davethetekkie

(Closing date 15th Jan)

Hi all, This came up on my FB feed… any use to anyone?

Hi all, So I'm just getting my feet under the table as a newly minted secondary school NM and have inherited a NetApp SAN which is 6 months out of support, the production disk shelf is turned OFF, the DR disk shelf is powered on and seems to be running the show and there's NO documentation regarding access to the admin panel to see just what is going on with it. Good times. So, the school have already migrated their main data storage to Google Workspace and MIS has been migrated to Hosted SIMS so that helps ever so slightly. The former Senior Tech had been looking into a like-for-like replacement from various vendors but looking at the likely quantities of on-premise data and the remaining workload (effectively DCs, Papercut, Net2 and MDT) I think it's time to scale down and continue the march cloudwards; in 2017 everything was on-prem so I could see the logic from that point of view. My instinct is to cut the SAN from the equation completely, return to on-host storage (2x new Hyper-V hosts with full SSD storage) and focus on the creaking infrastructure across site. Thoughts?

I’d probably say enabling verbose mode on your clients via GPO would be a good idea here so you get something a bit more descriptive than “please wait” to play with. One you know which step is dragging you’re in a far better position!

Having massive issues with 10th Gen Lenovos in general... I have a Thinkpad E15 running the factory image which works fine on all HDMI devices; yesterday I imaged an identical machine with drivers exported from my working machine and installed to MDT... all of a sudden the laptop won't detect an HDMI monitor but oddly works PERFECTLY with a new Viewsonic IFPD the school have recently had installed. My only suspicion is it may be to do with anything running older versions of the HDMI standard (I'd fully expect the HDMI-VGA converters to be running older HDMI versions - it's not like they're running 4K resolutions over VGA, is it?). At another school I have a set of 4x V15-IIL machines that REFUSE to work with older Clevertouch boards but work fine with the couple of newer models we have onsite. Tried querying this with Lenovo directly but they dropped the call (not impressed). Oddly the V15-ADA (Ryzen) versions work absolutely beautifully...

Hi all, I have a really annoying issue and wondered if anyone else has seen the same thing? One of my schools has invested in some new Aruba 1930 switches to replace their aged (and faulty) 10/100 switches. Today I found one totally frozen out (no access to admin panel, all LEDs on static) and restarted it (already unusual given how good HP switches tend to have been over the last few years). After restarting I completely lost all access to the Hyper-V host and the wireless controller promptly stopped talking to its APs (which promptly stopped transmitting being an ancient Juniper setup). One of my colleagues then told me that he'd noticed that some of these same switches at his school had totally dumped out their config upon power loss. I then managed to reproduce the same thing on another switch for giggles... Is this just something about this model when you're not running them in cloud-managed configuration? All of the new switches had their firmwares updated as part of the commissioning process and are only locally managed as the school is an ex-RM site (with some legacy issues to iron out) which doesn't use the default VLAN at all (and these switches seem to require that cloud connectivity runs via this VLAN unless I'm missing something). Ultimately I've just lost the best part of a day on the first week back...

Hi all, I have a nightmarish scenario involving Bitlocker, a headteacher who doesn't want (one of his two) laptops to be domain-joined and borkage. The laptop is an ASUS X550C; a few years old but it does what he needs it to do (most of the time). The machine to date hasn't been Bitlockered BUT is used for processing student data and so when it came in for updates over the summer Bitlocker was high on my list of priorities. So, I take a backup of the user's files, amend the local policies as necessary, start the Bitlocker wizard, enter the Bitlocker password, save the recovery key to a known good USB stick, restart the machine aaaaaaand... the whole thing falls flat on its face. The password I've set doesn't work and WORSE the recovery key that the same machine has saved to my USB stick also does not work. I'm not sure if we're talking about something caused by a tired drive (possible given the age) or if the problem has been caused by the fact that it's a consumer-grade heap that was never really intended to play nice with Bitlocker or Windows 10... So... I have the user's data backed up but it's a standalone that's been in use for a good length of time and I don't want to waste at least half a day manually rebuilding the thing unless I absolutely have to. I've pulled the drive and scanned it with a data recovery tool and the partition is effectively intact and is NOT encrypted (as it failed during the initial reboot it never started actually encrypting anything). I've test-recovered a few files and they're a perfect match. So... is it possible to mark a partition such as this as NOT being Bitlocker-encrypted in order to regain access in this scenario and has anyone had any success doing so? ...or am I just bashing my head against a brick wall? Cheers in advance!

Hi Edd, please could you PM me a list of what you have and what sort of money you're looking for? I'm looking at sorting a private nursery's networking and wireless out so don't have much in the way of a budget to work with but interesting to see what you have left nonetheless! Thanks, Dave

Had a first generation UAP-AC for testing and like many here I found it ran too hot so didn’t go ahead with them; I’ve since rolled out a set of UAP-AC-PRO points and for the money they’ve been rock solid.

The VeryPC Thinbook G7s are very nice, the quality has improved even more since I got my Haswell-based Thinbook (which has been solid) and hopefully there will be a G7 coming my way soon! The branding options give it that something extra and the level of service you get is something you’ll struggle to get from Tier 1 manufacturers (its the difference between spending a half hour on the phone jumping through hoops according to a script or a straightforward email...).

We have USB eLicensers... they work well enough but do require their own software which iirc on our version don’t have a .msi installer (annoying when Cubase itself deploys quite nicely). Saves having to re-license but you have to make sure the dongle is well secured (ours are on some Startech USB header-USB A socket adaptors cable tied to the chassis internally).

I’ve seen a whole batch of Thinkpad SL500 laptops suffer hinge failures and the Acer Travelmates favoured by one of my clients at the last place were absolute darlings for failed hinges too... both theoretically business grade gear... sadly even some of the Tier 1 manufacturers drop the odd clanger every now and then on business grade gear. That being said my own Thinkpad L420 has been bulletproof.

Thanks very much for my shiny new mug! Always nice to put names to faces! [emoji4]

I’m running a duo at my primary as a backup repository... already spotted that it doesn’t support SMBv2 even on latest firmware so will be putting it out of its misery when I start moving servers to 2016...

The meddling gits won’t be happy until all that’s on offer is Shredded Wheat. [emoji35]

I tend to leave MacOS updates a good couple of months on my personal gear... the only real incentive to look at High Sierra for me is the introduction of eGPU support... and I just don’t have enough cash for an enclosure and an RX 580 to gamble that it’ll do the job well! The last Apple server I played with in anger was an XServe, so that tells you how long ago that was... but I hated the thing with a fiery passion. Hopefully they’ll fix the glitches with the server app soon (though it’s seemingly a LONG way from being their priority these days)!

What a mess. Thankfully my primary moved their broadband service to RM at Easter... Hopefully the info regarding Sophos licensing will be forthcoming sooner rather than later!

+1 for nice simple security screws here... we replace ALL security screws with a standard secure hex screw and we haven’t had any internal hardware thefts in recent memory.

Yup. Not for long though. Causing far too much trouble at present at my primary and I only get 4 hours a week to do what needs to be done. Looking into best alternatives now and thinking UE-V will be part of the change to Windows 10.

If you do opt for a Mondeo of about 10 years’ vintage steer well clear of the 1.8 petrols. They run the same Mazda L series engine that’s in my C Max and apparently they’re known for piston rings going and burning oil (like mine is)... REALLY wish I’d gone with the TDCI (Our Peugeot 807 has the 2.0 HDi engine in it and I love it. It’s economical and delivers its power well). Despite being the bigger car (and basically all the toys being broken... that’s another story) the Pug will do a run costing £30 in the 1.8 CMax for £20 without exception.

The only problem with taking the last week of the holidays as annual leave is... I don't actually know! I'm personally feeling recharged and raring to go but all too aware that I'm going in as part of a 2-man team for the time being (compared with 4 this time last year) with a new head (oh, and we're also covering the creative tech for the first week back)! This... is going to be interesting.

You're not alone... this time 10 years ago I HATED Apple... I couldn't understand why they could charge over a grand for a laptop with a £600 spec for anyone else's money. Fast forward and here I am typing this on my MacBook Pro with my iPhone SE and iPad Air 2 close at hand. As you say, the build quality is top notch on all and the integration between devices is fantastic. Just a shame their gear ships without any gaming chops of any description... I'll soon be building a new basic gaming PC to sit alongside this!

The last few times I've been in our local hospitals I've seen very few NEW PCs in use... I've seen plenty of circa 2007-2008 Dell OptiPlex 760s and 745s though. What I see doesn't present the impression of an irresponsible NHS purchasing new systems just because. Maybe it's just the three trusts I've unfortunately had to spend time with making use of their services with my brood! At our place we pensioned off the last OptiPlex 745 2 years ago and the 755s and 760s were culled from back offices last year... And they were culled because they were crap. They'd had their day. The 745s were chock full of bad caps for a start; no amount of extra memory is going to fix an ailing mainboard!

+1 for the X27... I'd take a guess at dust buildup on a mirror internally... Because of the heat and the age of the projector chances are it's baked on. That projector has seen its day come and go unfortch!

+1 for the VeryPC Flex... we've just installed our third batch and also run a few machines based on the chassis used by the smaller Flex Micro (I'd stick with the bigger ones as pictured personally)... our first batch from 2014 have weathered really well and the metal branding plates give them that something extra.