NB9457

I use Veeam Free for all VMs and Iperius Free as a file level backup, both hosted on separate HP Microservers, which then copy to external 10TB external HDDs for weekly offsite backups, I will also be taking advantage of Cloudberry and Google Drive soon as a free cloud solution, but due to not having the best download speeds, this will be for absolute worst case and maybe as a bit of an archive too. We also have shadow copies enabled too for live data so the end user can recover their own files. As we don't have a SAN and are literally only just going virtual, I'm also planning on using an old server with some large HDDs and more RAM for HyperV replication of core servers, such as file and SIMS.

Was about to say, checkpoints on DC VMs is bad, but you worked that out! I manually back up one of My DCs around every 30 days, just shut it down, copy the VHD file to the backup system and the rest of the VMs and servers backups are automated.

Try ring HP, it may still be under the lifetime warranty

Hi all, ordered the wrong RAM for an old 2950 Server, looking for 4GB sticks if anyone has any? If so, happy to pay you a bit for them. Failing that, does anyone have a cheap server with at least 32GB RAM? Need a cheap machine/more RAM as a proof of concept that virtualisation is the way to go before the school invest in new equipment in the future.

If the warranty and supplier are good, I can't see a reason not to give them a go. Viewsonic have made displays for years, so they're not exactly a new company. Maybe try and ask for a Demo?

You can prevent this and passcode lock the profiles.

Set them up initially with the Mac using Configurator 2 and have a look into an MDM to remotely manage them and push out APPs Mosyle

I'm currently playing with Apple Device Management for Schools and Districts | Mosyle Manager MDM they do a free version too which seems very very good

So, for digital signage at the school I currently work at, my predecessor put Apple TVs on various communal displays around the school, as you can imagine, this was becoming increasing difficult to maintain and a nightmare to manage, so we needed something simple but effective. We looked into Xibo, but it was a little too complex for our needs. Our solution was Risevision, completely free cloud based solution, whilst others on here have used it, after browsing through, I couldn't see it being used the way we are currently using it. As some of you may know, Risevision charge for hosting content on their servers, now here is where G Suite comes in. Within G Suite, you can create a Google Slides presentation, so you create a shared Google Slides document within your school, give edit access to the staff who would like to add/update relevant info to it and then when it's complete, choose File > Publish To The Web > Embed. In here, set the resolution of the display you will be showing it on, set the transition time and click the two check boxes to auto run and restart the slide show, then click publish. You will now be given you embed code, copy this code and go to the risevision web app, then select the presentations tab, click add new presentation and select blank. Click the settings cog, set the resolution and name your display. Now click add place holder, and from the four boxes in the left pane, select more, this will open the widget store, in the search bar, search for 'html widget', clear the existing code and paste the embed code from your earlier Google Slides doc and scale it to fit the box on the screen, click save, then publish. Now all that is left to do, is set up a display and assign a schedule to it using the presentation made with the Google Docs. Congrats, you now have a signage system that is cloud based and in effect just runs off Google Slides! We have set our media players to restart in the evenings to make sure they pull in any changes made to the Google Slides Doc during the day. (They are set to restart by default anyway whenever you create a new display) So, apologies for my poor guide, but to the school it has been very beneficial, zero cost and pretty much fit and forget for us IT folk. If anyone needs any help or if I've missed something, please let me know. Hope it helps some one

We bought a few cheapo sets, then gave them to the departments and notified them they will be billed for any damage. When it comes out of their budget, it's amazing how much better looked after the equipment becomes...

It is the same as Enterprise, but with additional features for education, with the insight to add more in the future.

Currently physical and it's driving me mad. Trying to push for Virtual, so much easier to manage and backup. Currently all our Staff, Student, Admin and Domain Controller sit upon one server and it's one mass point of physical failure. Can't wait to split the roles and go virtual!

Not bad, what are the resolution of the monitors you'll be using? As I said, the Epson ones are Full HD and if your monitors are, you'll get the full benefit of the Monitor and Projector and I really can't tell you honestly how good the picture is on these units, for what we paid I was overwhelmed and the feedback we got of staff was extremely positive.

When I looked a year ago, economically there wasn't. When I checked, the power consumption of the LED projectors wasn't significantly lower to make the total cost of ownership any lower and with the plan to have the projectors on a 4 year life cycle, we should only need for most, one £60 lamp, making the total cost of ownership for us around £455exVAT a unit. I think at the time, the closest LED unit was well over £1,000 and yielded no benefits to us, plus we'd rather replace with a similar good more budget projector and expect years than have LED for 7. Who knows, the LED screens may be super cheap then! But as I mentioned, work out total cost of ownership tied in with your replacement cycle.

We used Epson TW5210, around £395exVAT, stunning picture, Full HD, very wider, very bright and genuine lamps only £60. BUT, no freeze button. The Epson EB-U04 is the business rated one and is very similar spec, I think it had a very so sightly longer throw, but again, uses the same £60 genuine lamps. £417exVAT (EDIT: But has the much loved freeze function)

I had a similar scenario a few months ago, staff member had her lifes work on an external hard drive. Tried everything and in the end, plugged it into a Mac and it just worked.

We use GMail, it's great. Exchange seems a bit pointless now, it costs money to licence, maintain and you have hardware costs too. No brainer for me at least!

That's true of the free version, but with the paid version (around £250) you can schedule deployments and set it to retry offline machines

Another for PDQ

It says it can push Apps, no mention of programs, so does for it to work, I'm assuming it'll somewhat rely on the windows store?

May not be a proper solution, but given you're using a VM, is it not just easier to get a blank copy of Win Server and start again? I did this when ours went pear shaped, only took me an hour to install the Server, WDS and MDT and then I just copied the drivers and images over onto the new share and imported them to MDT. Again, I know it's not a proper fix, but it is a solution and in the long run, could work out quicker for you?

Once you get SSDs, you'll be asking yourself why you never did it sooner. Worth every penny.

I use/have used: -Hirens Boot CD, Great for resetting local passwords and testing hardware -Spiceworks, think we all know this is feature packed -Angry IP Scanner, scans IP ranges and tells you which IPs are live and gives the ID of devices -Freshdesk, honestly the best most simple and effective helpdesk I've used, cloud based and free Lets not forget the biggest tool, edugeek itself, I'd probably be pretty lost without it now!

IIRC, you either have to use a controller to convert it to standalone or download the standalone firmware and flash it. The reset pin will just reset it in managed mode once it has been linked to a controller.

I pay my Coscto membership just for the hotdogs and pizza