GC75

I worked for the LA for 13 years, then got headhunted in 2014 by one of the primary schools I supported for about 10 of those years, so we dropped the curriculum support with the LA saving about 12K straight away. We still buy into SIMS support through them as it's cheaper as includes our SIMS licence, pushing out updates/patches and of course SIMS support (though I can solve most myself). We kept with them though as SIMS licences direct from Capita would have cost us around 9K and we pay less than half that for full SIMS support. Everything else I do myself in a large primary school, tech support, server work, rebuilding workstations, getting in quotes, project management, admin support with SIMS/SIMS reporting/Target Tracker etc. etc. We have a new headteacher starting soon and apparently she is all for replacing most of our ICT hardware so that should keep me very busy instead of keeping old kit up and running/cannibalising etc.

I'm a massive Star Wars fan, but wasn't sure about this as unlike last year there has hardly been much hype, but after this new trailer I am really up for it now. I'm going to be booking 15th December off work to go and see it (I did the same last year for TFA, saw it at Empire, Leicester Square), just need to find out when tickets go on sale now.

Just received an email from NS Optimum who will be on stand C279 where it states: 'Lots of goodies to give away including non-spill staff mugs – claim yours by visiting our stand.'

Hi Al, I do like the overview for NetSupport DNA, would be interested in seeing it in action at BETT when I visit on Friday and to also chat about cost etc. All the best, Graham

If you was to go the Linx 10 route make sure you get the Pro version so that you have the option of joining it to your domain. Slightly off topic has anybody had problems with the Camera App that is preinstalled on it? If the tablet it on standby and the user logs back in, opens the camera app, it comes up with a black screen with the take photo button on the side, only way I have found to solve it is to restart the tablet.

Thank you Oaktech

Hi Oaktech, We have 20 Linx Pro 10 tablets that I put in during the summer holidays, could you please let me know how you went about imaging them? They were bought for staff to use for SIMS, Target Tracker and using the camera on them, but only about 7 or 8 get taken out and used by staff on a daily basis, the others don't seem to want to use them, probably because they are not IPads!

If joining your new server as an additional domain controller, make sure Sysvol is shared and replicating via typing net share on a cmd prompt before moving any FSMO roles, I remember a few years ago a job I was on at a school where this became a major problem and ended up having to create a brand new domain to resolve it as we didn't have a lot of time to spend on troubleshooting it. If it doesn't happen straight away just wait it out and I'm sure it will be good to go. If you use Sophos Enterprise Manager, uninstall it completely from your old server before installing on the new one as I've experienced problems with it creating the database installing on the same domain. Uninstalling saves these type of headaches. Robocopy is a great tool to move data from one server to another, if your security groups/permissions are the same it can take them across with it and also if it gets interrupted for whatever reason, run it again and it will pick up where it left off. When doing this in the school holidays, I've setup the script to run it and kicked it off as I've walked out the door, next day everything is there waiting for you, so saves your time with that running out of hours especially if you have a lot of data. Housekeeping the data is good, I know nobody wants to do it, but it's always a good time to think about it with a brand new server. When you are happy with the setup, use an external hard drive to do a complete backup of the server, including a Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) backup. I actually have a full backup run every single evening in the early hours to go alongside our online backup, better to be safe then sorry is my way of thinking. Finally testing, testing, testing is the best thing you can do before everybody wants to start using it, make sure all your permissions/GPOs do as you want them to etc.

Jared, I've always been told not to transfer the roles until sysvol has been shared out on the new domain controller, so if you open an command prompt on the new dc and type 'net share' enter check that you can see sysvol in the list, it can sometimes take a little while to take effect, but hopefully you should be able to see it. If it's there you can then carry on with changing over the FSMO roles. If you have profiles and a home folder for each user in Active Directory, I find a quick way of changing them on bulk especially if they are in the same OU is to select them all, right click, properties and under profile path put \\yourservername\yourprofileshare\%username% this will then change all of them in one go to the new servername and create a folder for each user in your profile share folder. You can also do the same if you have a home folder path, just choose the drive letter then \\yourservername\userdataarea\%username%. Believe me that can save plenty of work especially if like me you are in a school with over 700 users! As for Robocopy it is a command line based application, though I tend to make a batch file and include all areas I want to copy data from like pupil data, pupil share, staff data, staff share etc. That way once you know it is setup correctly you can kick it off as you leave at the end of the day and it will all be transferred across over night, barring any problems anyway. I put in a new server in the summer and was able to come in the next day to find everything had transferred across successfully. I would advise to do it out of hours if you can as it could slow down your network and depending on how much data you have, can take hours to transfer. As for not having access to the user's areas, I cannot honestly answer that question for you as I have always made sure I use the built-in Administrator account that has full access to all areas.

Hi regarding transferring FSMO roles I found some good instructions here that should help you https://winsvr.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/transferring-fsmo-roles-from-ws-2008r2-dc-to-ws-2012-dc/. Also I would recommend Robocopy (It was made available on the Windows 2003 Resource Kit Tools CD, if you don't have it to hand you can download a copy of it here Download Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools from Official Microsoft Download Center) for moving data across from one server to another it not only moves data but also permissions over to the folders, as well as this if for some reason the copy gets halted, you can run it again and it will pick up where it left off. As an example of a script you can run I tend to use something like this: net use n: /delete net use n: \\servername\sharename robocopy n:\ d:\sharename *.* /S /E /COPYALL /R:5 /W:1 /LOG:d:\robocop\Sharename.log This example starts by checking that no N drive is already mapped, if so it removes the mapping, then maps an N drive to the server and sharename you want to copy across, followed by the robocopy switches to copy the data, there is a log file it creates at the end of the third line that you can check if you have any problems with it. I hope that makes sense and also that it helps with your goal of moving FSMO roles and data across to the new server.

Hi, I worked with a few 2012 R2 servers now and have found software deployment a bit hit and miss at times, something that I have found that generally works for me is in the same GPO that you use to install software, enable 'Always install with elevated privileges' this can be found in Computer Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Installer. Give the PCs a gpupdate /force after the server of course, restart and all being well the software should start to deploy. I hope that helps that side of your issues anyway.