Richie1972

Alternatively you can do something similar to what I've done: 1. Create a custom report in SIMS 2. run the command line report exporter to export the data to a CSV 3. Write a script that imports the CSV into an SQL table 4. A link on staff desktops enables them to access any student timetable directly (plus students get access to their own - so no excuse for "losing" their timetable) Richie

Damn, we've just bought licences for Win 2008 R1 - I didn't think it'd be out until much later in the year

Which is fine if you want promotion and don't mind travelling all over the place. As for me, I'm happy where I am and at my current level, so whichever company takes over it looks like I'm stuffed... unless we get one of the few companies that still realises the vlue of having local staff

They used to not recommend virtualising DCs, but that's not the case now - we're going to be virtualising our DCs this summer. However, they do say DON'T snapshot DCs as you'll get just the problems the OP mentioned

Had a drive fail in our RAID 5 on a Fujitsu Primergy server - simply swapped out faulty drive, fitted new drive in caddy, slotted back in and away it went - no downtime (lots of disk activity whilst rebuilding, though)

I used to hate sophos, but I quite like it now. We have it on our servers and it runs fine. We have McAfee provided by the LA, but it is total crap - made even worse by the fact we have no access to the management console (we can't have VNC installed anywhere as it is classed as malware ffs). I refuse to install anything as rubbish as McAfee (which, IMHO, is only fit for home PCs not schools, business, etc) on our servers. I don't find Sophos is resource hungry

Has anyone got any of these Vye laptops (http://www.vyeusa.com/downloads/s37MiniVdatasheet4.pdf)? With have a number of them but find that they are very flaky connecting to the school's WLAN. We have a number of other laptops around the school that have no problems, but these sometimes seem to struggle to connect - even if the AP is in the same room. If we have, say, up to eighteen in a room (there is more than one AP in the area, so it's not overloading) then I can guarantee that three or four (not the same ones) will fail to connect and have to be repeatedly rebooted. However, we have some nice cheap HP510 laptops that connect with no problem. Does anyone know if there's an issue with the Vye's having particularly weak WLANs?

Not sure where you get the 6 months from - it's supposed to be 12 months IIRC, however, the company you get transferred to can get rid of you after the first day for "technical or economic" reasons. On the plus side you might get money, training and new toys to play with - if they decide to keep you on... hmm, but would they really keep on NMs when everything is remotely managed? It still seems to me that we are all going to be losers in this game - not knowing if we'll have jobs from one day to the next - having said that, I'm so "popular" with regards to BSF meetings that I think I'll be the first one kicked out when we get taken over

That sounds like you've not got the Open Files backup module for BackupExec

We've played with it with various degrees of success. Things to consider: 1. ensure you have one of the servers hosting the DFS set as preferred (unless you only have static data), as there is a delay in replication 2. bandwidth can be an issue on a slow network 3. Linux/MAC can't see or handle DFS properly 4. Some backup solutions (Retrospect 7 in our case) can't handle DFS properly When it works it's great, especially on a good network

I tend to have GPO software deployment split into departments, classroom machines, whiteboard machines, office machines, etc. Far easier to manage. Not applying any to the servers at the moment, though

RAID (proper raid, not the pseudo RAID of cheaper motherboards) should be an essential to all your major servers. Split roles and ensure plenty of redundancy (DFS, load balancing, etc). Try and get virtualisation up and running - much faster to get a backup... back up again. Get rid of tape backups and have disk backups in a remote building (unless you only have the one building). Have a server(s) dedicated just to backups

I was worried about missing one out - subconsciously I still missed it out Ok, that has reduced my fears - slightly. I thought RM had been making redundancies: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/bsf/15289-job-losses-hackney-bsf-rm.html Or is this just rumour?

things are moving scarily quickly. I know each bid is different, but I am just looking at info regarding each company's past experience to get an idea of how they'll treat us. There has been info on here regarding job losses with RM (Hackney) just wondering if there wasn't much truth in that and that other companies haven't been doing the same (plus answers to my other questions from those who've experienced it would certainly help)

We're going over to Interim Managed Services from January and it is now public that the bidders are RM, Northgate and Redstone. Can anyone give me some FACTUAL pros and cons: 1. What happens to the Network managers? 2. What happens to creativity and development (as opposed to just having one system, hardware, software foisted upon us)? 3. What happens regarding other - not IT - jobs we do around school? 4. What about help desk (is it local to school or based in India)? 5. How much access and freedom do the remaining IT staff have? 6. How many redundancies have been made (either by economic reasons or change of conditions)? 7. What new opportunities are opended up (I don't mean moving on up the managed service provider)? 8. If there are any Network Managers left in BSF schools are they supported and allowed to stay - or are they "encouraged" to move on or up? 10. During the Interim service do things remain the same or do new systems, software and hardware get forced on us? 11. How are hours, holidays and salaries affected? 12. How are the remaining IT staff supported (local, remote only)? 13. What sort of improvement (or worsening) of service is provided by having EVERY IT call routing through a possibly foreign helpdesk? Please note: I am looking for FACTUAL evidence and NOT hearsay - I need to reassure myself, my school, etc (or confirm the worst)

Look into DFS for your profiles - try to ensure that you set one server to be a prefered server, otherwise if you get the same users logged on in more than one place some of their files might "disappear" for a while. This is your best option to reduce points of failure

You could also look at blocking groups of IP Addresses - they may well have just a block of addresses they use. Alternatively you could use keyword filtering in Websense so that the site is blocked if the word iloveim appears anywhere on it

We're using Sophos on our servers (I refuse point blank to use McAfee on the servers) The workstations all have the LEA supplied Mcafee, which is awful - we have no access to any central management system, so can't set exclusions and can't find out whether PCs have had infections or are even up to date (without physically checking them). If we had the money I'd invest in something else (Sophos or NOD32) but as we don't we're stuck with it. I do like the Sophos Enterprise Console - so easy to deploy, manage, update and review all computers (shame it's just the servers we have it on). As another poster said: install it and it just works. I get emails about infections, etc and I have a nice console for management

Yes, we're now running Websense 7 There are a lot of changes, one of the best being the web based management than can be run from any computer on the network. It's a lot more customisable and the reporting is better. Only had it installed for about a week or so yet

I'm already testing Xen on Centos 5.2 on a quad core desktop and a dual core athlon x2 (at home). I've had XP, Centos (32&64 bit), Win2k3, Win2k8 all running fine, but obviously not tried connecting client machines yet. I've even had VMs installed on iSCSI targets attached to the xen server (ran really slow, but I did have Openfiler sat on an old Compaq P3 733MHz lol). I might even play around with Vista and Windows 7... I want to try to build a Windows 2008 SIMS setup, but I believe there are problems with getting updates if you are already running a SIMS server - I'll also have to dig out the SIMS installation docs (once I find them). I'm in the middle of building a test for Openfiler with DRBD and Heartbeat (on two Compaq P3 733's - so fast test lol). However, with money constraints looming, I'm not sure how much of this I'll be able to build - I might have to try to split some of the project over a couple of years (BSF permitting). The servers I'm going to be using will have "proper" on board RAID (server class boards, so should be too) as opposed to the fake RAID you get on desktop computers. More than likely I am going to sit our ADSL/cable link behind a firewall and just point our virtual gateway (Linux with Websense7) at it to save having to dedicate a LAN connection to the ADSL link. One thing I'm not able to test until I get the hardware is Xen "live" (and not so live) migration - there are various documents on how to do it, though.

I'm not worried so much about the paid support side of things - I find that the ppl on here and other forums (fora ????) are very helpful. I'm making sure everything is fully documented so that anyone new is easily able to keep things going As I've said, I'm really just trying to reassure the powers that be that Xen is used in industry (and, hopefully, other schools) and is stable, etc

@AngryTechnician: thanks I'll use that as a reference @powdarmonkey: thanks for the offer, but I'm really just looking for the info to make my case. I'm looking to try SIMS virtualised too I'm trying to build up a good written case to present to my boss to allay his fears that I'm building on something not tried and tested, reliable and industry used.

Later this year we are building a new server core and I'm going down the road of virtualisation, redundant core switches and a dual SAN with High Availability (Openfiler with DRBD). So far my tests have all revolved around Linux Xen (which is proving to be very easy, stable and nice to setup). My problem, at the moment, is that my boss is having doubts about it and talking about just putting in standard, basic, servers What I'm looking for is a list of schools, companies, etc that use it and are happy using it (some online documentation to back it up would be excellent). I, personally, don't see the problem as the virtual clients will mostly be running Windows 2008 server - but I think his concerns are that I'm looking at something very much "non-standard" (he's worried that when BSF takes over I'll be kicked out or re-deployed elsewhere - not to mention the concerns of what would happen if I had an accident). Assurances that the whole setup will be fully documented (with "noddy guides" and pictures too!!!) haven't completely satisfied him, so any help very much appreciated

Ok, is there any decent documentation on this - bearing in mind that I know nothing about Python?

I know this is an old thread, but I am looking in to using Pykota, but so far haven't found a way of using it to add a user name to the header/footer of each printed page. Is this possible and, if so, are there any examples of how to do it?