toffee_paul

The blog mentions that the hack will only likely work until 22H2 and it's hoped MS will introduce GPs to manage the start menu but with that now out the only change to GPs related to the start menu seem to be the "Remove Recommended section from Start Menu". Not sure if the hack still works on 22H2 as we haven't tried it but MS really should be adding GPs for this instead of forcing Intune. Too much too soon again from MS.

Hi, We have a teacher who wants to bring in Apple Classroom in for use on a set of dedicated iPads. I've read that one of the requirements is to use School Data Sync to set up users/pupils. We already have our users synced from our local AD to our Azure AD tenant via Azure AD Connect. Will SDS try to upload pupils from our MIS to Azure AD and if so how will this affect the users who already exist on Azure AD ? Thanks

Looking into using School Cloud for our next remote parents evenings, anyone know of issues with ISPs that aren't emPSN?

Waiting on Bittitan (MigrationWiz) to get back to me after I emailed them yesterday. Mehball have you used them yourself for the same type of migration?

You mean manually exporting .pst files? We're an SEN school and I feel that would prove too problematic for most of our student cohort.

Hi, looking for some advice on partners who may be able to help with a Gmail to Exchange Online email migration. I know Microsoft offer a method to do this which doesn't involve working with a migration partner but for the piece of mind I'd like to look at other options. I've seen MigrationWiz mentioned on here by @%1; last year but wondered if there's anyone else who's done something similar and can recommend a company? I need to migrate (up to) 180 pupil accounts, 60 staff accounts, several email distribution groups, a few service account type mailboxes, and a shared school calendar, which needs to be done over a half-term and without any problems! I spoke with someone from Microsoft about this and took up their suggestion to receive calls from three suppliers who specialise in cloud migration/transition. I've spoken with a couple but get the impression there's not the level of expertise there that they claim! Has anyone done this themselves using the Exchange admin centre?

I left wiping these until coming back term as I had a suspicion the licences for web filtering would be extended even though I didn't think it would be as late as 2 weeks before it was due to expire! I had started to get a few back in to reset and enrol in Intune / Smoothwall Cloud Filter but now they've extended it til Sept '22 I won't be in any rush. General plan here is to allow pupils who had one assigned last year to keep it for the duration of the time they're pupils here. Some of our surplus ones from last year will go to pupils in the 2021 this month and they'll have the reset (Intune/Smoothwall CF) ones given to them that have M365 A3 for students benefit licences on them. Ours are set up in Autopilot and they work very well the only downside being the length of time it takes to get Office on them during the Device Setup phase of OOBE. I dabbled with White Glove as a way around this so the standard apps like Office and the Smoothwall unified client were pushed down to the device before pupils get their hands on them. I initially tested this on GeoBooks but was having issues with the TPM during the Device prep phase even though they apparently support the required v2.0 standard and attestation already. Had no such worries with the Dell 3190's and White Glove on these was smooth as butter. Also had some weird issues with the time zone of Autopilot/White Glove devices being set to Pacific even though during OOBE English was selected for region and keyboard. Didn't seem to affect anything in any major way but was annoying me so solved this by assigning a device configuration profile and setting 'Configure Time zone' to 'GMT Standard Time'. EDIT: For anyone wondering, White Glove (or Autopilot for pre-provisioned devices as they call it now) is possible on the DfE laptops that won't have an Ethernet port by just connecting to to WiFi on the first OOBE screen following a reset. SHIFT+F10 > type 'control netconnections' then connect to a WiFi network. Thenn the usual 5xWindows key process to kick off pre-provisioning. I appreciate WG can be unrealistic depending on the volume of devices but it's nice to know it's doable even with the DfE-provided laptops.

Have you migrated from G Suite or on-prem Exchange?

Anyone else having issues with how quickly Dynamic Groups populate in Azure AD? Added a load of hardware hashes to AutoPilot yesterday and they show up in the portal with "Assigned" next to their name which is great. The problem is the Dynamic Group I created does not populate with those devices even though the rule syntax is correct. (device.deviceManufacturer -eq "Dell Inc.") and (device.deviceModel -eq "Latitude 3190") Looks like a known issue (https://feedback.azure.com/forums/169401-azure-active-directory/suggestions/33481477-ability-to-trigger-a-dynamic-group-update?page=2&per_page=20) but wondered if anyone has had similar issues and how long I should expect these devices to show up? The workarounds mentioned on that Azure feedback forum don't work either.

Can anyone recommend any reliable and competitively priced fibre installation firms in the north-west region? Thanks

Is it still the DfE's plan to discontinue use of their MDM for these devices in September? It will be interesting so see if this gets extended or there will suddenly be hundreds of thousands of laptops with unfiltered Internet access

I have a very strange issue with WDS whereby I can't approve pending devices! It's driving me insane. Previous set up: - Server 1 (2012 R2) : ADDS, DHCP, WDS This worked perfectly fine and I could PXE boot BIOS and UEFI (using DHCP options) Current set up: - Server 1: ADDS, DHCP, WDS (service disabled) - Server 2: (2019): WDS When I install the WDS on Server 2 (in Standalone mode, same mode WDS was using under previous set up) I can't approve any pending devices and get this weird "Element not found" error message. Also tried running the wdsutil /Approve-PendingDevices /requestid:{ALL} command but get "Error code: 0xC104010B. Error description: An invalid request ID {ALL} was specified. Also tried with /requestid:{1} but get the same error code. WDS settings used: PXE Response: Respond to all client computers (known and unknown) - Require admin approval for unknown computers is ticked. Boot: Known/unknow clients: Continue the PXE boot unless the user presses the ESC key DHCP: Do not listen on DHCP ports - unchecked, Configure DHCP options to indicate that this is also a PXE server - unchecked TFTP: Maximum Block Size: 0, Enable Variable Window Extension - unchecked Rest are as defaults I've found that if I untick 'Require admin approval for unknown computers' the devices skip the pending stage and will image fine but I need to be able to retain control of which devices can receive an image through PXE. Server 2 is domain joined member server only with just the WDS role installed. DHCP remains on Server 1. I'm logged into Server 2 with admin rights. Just can't see what is causing this, any ideas?

We have some coming back in and teachers complaining they had no space to store them. Told them nobody has asked them to store them anywhere, the advice hasn't changed and the devices need to stay at home with pupils in case of the need to isolate again. We have several occurrences of bubbles self-isolating BEFORE the latest national lockdown. If laptops all come back in it would be a logistical nightmare to sort out who's is who's. Head is happy for them to remain at home with pupils so that's more than ok with me!

The school I work in is in the process of applying for a funding to build an external classroom. From an IT point of view we will need wired and wireless connectivity. The new building will need wired and wireless connectivity (Curriculum and Guest WiFi VLANs). Entrance to the new build may be through magnalock gates (Net2 door access) so we may also need provision for the Security VLAN. Same for CCTV too. There may be cameras inside/outside the building staff which need to be connected to the Security VLAN. In the server room we currently have HP switches (two stacks of 4). None of the SFP ports are in use. I've been told the builders will be digging a channel for electrical cables to run underground back into the main school. I've not had yet had any conversations with them but I imagine this channel can also be used to lay fibre cabling. We've not undertaken a project like this before so it's all a little new. Am I best speaking with a comms/fibre installer? Is is possible to provide 3 different VLANs to the external classroom? Thanks

We're only a smallish school here <200 pupils. Could you not disconnect the older data files? I rarely if ever get asked for web activity beyond the last few days so for us it makes no sense to keep the older logs connected. Totally agree about the legacy tech. SIMS is horrific but try and mention about moving to another MIS and the staff start trembling with fear!

Thanks for the responses. I migrated our installation the other day from WS2012 R2 to 2019. Just wondered if anyone had took the chance with Win10. I've assigned the VM 8GB and it's using 30% at the moment. Probably down to having few connections to deal with at the moment with only a handful of pupils/staff in and maybe as I've only loaded the last 3 months worth of iLog2 data files in.

Hi, We're moving our Impero Server installation and noticed from the server migration documentation that it's possible for it to be installed on Windows 10. I'm wondering if anyone has actually installed it on Windows 10 (and if so how well does it run) or does everyone stick with Windows Server ?

They are drives that are in the server spec document so no issues in terms of compatibility. They are Lenovo ThinkSystem 2.5" 5300 Mainstream SATA 6Gb Hot Swap SSD drives. There's the Entry, Mainstream and Performance ranges. There's no way we could stretch to the Performance range. This will be a storage for a new Hyper-V host. DCs, WSUS, Impero Server, etc. I'd normally go with SAS but this is our first new server in quite a while so wanted to see how well SATA SSDs compare against SAS HDDs. I know the SSD vs HDD argument is a pointless one as SSDs have obvious speed advantages and are now enterprise-grade, which hasn't always been the case. I was more interested in the SAS vs SATA argument. SATA as a protocal has been around for years and SAS as the successor to SCSI is much more efficient. I'm wondering if the speeds SSD gives over HDDs makes the SAS vs SATA argument a moot point.

Hi all, Looking at utilising 4 x enterprise-grade SATA SSDs in a RAID 10 instead of SAS HDDs in our new server. Has anyone had any negative experiences going down the SATA SSD route? I know SSDs are so much faster than HDDs but when it comes to RAID and comparing the two I've not been able to find a lot of info about the performance gains over SAS HDDs when using the same RAID config. Thanks

Are you after devices that someone can just pick up and use, not had to sign into anything, but still have the devices enrolled in Intune?

I've just set our Android tablets up on Intune as "Fully Managed". You're right in saying the enrolment is completed by them logging in to the account on the device. For this reason I don't thinks it's possible to enrol when some users don't have accounts. Could you set them up with accounts and restrict what services they have access to?

On the SSL front, I've just had a chat with PrimarySite who are designing our new school website. We've not launched yet and we still have our domain and hosting with a different provider. We apparently get a 'free' wildcard SSL certificate from PrimarySite to make our school website secure but the guy I spoke to said he's not aware of sending schools the certificate for importing into their own RDS server. I'm really confused now as to what to do with the this step! Any ideas? With regards Smoothwall, would anyone be so kind as to help me fill in the fields for the new port forward rule for port 443?

Hi, As a small school that have never used remote access before we're now in a position where we need it setting up. This isn't my strongest area exactly but I'm trying my best to get this set up at the request of the headteacher to allow staff to work from home. When the server was installed it a VM was created as a member server and had the Remote Desktop Service role installed along with the File and Storage Services and IIS roles. The configuration of the RDS role doesn't appear to have been completed. Most of the options in the deployment overview are greyed out, which I have read, mean that those have been completed but the RD Gateway has a green + icon, as shown in attached. Here's our current setup: Physical host with Hyper-V and three VMs- VMs: One DC running Server 2012 R2, two member servers both running Server 2019 Standard (One SIMS/FMS, One RDS server) Smoothwall UTM - no configuration related to remote access or changes to firewall rules/port forwarding has been done on the Smoothwall. An 'A' record has been created in our DNS hosting company, pointing the remote access URL we want staff to use, to the schools' public IP address. On the Smoothwall firewall log, I can see attempts I make to go visit the URL are hitting the Smoothwall before being dropped. I know this is expected due to there being no Smoothwall config done as yet to allow the connection through. When inside the school, browsing to the internal RDS URL (https://remote..lan/RdWeb) I get a "This page is not secure message". If I click 'More information' I get this message "The website's security certificate is not yet valid or has expired. The hostname in the website's security certificate differs from the website you are trying to visit. Error Code: DLG_FLAGS_SEC_CERT_DATE_INVALID DLG_FLAGS_SEC_CERT_CN_INVALID." As well as the certificate being expired (expired about 4 years ago), The reason the hostname differs is because the SSL cert that was purchased was done when the school was known by another name. We have a new school name now. I can select the 'Go on to the website (not recommended)' link and it will take me to the login page for where I can enter my AD credentials. I can access the RemoteApps programs such as Word, Excel etc and use the 'Connect to a remote PC' link to connect to a computer in the school. So this is where I'm up to. I'm not sure what additional config I need to do on the Smoothwall or what, if any, changes are needed in DNS. I'm expecting to be told we need a new SSL certificate but can this be purchased from anywhere or does it need to be bought from the same company our school website is hosted by hosting provider? Our domain is also registered with the same company. I know I'm not a million miles away but I could really use some help from the Edugeek community in getting this over the linem, particularly with the Smoothwall/DNS side of things. Any help offered is much appreciated.Thanks

Does anyone see any potential issues adding 2 x 16GB sticks of RAM into a server that currently has 4 x 8GB sticks in? We currently have 4 x 8GB DDR4 / 2133MHZ / PC4-17000P-R / 1RX4 / RDIMM installed and I want to add another 32GB. I can add four more 8GB sticks but two 16GB sticks are cheaper, just wondering if it's ok to mix and match capacities as long as the rank and speeds are the same? Thanks

Sorry I missed this reply... have you had any luck resolving this? I'm not too sure what might be causing this not to work.