Ephelyon

I bought an old Sun Fire T2000 server off eBay for about £150 around a year and a half ago, because I wanted to fiddle with a SPARC processor. Trouble is, being an old T1 processor it's got 8 cores but only one FPU between the lot, so it's fine for mainly integer operations but rubbish performance (for its spec) with anything floating-point related. Oh well... it's still great for all the enterprise-level database and middleware applications I need to run my house with...

Any servers at all?! That's the way the marketing's written but I find that difficult to imagine...

Yeah, it was RemoteApp we were using, but with a Full Desktop option as well. We also never really had a proper VLE in place, so this is was of a replacement. That said, I'd definitely prefer to move more remote working over to a VLE-style approach than taking up resources on an RDS Session Host... though if we'd managed to implement a VLE successfully it doesn't mean I'd have taken the RDS solution away as it was already there.

I don't know... we had a comprehensive RDP platform available at my last school, which could be used both internally and externally, with beasty VM resources assigned so it could handle the demand. I used to see kids (and staff) on it all the time when I was working out-of-hours. Didn't bother with Citrix or VDI per se as we didn't need them - RDP alone was enough for the job. I think all schools ought to have such a remote access facility available so students and staff have the option to work from home if they choose to, but I'm not suggesting it should have to be plugged relentlessly to all users.

Never said I was endorsing it... Just an example I know of because they're a managed service provider in my local area who offer quite a lot of services, to both corporate and schools, but more and more to schools, and are now also offering this particular service as a standalone fully-managed package (I think), so I felt it was relevant to the question asked.

There's an example of such a service being offered as an explicit package, by Novus Group, here: MySchool Desktop

I've also had a tough year. Probably so tough that I won't be able to come though... :/

Because this is likely to be a contentious issue on either side of the debate, can any GDPR-savvy people comment on which bit of the Regulation this is most likely in reference to? @GrumbleDook @Mel_GDPRiS

Wow - somebody's annoyed this morning!

I'm sure we could manage it if we put them all together, along with the customary bumph that goes along with these things...

What a nice article! @Dos_Box, do you think we could draw something similar together from all the positive experiences we've had with teaching colleagues?

You could maybe look to embedding it "by the back door" by adopting an O365-based VLE, like LP+365? (Alternative products are available! ;D ) That brings the more classroom-centric features together into a single dashboard, while also adding some new functionality (e.g. assignments/marking), which leads to a situation where it becomes everybody's default homepage/dashboard. From that point, you then have a basis to start slowly drawing people's attention to the other features as well...

Hmmm, what's this? A cloudy service has gone down, while I happen to know the Exchange server I set up at my last place is still up? On-prem for the win!!!

Don't worry - I won't! ;D

The point is... I don't get why anyone would stock anything that by default comes without one any more...

That 8300 could be a really good machine, but I'm afraid we never buy anything without an SSD any more...

+1 for SuSE! The distribution more latterly styled as "openSUSE" is now my go-to for Linux - gotta love YaST2! I also still have a boxed original version of "SuSE Linux Personal 9.1" on my bookshelf... =]

This was my work on Friday (yesterday): * Verified that all phones are in place and correctly configured; * Updated all phone extensions with the correct name for where they are; * Edited the options on the main menu when externals call so that calls to Finance actually go to Finance; * Changed the Reception ring group to a hunt group (to ring the next extension if the former doesn't answer, instead of all at once); * Replaced two workstations in Reception and Computing as the ones supplied were dead-on-arrival; * Created and configured 105 new student accounts and generated a nice PDF with all the usernames and passwords; * Tested the Lecture Hall audio/visual installation and made it ready for the Principal to kick off the staff training at 8:30am on Monday; * Imaged up 8 staff laptops for the new starters; * Imaged up 12 out of 32 student laptops in the new laptop trolley, more to follow next week (last summer thing to do). This summer was the first in 30 years where I didn't get any sort of break. Our new building was being finalised and handed over, so there were all the new phones that needed doing, plus the CCTV, access control, BMS and cashless catering. Then a further 76 desktops and their monitors to asset tag and image up once they'd been fitted by the installers. I won't say who the installers were, but let's just say I'm not sure if we're going to be paying that invoice. The amount of cages I had to open up to plug the keyboard in properly, or the power supply, or remove the blanking plates that had been left in so the power button wasn't actually accessible! So it's safe to say I'm almost looking forward to the students returning next Thursday - things ought to be almost back to normal by then!!!

Have you seen the last post (by me) in the thread referred to earlier? You may need to add dllhost.exe as an exception as well as fontdrvhost.exe to get it to work properly...

Thanks for that - can always ask!

I'm getting a little worried about this at my new place. From tomorrow, I'll be based in the new building, where they've managed to give me the only office space on the site with no windows or access to natural sunlight. My Technician will be sat outside the office, literally at a desk in the corridor. Not entirely sure how he's supposed to concentrate, or I'm supposed to not develop a Vitamin D deficiency! :/

I don't think we've managed to raise any generations with no problem-solving skills, although it could be argued that we have equipped some generations with more than others. I really do think it's a culture problem. It will always be the task of the education system, from EY and upwards, to teach that skillset, and improvements can always be made. But beyond education, the solution may lie in "unlocking" a skillset rather than teaching it. But what that would involve is more of a "taking ownership of your own issues" approach.

I find it's not an inability to problem-solve, more a lack of willingness to do so based on the idea that they've "got someone for that". That's not an issue of a missing skillset; it will require a culture shift.

Teachers? (I jest. I actually like teachers.)

I hear that ... the amount of times I've had to correct people when they assume that "they're kids, they'll know how to operate it"... No, they're just less scared of pushing buttons than you (because they're generally less scared of things, being kids). That doesn't mean they have any more of a clue what they're doing!