Tallwood_6

vSphere stoarge applaince and vSphere Data Protection for backup would be an option. 4 vms per physical core is feasible if these VM's arn't doing much .i.e. typically based around under utilized web servers but i'd aim for a lower vm to phyical core ratio myself.

As a reasonably large site that uses CC4 and has done from the outset i can tell you the current product is pretty much problem free, much of the information posted is miss information you are not railroaded into some kind of RM religious sect whereby you have to purchase everything from them or support dictate what you can and can’t do. We use CC4 for what it is a station, application & user management tool, we package most of our own apps and purchase curriculum choice packs for the pigs like CS4 etc as it saves time which is the point, we deploy mostly non RM hardware some of which we even purchased from RM because believe it or not they can actually get very good pricing on HP kit amongst others. We have lots of non RM related member servers connected to the CC4 domain which we support ourselves, all the servers & SAN didn’t come from RM but they are quite happy to commission new CC4 servers on it. The only criticism I have with CC4 is the time it takes to support new operating systems both client and server, we are still waiting on win 8 builds and server 2012 support and with the shorter dev. cycle on MS products I think RM need to shorten the turn around on this. All this said if you have the skills and time to install, support and document a system based around SCCM or similar then it probably makes more sense to go this route and you will untimely save on likening and yearly support costs. Ohh and for those who think RM support is expensive we pay less per year for RM secondary support than we do for Frog support and dev and I know which one is more useful. I can’t believe I’m actually singing there praises…

How much is an average midrange PC and monitor? Why would you decide to run 40+ PCs off anything less? Quite a simplistic arguement I know. You could take a BOFH approach and say fine buy one and run all the senior management machines off it. Said switch could then maybe have a few issues over the course if a month and see if they then fancy investing in a few more?

They are designed for small business (not sure of the size of your school) and will not support 10gbit ethernet

Updated yesterday other than forgetting the SSO administrator password the upgrade was pretty straightforward.

Haven't been to any of the events but have had a bit of a play with the demo site and yea it looks good and is tablet friendly but is currently missing a lot of functionality. Everything is very much centred around creating a site or webpage which I'm not sure about, I.e you want to assign a class a piece of work you've done in word you can't just assign this like you could on Frog 3 it has to be turned or embeded into a website which it will do for you quickly and easily but why does everything have to exist and be assigned in this fashion?

Take a look at RM orbit, we have been field trailing it the last couple of months and its available for order now although not quite released and this will give you much of the integration for well under a grand and you don't need a CCx network.

Yea vCenter support for Server 2012 is the only significant change i can see the rest looks to be largely bug fixes

I see VSphere 5.1 Update 1 was released a couple of days ago anyone taken the plunge yet?

Dell Equallogic here and very happy, they are a little more pricey and prehaps not as scallable as the HP lefthand SAN's but i like the interface and the one time i have had to deal with support they where very helpful.

Nope its a chargeable part unless you have pre licenced for it or have a CC4 subscription (not purchased outright), should be user installable i think.

The update does require quite a lengthy core update of all the machines, its taken us about 4 days to do the whole site and inevitably you get a small number that require a complete rebuild.

RM dont even advertise smartcache for sale now which says it all about its long term prospects, instead they are marketing lightspeed and smoothwall solutions.

Win 8 smartclient is freely available for CC4.2 and CC4.3 networks that have a valid support contract and the download IS supposed to appear under My Account- Product Downloads, does for me anyway and we are not field trialing it although its concieveable they may be staggering it, give support a call and i'm sure they can sort it. Windows 8 build will only be available for those who have ordered CC4.4 and requires a 2008r2 Forest Root when its eventually released.

First and foremost you would need to get to the bottom of how and why the IT is in its current state. I.e. staffing issues, lack of funding etc. and then you will need to include those who will ultimately be implementing and supporting the IT on board and include them in the process, if they drag heels then in will completely undermine what you are trying to achieve. Also look at sustainability, if you start dishing out iPads now because you have a bit of extra money to spend are you going to be able to replace them in a couple of years time, long term financial planning is key.

Slightly off topic but if you can strech your budget a little further i'd go with the new the 2530-48G Switch's (J9775A)

Draytek vigor 2710 here solid as a rock with decent wireless coverage, a little pricey but the last cheap Linksys I had gave me so much greif.

Trailing lightspeed mdm and I've been quite impressed, easy to setup and use and you can get it for £2per device per year. Not tried Meraki.

Must say v2.4 seems to be a significant improvement, liking the dashboard and it can now handle email attachments and screenshots which was one of its previous failings. Keep up the good work & if you could fix my login while your at it

I'm afraid not, the attachment must have been too big for my hotmail account as well, i'm not sure if you could upload it elsewhere and forward me a link? Desperate to get the helpdesk working with attachments which v2.4 looks to solve and is the main barrier to staff using it at the moment.

Thanks i've opened a ticket with sales so i'm hoping this get routed to support.

Be good if i could actually download the release, everytime i click on download i'm prompted to login again. Cant log a support call online as i dont seem to have the option, call support and your asked to log a call online and call sales and it just rings, less than impressed!

Do a forum search the limitations and issues are widely discussed. iPads are in no way an alternative to MacBook pros, if your looking at doing video or image editing work then a MacBook Pro or iMac would be logical choices if your just looking at apple based products.

Xirrus and Meru just happen to be commercial partners of the "e-learning foundation" who conducted the survey, need you say more really.

I've had about 10 fail out of 450 machines. It's when it fails on a personal laptop owned by a member of senior leadership the headaches begin.