NetworkGeezer

So remember kids: Backup your MIS or other DB at leat a few times within 6 months.

It would have to be 7.62 at the very least unless the NM got a note from his mum to excuse hime from doing PLASC ...sorry School Census

I'm confused as well, a lock file should only be the size (or slightly bigger?) of it's main db file, I'm sure.. Shall I ring Capita and tell them that I have a 800mb mdf file and a 110Gb lock file and see what they say, just for a laugh?! I hate to be a pedant especially as I make so many mystakes myself but it's log file not lock file. The ldf stores any transactions which haven't stored in the main ldf file.

Sorry for the double post folks. My net connection's playing up so I was posting in the dark :oops: 110gb ldf looks like the log file hasn't bee truncated in a looOOOng time. Has the NM ever backed up SIMS.net Only 300Mb??? I think it will be a bit more than that because the SQL server will dump a bak file of least 812mb into the free space. It could be a lot more considering the size of the ldf. If your backup folder is in a different partition then you might not have a problem.

116GB! Does that sound about right? If so then I suspect a backup operaton might of gone wrong leaving you with one or more huge .bak files in your SQL Server Backup files. Normally System Manager creates zip files at the end of the SQL backup. Althoug you can't logon touse system manager what you could do is go into the backup folder and replace as many redundat .bak and .zip files with zero 0kb files of the same name. That way SysMan won't throw a wobly if you need to tidy backups at a later stage. It doesn't matter quite so much about the CD if you have backed up S:\SIMS\Setups as part of your normal tape backup then you can repopulate at later stage though any clients won't be able to upgrade until you do. I assume you are running SIMS.net in read/write mode. If so then another area to look at is any student photos stored in the old dBase Star folder. This might take up a lot of space if you have been using SIMS for many years.

116GB! Does that sound about right? If so then I suspect a backup operaton might of gone wrong leaving you with one or more huge .bak files in your SQL Server Backup files. Normally System Manager creates zip files at the end of the SQL backup. Althoug you can't logon touse system manager what you could do is go into the backup folder and replace as many redundat .bak and .zip files with zero 0kb files of the same name. That way SysMan won't throw a wobly if you need to tidy backups at a later stage. It doesn't matter quite so much about the CD if you have backed up S:\SIMS\Setups as part of your normal tape backup then you can repopulate at later stage though any clients won't be able to upgrade until you do. I assume you are running SIMS.net in read/write mode. If so then another area to look at is any student photos stored in the old dBase Star folder. This might take up a lot of space if you have been using SIMS for many years.

Exchange Server is one of the things Microsoft does well. Yes, you can find FLOSS email servers to do SMTP and POP/IMAP4 but the combination of Exchange and Outlook is very hard to beat for PIM functionality and the seamless link to AD.

OK you have established that the print server card is responding. Following on ITWitch's comment have checked the setup of the printer as it appears to Windows (I assume you are using Windows). In particular have you checked that the port is set to JetDirect or Standard TCP/IP printer not USB virtual port and that it points to the correct IP address. Is the printer (in the NOS sense) installed on a Windows Server or an end user client PC?

Looks good for remote admin especially if your not a WMI scripting geek but it does not have the classroom specific features (web & app blocking etc, lesson plan, quizes etc). Remember this is going to be used by teachers and so has be straightforward.

A few more NSM annoyances: The keyboard lock for demo or screen lock does lets through some keypresses so some students can cause irritation by filling up keyboard buffer and waiting for the computer to start beeping. NSM notifies teacher of connection and disconnection via pop ups which means if a group of kids reset their machines then the teacher is bombarded with pop ups. I had to turn of the chat and call for assistance for this reason. There should be a more flexible option for allowing or disallowing chat. To top it all, why doesn't NSM have a proper select all function rather than having to click drag to select all the machines in a cluster. Block all internet appears to have stopped working. Have had to whitelist a fictious site then set Allow only approve webistes web blocking. I could have blocked iexplorer.exe but IE is needed for some features in FrontOage and to also view some HTML pages on network drives.

Any one seen the promotion at VeryLabs.com for VeryTeaching Free licenses for a limited period which I take to mean you can register for free before a certain (though undisclosed) date otherwise it would be no better than a shareware trial. There has to be a catch. No phone numbers or snail address either ... hmmmmm /chin stroke

This isn't quite the same thing as the article in the register. The quoted server could run SBS which isn't over kill for 16 stations. There is also scope for expansion and in a skills centre it wouldn't be quite as messy as p2p filesharing.

These are standard features in programs like NetOp, NetSupport, Ranger etc. What is more important is how stable is it in use and how teachers find using the interface? Have you used in teaching scenarios or just for remote administration?

Actually looking at TechNet again if it's possible to specify a path as just *.vbs then you may be able to use d:*.exe which should cope with subfolders.

There are two methods of application blocking. Software restriction policies as mentioned above or Run/Don't Run specified Windows Applications in the Admin Templates section of the User part of the GPO. This second method is reliant on filenames only and so changes in directory paths don't matter. It works well if your students are 'GUI centric' It's also more forgiving when it comes to dependent exes for major programs such as in Microsoft Office. The one flaw appears to have to be programs which have spaces in the filename.

I don't think this would work as these program usually use some kind of low level OS call to detect the CD-ROM the CD is running from. Unless you're talking about terminal server session then virtual drives on a server can only appear as vanilla shares to client PCs. I know my status says newbie but even I know how to do that Well, our teachers seem to have an unerring ability to find them. Have you ever encountered the Start to Finish Classic Literature series?

I did think about doing this but the problem was that most mounting methods in Daemon Tools world offer only static mounting. Clicking on an icon should mount to the first free virtual drive as there are limited number availible. This means of Geography CD 2 and History CD 3 map to drive 1 then they can't selected together even if there are only ones being used during a logon session.

Yes. By definition Daemon Tools would have to run on the end user PCs in order to create the virtual drives. Remember this is only necessary for applications which require a CD-ROM in the drive while running. If a number of such apps are need on a particular room, it would be nice to be have as many as possible before the user needs to mount and unmount images. Of course it cuts down on the number of free network drives but this isn't normally a problem. Anyone tried Axis or Avantis?

What CD server solution do people use? Dedicated hardware like Axis Lanstor or Avantis with proprietary client software? Or a mixture of standalone client software and network shares running on a normal file server? Daemon Tools looks good (especially the scriptable image mounting) but the 4 drive limit is a problem. Yes you can get shell extensions for to right click mount and remount but imagine kids having to doing this. Does anyone use H+H Das Original Virtual CD or Paragons CD Emulator especially in networked environments? These seem to be better suited for central administration. TIA

Looks good NetMan but do you allow remote access?

Why is it banned?

Whoops. Sorry NetMan I should have read your post more carefully before duplicating some of your points :oops:

On the otherhand NetMan your questionaire would be useful in finding out how good a feel a candidate had for the world of IT. Faced with a line of A+ certificates you want to know who is the techy and who is merely a respondent to the get rich quick adds beloved of private computer 'colleges'.

NSM School does seem to perform better for speed & stability but the user interface conventions appear to be have thought up by a Dalek or some other extra terrestrial intelligence The reason you have to get them to 'register' is because it saves on network traffic. The 'registering' you talk of is actually connecting to the client and acheiving a permanant connection until disconnected. If you connect to all clients then it will send your management station all of the info from those PC's and generate traffic. With NetOp on the other hand you can see the computer name and the username of who's logged on. If you're clever with environmental variables you can even set the details screen to show the user display name.

Hey Russ don't you sleep?