DavePa

We run with virtual DCs that sit on non-domain joined hosts. Each site has the local DC for DNS and also a DC located at a secondary site. The DCs are setup to boot immediately the hossts are started, any other virtual servers (file/print, SQL, Impero etc.) are staggered at 30 second intervals. Been running that way for 5 years - some are still 2008r2 machines - without any problems so far although I've probably just guaranteed a failure...

Like many other here we use Impero. Had already seen it in use elsewhere so we didn't even look at other alternatives. That was 3 years ago we and haven't regretted it for a minute.

We have a site that went from ADSL (4 down, 0.8 up) to VM 'home' fibre (50 down, 5 up) and finally leased line (30 down, 30 up). Although the 'home' line could cope with the traffic it was not reliable and as we are using VOIP telephony as well we had no end of problem - VM would not give any service guarantee and as it was a 'home' line there was no QOS support. We suffered frequent (as in daily) dropouts where the phones would cut off part way through a conversation - embarrassing when you are talking to a parent. The problems didn't only affect the voice though - students had problems with online exams dropping out as well. Although the leased line has a slower download speed we haven't had a single complaint about it and the increased upload speed and reliability have more than justified the cost. If you have the budget for it, go for it!

As fairm010 says, the load is shared between them and you will find clients authenticating to both of them. DNS is also replicated but if you run DHCP on your DC then that is not - you would need to configure another DHCP server. Also, if one fails and it holds any FSMO roles you should consider moving them to the remaining DC. If your DCs are virtual machines it is probably best to stagger the startup to ensure that they start before any other servers. Finally, any HyperV hosts should not be domain members if you are using VMs for DCs

Thanks for the replies, I like the idea of instructor led training and it tends to have a higher success rate although it could be argued that at £1995 per person it should! Do you get much discount from that? I'll certainly look at NEOS IT Training, their prices seem more reasonable than QA so more chance of it being passed by senior managers - as long as it is comparable quality.

We are looking at training for our IT team (including me) and wonder what others do - instructor led or self study? If self study then single course at a time or annual pass for access to a range of materials? Cheap option: https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-gb/volume-licensing-program.aspx Expensive option: CBT Nuggets Very expensive option: Microsoft - Administering System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (M10747) - globalknowledge.co.uk Somebody passing a server administrator exam brings additional value, do you recognise that financially?

Doing a similar project albeit on a smaller scale (17 switches). Looked at HP / Juniper / Meraki and was initially considering HP - better performance than the Juniper, cheaper than the Meraki. However, our Meraki reseller then came back with some bid pricing that reduced the cost of the Meraki switches (MS320-48LP, L3, PoE) from about £5500 each to (just) under £3000 each including a 5 year licence. Might be worth asking if you haven't already done so.

It's a lot of money until such time as you need it, at that point however it's a complete bargain!

I listen to the radio - truly random! (Actually not of course - depending on the station they only play a couple of dozen songs from a single genre. Don't recall hearing any classical music on radio 1 for example)

Ah, thanks for that - looks like I'm comparing apples with oranges then! As long as I can configure and manage VLANs at each site I'll be happy. Meraki was actually my 1st choice (we are looking at Meraki wireless as well) but the price I was quoted put me off and the 2920 was suggested as an alternative. At 1/3 of the price it makes sense providing it can do what I need

Crikey! That's one heck of a lot of sites to backup! I'll have to have a look at that next time around but have very limited experience of backup software - I've used BackupExec and Arcserve many years ago but nothing recently. Microsoft DPM is an option but again, I have never used it. I suspect that once you know the principles and the software it becomes a lot easier to manage yourself but starting from scratch it would take some time to get up to speed

Have to disagree there although there does need to be a balance and that could be hard to achieve. I once worked for a company that recruited a fairly senior manager whose LinkedIn profiles showed that he had had lasted an average of less than a year in each of his last 7 or 8 jobs. Sure enough he was off again less than a year after joining us - that's an expensive recruitment process and of no benefit to the company. It's not just about pictures of people getting lathered up on a night out! Would looking at his LinkedIn profile have changed anything? No idea, I'm not involved in recruitment but it may have done. Personally I have Twitter account (probably 6 tweets in as many years), a G+ account used for sharing photos to family and a LinkedIn account that is only used passively

I was quoted £5,355 for an MS320-48LP Meraki switch (48 port PoE) - and I was buying a number of them! Looks more likely that we will be going HP2920 (48 port PoE) at £1700 each

This went on before the days of Twitter and Facebook etc. Remember Gerald Ratner effectively firing himself by describing the products sold in his stores as cr*p?

...answered this one myself (I hope) One of the companies I spoke to offers a 'hybrid' service whereby we provide the hosting and hardware and they provide the licensing, monitoring and management. This brings the annual costs down to a more reasonable level and although obviously not as cheap as doing everything in house it looks to be a good compromise in terms of cost / efficiency

I've always been wary of using these kind of tools (the free versions) as they are sometimes 'nagware' with a purpose of trying to encourage you to buy something else. If I can't find the drivers on the manufacturer's website I'll tend to use PCIDatabase or Google in common with some of the previous posters

I'd split them from both a management and security point of view. I'd then explicitly deny access to the staff server from members of the student OU - you don't want them playing with UNC and IP paths and finding even read-only shares on the staff server! Also, as mentioned above, losing one doesn't necessarily mean losing the other if they are separated.

Greetings, we have 3 sites (post 16) that are connected by fibre links. All 3 sites are linked to form a WAN and I can see any site from any other. I need to provide both a backup and file replication solution and am looking for a hardware-based solution to keep the costs down so although the likes of Redstor are very appealing the cost (£12k per year for the volume of data we have) is a problem. I would prefer to purchase a couple of NAS/SAN devices and perform my own 'offsite' backup - the sites are in geographically different locations so a major disaster at one would not affect the others. My idea is to place a device at our main site and backup the virtual servers from all sites to that (maybe make a file copy of key network shares as well) before replicating it to a 2nd device that is at a different site. I need the data at each site to be de-duplicated and compressed before being sent over the WAN links and I need to find a company that offers software that can do this without charging an ongoing management fee. I am looking to purchase the hardware and software myself and manage the backups in-house. All of the companies I have spoken to only offer this is a service where even using our own hardware there is a recurring (not insignificant) monthly cost which is what I am trying to avoid. Has anybody any experience of software that will do what I want without being licensed on a monthly basis - Arcserve? Backup Exec? I did enquire about Veeam but as their pricing is per virtual server it was too expensive (over £20k for licenses alone) Thanks in advance

Sounds interesting but can't see it on your website? Also, what sort of price are we looking at?

Would it support all of the requirements I listed in my 1st post? One of the key things for us is inbuilt 3g support (or 4g if that's all that's available). I suspect having to load a copy of Office is going to push the price up compared to using one of the free apps available on other platforms but if you think price would be comparable to the Samsung (Around £500 for the hardware, most apps are free/low cost) then I'd certainly be interested, particularly if it offers the stylus/handwriting/signature capture functionality that the Samsung does

Hmmmm, interesting. I'll have to take a 2nd look at these, I was given to understand that 3g/4g support was not feasible on a RT tablet. Do you know if it is via a SIM (like an iPad/Nexus7) or is it via an external device (like some cheaper tablets)? There is a certain appeal to Windows RT although not sure it has much future as most companies seem to have abandoned it

Thanks for the reply but unfortunately it does, we tried a cheap Android tablet just as 'proof of concept' and one of the key objections was the requirement to have either a USB 3g card or access to a phone-provided wi-fi hotspot. Inbuilt 3g/4g support is key which is a shame as otherwise we would have more options!

We need to buy a small number of tablet computers and are wondering if anybody has enough experience to be able to make recommendations. We've looked at various options and know some of what *won't * work but not yet what will work: iPad - one of the applications that we use is not supported on iPad. That's not to say that it might not work but in the event of any issues we won't be able to get assistance from the developers Windows RT - We need connectivity through 3g/4g and I don't believe that RT supports the use of these Windows Surface Pro - perhaps a good choice (providing we can get something with 3g/4g) but somewhat expensive Android - Where to start with all of the options available? Ideally there will be something that meets our requirements which are... 3g/4g support 10" screen or thereabouts Handwriting with 'palm rejection' Stylus support The ability to capture signatures electronically Reasonable battery life Able to open/edit/save/print Office 3013 documents I'm thinking along the lines of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition but Samsung no longer sell them direct as they have moved to the Pro version...which appears to be only available as wi-fi only (no 3g/4g version available yet) and in the larger 12.2" size. No doubt the other versions will follow in due course but I'm looking for something now. I can still get the 2014 version through retail / online stores but it seems silly to buy something that appears to have already been superseded by a later version. Any suggestions?

Thanks All, I thought that would be the case. At present we run a DC a file/print and a SQL server and that's what we are replicating onto the new server so 4 VMs should hopefully be enough, at least to start with. I actually have a 2nd identical server that also needs 2 OS licences but only needs to run 2 guests so between the 2 hosts I should have the capacity for 3 further VMs if required. I downloaded and read that PDF before asking the question so I was fairly confident of the answer but thought I ought to make sure

Quick licencing question for Windows server 2012... I have a server that has quad processors. As I understand it both Server 2012 datacentre and standard editions only support 2 processors per licence. Therefore I need 2 licences of whichever version I install. As I want to run 3 guest VMs on this machine I am intending to use standard version on the basis that I need 2 licences for the host OS and each of these gives me the right to run 2 guests OSs. Is that assumption correct?