Tallwood_6

Simple question, will cat5e support 10gbit over short distances (less than 10 meters) there is no official support for anything less than CAT6 (55 meters) but I'm thinking interference will be minimal over a short run?

We've used synology & qnap NAS for years or be it for backup iscsi stoarge or for straight NAS duties and never had a drive failure or OS issue, the higher end units are basically servers running whatever flavour of NAS OS. Drive wise most prepopulated units come with WD RED drives which are designed for storage appliances and the higher end models will SAS if so inclined, there are similar warranty options available as well. If you put one up against a similar speced server running 2012r2 storage server I'm pretty sure which would perform better. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/storage-appliances/390112/synology-rackstation-rs3614xs

Some valid points however you don't have to spend a fortune on a SAN and most setups shouldn't require much admin once implemented and may give you some flexibility in terms of scaling for storage / application needs in the future. You could get a couple of QNAP or Synology enterprise NAS devices with 10gbit cards and SSD caching for less than £6k, chuck in some procure switches for iscsi and you have a quick redundant pool or storage which will last for a while.

Many thanks PM on its way.

Is there anyone here who runs or has experience with a split site setup with user roaming between both sites (10km plus distance apart) who would be willing to have chat with me?

Its quite simple if you try and spec up a SAN with similar specs and performance from one of the bigger OEMs it comes out a lot more expensive. The rest is all about SLG trusting in your expertise on the matter. We have a single Nimble array supporting are whole virtual environment, we don't use VDI currently but they are well equipped for this.

We have a nimble SAN if you have any questions fire away

Are there any sites out there signed up and running any courses under the Microsoft IT Academy banner that can share some further info or experiences? I've been looking at the scheme as it looks like it would be great means of offering both IT support staff internally some CPD (Microsoft IT Professional certification pack) as well as staff and potentially students if i could get IT teaching staff interested with the Microsoft Office Specialist and Microsoft Technology Associate qualifications, all at quite a reasonable price.. However i cant seem to get much information from resellers about exactly what you get access to in the UK in particular i.e. if you sign up to each pack do you get access to all the training material / teaching packs required to deliver each qualification in house? Can you administer all the microsoft tests onsite etc?

It will be the web appliance that's the issue not the rest of the Sophos suite. Replace this with a better web filter such a lightspeed or smoothwall

Ricoh MFDs and equitac here and it works well.

Many of those "new features" I think are quite often just non security hotfixes or enterprise hotfix roll ups requested by larger MS customers.

I doubt they will release another service pack for win 7

Mainstream support end date is just when they will no longer add new features or service packs, the extended support is what everyone's really interested in as this is when security updates stop and this isn't until 2020. Latest stats show windows 7 adoption growing and windows 8 flatline in the face of XPs death which says it all.

No you need to set the ports on one switch that is part of the LACP as active and the ports on the other switch as passive although active both ends will work. You should see traffic going down both ports on the switch if its working ( look at the port counters)

You can use either static trunks or LACP it makes little difference switch to switch but I've always used static HP trunks myself

Be using a Nimble CS220 for just shy of a year and can highly recommend there arrays if your budget can stretch that far.

PM your email address and I'll sort you out some packages have you got the licence server sorted a port set and exceptions in place on the server and station firewalls?

Yes we have it working on CC4 following the instructions I posted

I've used a couple of the interactive short throw epson projectors in our food tech and DT rooms and positioned them on a wall as far away from sources of steam and dust and both are still going strong after 18 months. A large interactive LCD screen would be a better or maybe more expensive option.

There is really nothing special about CC4 it's simply a set of management tools that sit on a windows server and integrate with AD and a Postgres database. Navigating the RM management console should be quite self explanatory really but it maybe best to get the school to book you on one of the training courses before you start fiddling.

Vote procurve 5400R zl v2 the normal 5400 zl v2 and many of it's supported modules are going end of life

Just about to launch it for sixth form and staff but plan on using rate limiting per client on the BYOD WLAN to aviod a youtube meltdown.

Cheaper and similar option I've looked at for CC4 here is vdi in a box .. Now owned by Citrix

Purchased them all refurbished for technology for about £300 each a year ago, RDC - The World's foremost IT Disposal and IT Recycling Company they don't come with warranties but they are all MAR refurbished, they only have 8gb RAM but all come with NIVIDA quadro graphics cards that play nicely with the various CAD tech programs they use. For others looking to deploy this I following the guide posted here IT Pro Tips for PTC Creo 2 | ITNinja Note you need to package and deploy the Creo Agent, Thumbviewer & CreoView Express separately otherwise the users is prompted to install these at first launch but all 3 have .msi installers.

What area of London is the job based?