ranj

Dear All Ok your going to have to bear with me on this one, theres lots that I need to say and I am looking for advice on how best to tackle this. I did post on an earlier thread but some of the requirements have changed since that post... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/thin-client-virtual-machines/29732-virtualising-more-server-roles-learning-gateway.html We have jointly decided (myself and SMT) that Learning Gateway isn't the VLE for our school. I am about to spend big on infrastructure, back end services at our school as we prepare to implement a VLE full on by September. Before we go out and buy the VLE I have identified issues with our current network that I want addressing, I talked this through with the senior team and they agree thats its a good idea that we address our current issues and improve operations. I will summarise what we plan/would like to do, we are not going to do all of this in house, we are going to some consultency from third parties to assist us. Replace 2 X aged 2003 servers (1 which runs print server, DC with all roles, exchange 2003, dns, DFS, dhcp and the other server which runs various IIS services, second dns, DFS) with virtualised versions. Introduce Server 2008 to replace old 2003 boxes so will expect to have a mixture of 2003 and 2008. 2008 boxes will be the new DCs, DHCP, DNS, Exchange 2007 and all the rest. These will be virtualised boxes using VMware and there will be a physical DC as part of this for extra redundancy. Exchange 2003 will be migrated to 2007 with mailboxes moved over and shrunk so only a years worth of emails are carried forward. Improve our machine deployment options, currently use ghost and don't like it anymore, very time consuming and am keen to investigate alternatives like Microsoft BDD 2007... System center 2007.. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008... Novell Zenworks.. to streamline our operations and because so many different options are open to us being a schools agreement customer. This is especially important as we intend to roll out Office 2007. Improve our backup operations to store backups up to 1 month (currently only store 2 weeks), want to utilise VMware functions to assist us to improve the schools backup and DR strategy. Also want to implement a SAN to replace our much worked NAS box and this to be part of our backup. On a weekend/nightly want our backups of files and Virtual machines to be backed up onto the Nas box as a secondary backup which will be on another site whilst using the snapshot features a SAN will bring. Will HP MS SANs give us these options or will we need to invest in a more expensive SAN? Integrate our Windows and Mac network together so its one AD username and password and either we centralise all windows/apple storage to a SAN or use a SAN for Windows storage only and use our existing Apple XRAID box (which is perfectly capable) for Mac storage. We also want to control pupil desktops on both the windows and Mac network. We can currently do this because we have 2 seperate networks and directory systems (AD and OD) but administration/management is proving difficult. Apparantly Novell Identity manager will do this? We currently use mandatory profiles for pupils and roaming profiles for Staff. I want to give staff a choice of a mandatory/roaming profiles. How would I implement such a change? 1 companies is trying to sell me Novell Zenworks which apparently will make mine and the technicians life a lot easier. Have a system where if a new user is created in CMIS it automatically creates the user in AD (save administrator time and streamline operations). I know some IT managers have created scripts but is there a tool which wil do this? again Novell identity manager has been suggested to me. I am looking for help/advice from fellow edugeekers on how they implement these solutions in their schools/colleges. I have different suppliers offering me different solutions, one supplier in particular is pushing Novell solutions which sound good but I ask the question, can these operations be done using Microsoft Technologies or alternatives. I am keen to explore Microsoft options as we pay a lot of money for school agreement and want to ensure we are making the most of it. I know Microsoft have good free tools out there such as the ones I have explained above, do other schools use them, if so do they come recommended or would I be advised to look at alternatives such as Novell? From speaking to a Novell expert I understand these products dont replace AD/GPO etc just improves on existing features to improve operations and make our job easier. We currently have 2 hypervisors using VMware Infrastrucuture foundation and would like to continue using this and maybe look at upgrading to the enterprise edition for High availability, I intend to use these existing Hypervisors to move some of our existing services from old servers to these boxes. How best would I introduce server 2008 into our existing 2003 environment? If anyone could give me some advice it would be most appreciated. Thanks

Hi We recently encountered a few issues with 2 PC's with onboard VGA where you plug them in and no display appears on the screen. The fans are whirring away and there is power to the motherboard, there isn't any POST beeps either. We have completely stripped the machines so the only thing connected is the PSU, to the motherboard, CPU and memory and still it doesnt work. Which leads me to a problem with the following: CPU or motherboard I have tried an AGP graphics card to identify if the problem was with the onboard graphics but still no display. This has happened on 2 identical machines which same spec in a matter of days, the other 20 machines in this suite seem to be ok. The machines are approx 3 years old. Has anyone else suffered similar problems, is there any cure? On the subject of motherboards and testing. Does anyone know if a product can be purchased which will allow techs to test motherboards so we have an instant answer whether the motherboard is faulty. I know there are tools you can use in BIOS or windows but that means the machine needs to be in some working order and wouldn't help if you have issues where you cannot see the display. Any help would be most appreciated.

Hi I was wondering if anyone has the HP ML370G3 Servers and if anyone has converted these from a tower to Rack form. Can it be done? if so does anyone know where I could get hold of a conversion kit? I want to rackmount all our servers as we are limited on space and I want to get rid of all the shelving that is in the server room and instead fit a new rack in. I would rather convert the 2 HP tower servers into racks as they have still got a lot of life in them yet and can be used for small tasks. If anyone can recommend I would be grateful. Thanks

DO you work in a school? If so CX4's are an overkill. I have been doing some research and if you need the performance that CX4's are enterprise grade and will give you the all singing all dancing solution you are looking for.

I believe I have sorted this problem. If I Hold down N at bootup I can then boot into netboot mode. I can then access disk utility through there rather than from the CD and then it seems to work.

There a company called AT Computers who are an authorised Apple Reseller. They are based in Tewksbury. We used them to purchased 45 iMacs and Xserver/Xraid setup and they were very helpful.

I believe there is a problem with the actual image I have created and that is the reason its not working through netboot so rather than me create the image again I would prefer to try restoring from a external firewire drive before I give up and try and recreate the image. I have loaded a 10.4 dvd into the client mac, and gone through the process of installing a brand new copy of OSX, but then you get the utilities option, through there i have gone to disk utility, and tryed to restore a dmg image but when trying to restore I get the following message: Restore Failure An error (16) occured while copying. (Resource busy). I believe this problem has happened because it doesnt like me booting of the 10.4 DVD. Is there any way I can access disk utility but not via the DVD or through the OS itself. Thanks

Try a company called GNR. We buy all our hard glass monitors from this manufacturer. Not sure if they do 22" though.

Do you know if I could put the image onto a firewire external drive and restore it from there?

I have yes. I taken the old image out of there and only put the new one in, tried all sorts of combinations, just cant get it to work.

I have been trying to image one of our Intel iMacs via our Xserve Mac OSX Server 10.4.11server for the past couple of days. I can click N on the client, boot to the NetInstall, click Continue, accept agreement, all that jazz. When I click "Install" it instantly says you are done and doesn't do anything. Says "The software was successfully installed. Please restart your computer." This is after 1 second. It obviously did not copy the image to the computer. I don't think it even erased the drive and I had that option checked. I am sure I have put the Image in the correct area as Server admin is able to pick it up and I can select options like enabled and if a particular image is the default image. I have put the nbi folder on our Xraid under Library/Netboot/NetbootSp0/netbootimage.nbi Does anyone know why this may not be working Thanks

I was wondering if someone would be able to advise on the best way to setup the Extricom system to support PDAs which would connect to our Extricom wireless network. I am having a few issues and believe it could be to do with the channel configuration on the two 24 port switches we have in situate. Throughout our school we have 2 radio AP’s with 2 SSID’s setup on 2 different switches. Switch 1 – Radio 1 uses 802.11g only, is on channel 1 and is using 1st SSID. Switch 1 – Radio 2 uses 802.11b only, is on channel 11 and is using 2nd SSID. Switch 2 – Radio 1 uses 802.11g only, is on channel 6 and is using same 1st SSID from switch 1 Switch 2 – Radio 2 uses 802.11b only, is set to channel 1 but the SSID is not activated in fear of channel collision with Switch 1. 1st SSID – used for laptops and connects through a Radius system using Microsoft IAS. Generall connection has been good but have found occasionally on some laptops we will receive a message to say it has limited connectivity, only way to resolve is to turn off the wireless and turn it back on again. 2nd SSID – is a visitor SSID and is used to create manual connections to the wifi network. Have tried to use all encryption technologies, the only successful one I have had it working with is WPA Personal but have found it is an intermittent connection, sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t. e.g. it will connect to one switch as soon as your in range of the other switch it will refuse to connect. A Common application being accessed on a PDA through wireless is exchange synchronisation (activesync). I have heard of issues with DHCP servers and the Extricom system as in previous posts above and have changed the registry entry on the DHCP server to go from broadcast to unicast and haven’t seen any improvements as of yet. Also are there any benefits of changing any of the configuration in the ESSID settings page to improve performance of the wireless (i.e. faster throughput) e.g. Allow store and forward, Enable Multicast, Beacon Rate control etc. If someone could suggest an improved way of configuring our switches it would be most appreciated. I not sure the way I have configured them is the best.

Welcome to Edugeek! I am sure you will find this a useful resource. Its great for all IT support staff in UK schools and Colleges and elsewhere! If its at all possible its always a good idea to speak to the current IT manager and the first thing you want to ask is if that person or his team have an up to date documentation so if you get the job then you in a good position to understand the network. With regards to the interview if you know your stuff technically then you should be ok. Questions non-technical related I ask when appointing staff are the following: Why did you apply to our school? Where do you see yourself in a few years? A customer service question? How do you prioritise work Handling difficult users Have an answer to these questions, most likely you will be asked at least one of these in some type of context. Having certs will help your cause but if at the interview your talking to non technical people at the interview they may not appreciate the work involved so bear this in mind. I am sure you will be ok, let us know how you get on. Good Luck!

Just renewed our schools agreement last month but went with a different supplier, and I have noticed that on the software assurance section the 2 complimentary support calls have disappeared. Have they been taken out of schools agreements?

lol I cant beleive it. I completley forgot to download it!!! ARGHH!

Hi I thought I would share this with fellow edugeekers, it worth getting hold off for no cost. Linux format mag will be offered for free (ebook version) for 24 hours from midnight tonight! Linux Format free to download for 24 hours only | TuxRadar Good magazine for tutorials, reviews, previews and all the rest. remember from midnight tonight it will be available.

Either power supply or CPU fan not working. Depending on your BIOS it may give you a message and it may say "CPU fan error" if you have a similar error appear it would indicate its a problems with the CPU.

Facility CMIS is solid as a rock, I couldn't say the same about E-portal but I think thats to do with our local LEA messing around with it too much before they give it to schools.

Hello all I am looking into Ergo has a company as we looking to get some infrastructure work (replacing servers and virtualising) and the initial conversations I have had with Ergo have been promising. Just want to know if they are any good and come recommended. We are also looking at the VLE they are selling (a Learning gateway solution called Scholaris). Is anyone using this and would you recommend it? Thanks

Was this with Ergo can I ask or another supplier? Does anyone recommend Ergo as a supplier for infrastructure work?

Hi We have recently changed our website and it was hosted on a Virtual machine in Vmware ESXi and before we moved over to the new website I did a snapshot through the infrastructure client console. I have now realised that I need to get some information of the old website and am hoping that this is still held on the snapshot I took. I have VM workstation installed on my local machine and wondered if its possible for me to take the snapshot files of the storage where the snapshot is located, copy it over to a temp location on my machine and open workstation and import the snapshot into the program. is this possible? At the moment I cant copy the files onto my local hard drive and think this is because the vm is currently running. Is there a solution for me to open the old snapshot VM's? Thanks

Great thread, a question I had was if it I wanted to move the database from one server to another, if this could be done. It seems like it is possible.

At the moment we currently backup our apple data to our SNAP server Nas box. Problem is the snap server is in the same location as the Apple server. Now we have our media studio/office on the other side of the school and what I would like to do is on a daily basis for it to backup the data to the snap server but was thinking of installing a NAS box like bufallo on the other side of the building for the apple server to backup to this box on a weekend basis. Rather than the school spending £500+ on a NAS box, is there any linux alternative that I could use which would allow me to backup the data on the linux box, if a student lost a file I could simply go to the linux box, locate the file and restore this back onto the apple server. I have heard good feedback on free nas, would this work in a OSX environment? or does this work best for windows environments. Thanks

Hi I am in the process of looking to replace our MIS server which hosts Facility CMIS and Eportal, as part of this I need to look at some new backup software which can backup to tape. Apparantly its an audit requirement that our MIS data is backed up onto tape as well and kept in a fire proof safe, on top of that we can backup to whatever we like but our MIS data has to be on tape. I would like to purchase some backup software for our environment. On the current MIS system we use Veritas backup exec 9.0 which is very old and probably not the best in this day and age. I made my mind up that I want to choose either a Acronis or Symantec solution but I'm not sure which to buy. I am looking at Acronis True Image Server which has function to backup and Symantec backup exec. I'm not sure which product is better. This software will only backup our MIS data (SQL), I use the inbuilt facility in SQL2005 to backup of the SQL data, so would I need to buy the SQL addon for these products or can i get away with the standard server software? If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to recommend if there is any software better than these two please recommend these also. I dont want to budget more than £400 for the software. Also if anyone recommends a good tape hardware solution to compliment with this that would be great. Thanks

Ahhhh that would make sense, we do have netsupport installed on this machine as our LEA need to access it when we have problems. I will try to uninstall it tommorow. thanks