interestingly, surly PSF would be better getting there software running as a SaaS soultion but what would I know?

No problem I am just trying to dig out the code, I am bogged down with meetings and go lives at the moment, but will try to get some starters for 10 posted as soon as.

if you run Exchange, create a mailbox (set to allow staff only mail to it) use PowerShell to monitor the mailbox. Get your staff to send a mail to said mailbox with the name of the student(s) in the cc part of outlook mail client (others are available) and get the PowerShell to reset the passwords of the users in the cc part and mail the teacher with the new passwords. No installing RSAT or other bits of software on clients, no delegation of rights this way you get a system that requires little training as its using an application that is well known, and adoption is fairly painless.

Good luck with that, I have just found out we have a girl on the way. Due on the exact same day as her 2 year old brother! all I can infer from that is the routine must be spot on!

Hey I got into IT for the drugs, sex and all night parties! yeah this kind of issue takes us away from doing all new things but its bread and butter work and it always seems to be the most tedious and frustrating bits in IT and also the bits that no one outside of IT see or care about.

I would be surprised at a damaged file causing this, the fact is you have copied the data means every file on the server has been touched by a read and a write, that operation right there would suggest that the files are all intact...... (just a thought) assuming that there was no errors. oh and if you are thinking that you have issues around disk integrity then the last thing I would do is start turning on dedupe.

Probably worth firing up perfmon and adding some of the disk counters to it, just to see what the profile of the disk subsystem looks like over time. I am going to assume that the OS is not on the same set of disks as the file share but I would be tempted to add all drives to the logging. If we cannot see an issue there, I would then start looking at CPU and Memory but my gut feeling here is a bottle neck around storage subsystems I think I saw further up the thread about checking out firmware on the RAID cards and individual disks would be worth looking at that as one disk with a different firmware can cause issues also check that the disks are the same. I have seen some interesting server and SAN configs in my time, I am no storage expert but with around 500TB on the windows network I have seen a lot of configs.