Ephelyon

Not without some disruption on the failback I don't think. So I wouldn't use it to actually complete the work, but rather just to run through the procedure to make sure everything is okay. It does mean doing it twice, but better safe than sorry. If everything goes smoothly on the replica but you click the wrong thing on the live server and FUBAR it (disruption inevitable), you can always just copy the replica files back over to the host and fix it that way.

You can replicate it away and then make changes with zero disruption, but in terms of integrating those back in, you might need to make use of its Failover and Failback features.

Actually, that pic is a rather nice metaphor, considering Tony said something like the award reflects the community...

"... and there, it consumed him..." xD

I got mints and a bear Does John's bear collection have anything to do with your bears???

Reminds me of the end of Episode 1. "But which was destroyed... the Master or the Apprentice?"

Hehe whatever's going cheers =] What kind of teddies?

I'm not there till tomorrow :/ Will there be any left?

WHO'S GOT MINTS?!?!

As I've said in other threads, the school would be reinvesting the money back into T&L in a different way. A more sustainable way, as opposed to the shinies they could otherwise have spent it on. At the moment schools are not winning with their IT anyway a lot of the time, because they don't train their staff up to do the tasks they want from them. So this is about making that situation better and moving some money around (not pulling it out of thin air) so that they're spending the amounts on staffing that they should have been spending anyway from Day 1. Also, no, the point of the framework is that it covers suitable career entry points all the way up to Strategic ICT Management posts at SLT-level.

Congratulations! I missed this thread, but would have given these in particular: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/courses-training/92822-defining-our-profession.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/behind-red-door/87393-view-smt.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/behind-red-door/104174-stress.html (on a more personal note)

I'd say it's more apathy than anything else. To be honest what I'd like to see more of is sector-wide reforms to make staying in school IT and becoming this concept of the "educational technologist" much more attractive to people in our position. That way, we get better employment opportunities here and the schools get to benefit from very experienced technical staff who have broad skillsets when they enter a new role (as opposed to just when they leave it) and who may also have picked up a passion for education, i.e. the uses of the technology in this sector and not just the technlogy itself. Everybody wins then, but I'm afraid it'll cost more than they're offering at the moment.

There has never been sufficient visibility into our roles to allow executives and higher-up HR types (or in a state school setting, the Local Authority) to gain a decent insight into exactly what it is we do, what we know, and what we're responsible for. As long as we continue to be seen as merely putting into place other people's plans (which is only half the picture); as long as we are seen as merely supporting rather than actually doing; and as long as there is insufficient perception of our duties and responsibilities (such as having access to everything, which I class as a workplace hazard as it dramatically reduces your plausible deniability in law); then none of that will change. And as @witch says, yes, a lot of us go in younger and through the self-taught route so we accept lower-paid jobs and then stay in them for a variety of reasons. But work is underway... @TrevorGreenfield is still working to set up an Association as referenced on page 2 of this thread. @GrumbleDook and I have attempted contact with the BCS (one interested response from their Director of Membership so far) and I'm interested in working with organisations like QA and the FITS Foundation to create a career entry and progression framework. Other things we can do in state schools include applying for a review of our job spec - I've done that and gone up a grade, plus it allows you an ample opportunity to sit down with SLT and really go through everything you do. I have oodles of resources on how to go about that if anyone is interested.

Hehehe, hardly... @GrumbleDook knows we disagree on some things, @elsiegee40 knows we disagree on others... but I've never had cause to doubt the fact that we all respect each other as professionals at the end of the day

There is a difference between doing something and doing it with distinction, whether you choose to base your sysadmin skillset around Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X (supposedly even easier to administer than Windows but still a b*gger when it falls over), or in the mainframe market like AIX. It's true that Windows sysadmin skills are among the most common in that job market, but it's also true that the majority of SMBs will use Windows (at least on the desktop). Certainly the majority of schools do as well. Are there more people because there are more jobs, or is it vice versa? I imagine it's probably both. If you Next > Finish your way through Windows networking, you're not getting the most out of it. I've achieved a level of automation (image deployment, software installation, backup management etc.) here with Windows - through Group Policies, batch scripting and Auto-It - that frankly you're not going to get with anything else, and that means the system just runs itself most of the time (isn't that the American Dream of sysadminning?) so I'm freed up to focus on the strategic side and work with the curriculum staff to achieve the best from their technology. It might look easy to keep it going now... but that's only because of the phenomenal effort it took to get it there. When I first got here there was an average of 50 jobs on the Helpdesk all the time and we had a couple of Win2K3 tower servers that fell over every few hours or so, with XP on the desktop. Now we're a fully-virtualised Win2K8R2 + Win7 shop that largely runs itself with an average of 0 jobs on the Helpdesk... but that's only happened through years of work (as Technician then NM) that's far beyond the Next > Finish level (not being arrogant, jus' sayin'). So put bluntly you can Next > Finish your way through administering a Windows network, yes, but you're using very little of its potential to free you up for the rest of the role if you do. At the end of the day, there's a reason why the "green and keen I-can-regurgitate-MCITP-textbooks" types aren't as well regarded as people with actual experience. Simon Travaglia likes to talk about this...

Right, thanks for that!

Right, I see, cheers for that info. Do you know how I might go about looking for that? I can get a list of UPNs/e-mails from AD with: dsquery user "OU=Pupils,OU=*** Users,DC=**********,DC=local" -limit 0 | dsget user -pager -email> "%UserProfile%\Desktop\Pupils.txt" So that would work once I clean the text file up a little.

Okay, thanks. How do you mean "used a lookup"? In AD, SIMS or the Import Tool?

Hi Matt, is there any way this could be expanded to use the UPN as well as / instead of the Admission Number please? We currently have our pupil UPNs in AD anyway so our Parental Portal knows who they are, and now I need to bulk-import their Exchange e-mail address as defined in AD into SIMS. It would be very handy to use the UPN as the common reference point as I can then dsget the UPN and e-mail address from AD and use it with SIMS Bulk Import to do the lot all at once.

I'd hope to make the Saturday

It seems the BCS has clarified its position on this matter: Women in IT | Consultations and responses | BCS Policy Hub | Features, Press and Policy | BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT

True; I don't think ours is ungrateful due to his awareness of that very fact.

An issue with one or more of the following: 1) Autodiscover config in Exchange; 2) Autodiscover config in DNS; 3) Autodiscover in Outlook (often safe to turn off for internal clients as long as you're deploying their mail profile settings through GPO). On Outlook for Mac this is often fixed by turning off Autodiscover on the client.

Count yourself lucky; an apprenticeship is low-paid with many hours. Ours only got paid more (in the end) and trained more than the basics because I fought for it.

It depends on your situation. We employed our apprentice at 17 who's from the local area but a different school. He's now finishing his apprenticeship as well as a host of other training courses and was able to mind the fort for me when I was off ill for a month last year. Overall I'd say he's a success story and evidence that it can be done.