Teth

The folsk at tom's hardware have mentioned a couple of times that microsoft aimed to be more lienient towards ethusiasts this time around with oem licensing. That a motherboard change would not neccesarily result in an end to the OEM license. It works on a points system using identifiers from alot more hardware components than XP. CPU, HDs, CDroms, expansion cards 1 point. GFX, mobo 2 points, Network ie MAC 3 points. So provided you get a mobo that you can specify the MAC in the BIOS which is all of them I've seen for the last few years. you should be able to make a mobo switch even with integrated LAN a 2 point change and keep your license. MS however did not specify how many points constituted a new PC and whether it was set for a license or whether they decayed over time. For instance mobo this year, GFX next year, change a dead nic 6 months later and bye bye license. Regardless of this you can buy 2 OEMs for the fost of a retail copy so unless you really like to upgrade I think OEM is fine. Considering most upgraders doing a mobo processor change will keep the old components running as a second PC these days getting a new license and leaving the old license on that hardware makes sense. They are certainly tightening up on multiple installs with one key so staying legall wont be an option.

Yea raid 5 for your setup. To gain from more "exotic" forms of raid like 10 you need to be working with twice as many discs than you are. 5 on a good hardware controller with SAS drives will be plenty fast for your needs.

I think its your best option Russ. The only alternative for non rack powered appliances is to replace they're packaged transformer with one of your own and then run distribution from that. I have done this in the past when a large number of identical items needed powering. In that case 4 switches that all used 29v. I bought a power supply and wired it into a plastic box with 4 sockets and wired them that way. For varying devices there should be no problem powering them from a block. Just make sure to stay safely inside the load limits of the UPS sockets using a quality block with a proper guage of cable and you'll be fine. The draw from those kinds of power supply are very low anyway.

My thoughts exactly. I don't think SAN helps me without increasing throughput on the DCs themselves in some way as well. I think a new server with a good raid 5 array with hot spare(s) in a machine optimised for as much network throughput as I can get and running 2k3 R2 for quota management is my best bet. That should be within my 5k I'm ordering 36 desktops with this as well so I have a littel wiggle room. But looking at SAN it seems to be unrealistic to impliment it with less than 10k.

Sometimes I hate the "system" of purchasing here. This has gone from a theoretical possiblilty to a buy it by friday after Monday nights Finance meeting. I'm honestly not prepared to make this decision. so I'm going to provide some more details and throw myself on the mercy of the edugeeks. First of all I have around £5k to spend, My network will be 120 growing to 140 clients within the year and up to a possible 360 in 2 years time. There are 1300 users approximatly from year to year and I'd like to give them 100MB which obviosuly they wont all use. Currently the 2 DCs are doing as above WSUS, Symantec AV, Network apps (encarta, Skillcheck, odessy, and several other use items) Ris, software by GPO, Mandatory profiles and print server. The users are split roughly 50/50 across the 2 DCs with they're profile and Home folder with redirected mydocs, appdata, favourites and desktop servered from the same DC. Backups are done by mirroring the home folders between servers daily and tape backups of system drive day 1, half data drive day 2, other half day 3, and repeat. What I want is load off the DCs and more storage with data safety. Now a few things to clear up my knowedge. SAN adds storage to the server over the network assuming by a second network interface. so Client connects to server > server connects to SAN > data comes from san through DC to client. This still leaves the DCs loaded with alot of user activity in my mind and might not be the answer to my problem. Am I correct? My DCs are connected to the core switch by 1GB copper and I'm concerned this will be a bottle neck with this many conncurrent clients. NAS adds storage on the network so my users would have they're profile and home folders mapped to //NAS/Home$/yeargroup/user for example. NAS / storage server would have to enforce permissions of course and my DCs would be freed up. The new box would be bought with better network connectivity I have 2 free modules on my Core switch and numerous free copper GB connections that it could use to get network wire speed as close to the disk access speed as possible. My goals here and Data security with good redundancy for uptime and of course good backup in case of catastrophic failure. Any comment and product recomendations would be welcomed. I'll be talking to dell and HP over the next few days and asking they're advice but I really need some realworld knowledge to go with that. School networks are somewhat unique due to our very high ratio of users to clients. We see far more logon traffic than any coporate network that I've been involved with before.

Since I started working here last year I seem to have managed to impress a few people because the schools intrest in IT spending has gone from Zero to include a refresh of 2 general purpose rooms and a refresh with bels on for the media department from standalones for sound and video work and a small network for document work to a network of Core 2 machines capable of both. The media department is justifiably pleased now that they don't have to restrict coursework choice and timeshare systems. I've connected 3 of the schools disperate networks into 1 dramatically improving the usability of the network because user logons and home folders are now unified. However I'm a victim of my own success. There are another 2 networks in the school and management are now eager to have them join the main network. I have the problem now that when I bought the new servers I was buying for a network of 90ish machines. So I choose 2 domain controlers which would each host half the user home folders and then mirror those home folders across the 2 DCs for redundancy and load balancing. Its worked great so far but adding these 2 networks will bring me over 150 machines and some logging of perfmon indicates that it will be too much for the DCs which are currently running, WSUS, Symantec antivirus servers, Home folder storage, a number of network apps and Printers. Some of these Roles are going to have to move. I plan on moving the symantec and WSUS roles off to one of the servers made available by the convergence but I still think the current DCs would fold under the preasure of 150+ users with mapped redirected, Mydocuments, Desktops and app data, running apps from the servers etc. We will also hit a space issue soon the 1.6tb of the user directories already doesn't fit on the same backup as the system drive so I have to do a sysmtem state backup then change tape and start the user space backup before I leave work. So in short what I think we need in a truely up to the job dedicated home folder server. I want it to be big, at least a couple of TB, Fast, Dual maybe quad GB to the core switch, Hardware level raid 5 with hot spare(s), and a proper backup solution. Thats my thoughts so my question is. If you agree with this solution ahve you any suggestions as to what spec, model, general guidance on buying such a machine because I'll be honest I've never bought or commisioned a server of that level before. or if you think I'm going at this totally the wrong way. Whats the alternative, NAS maybe, some sort of SAN any advice on products in this respect?

Just to add a little clarification to early posts about Pupil full control permission specifically assigned and Inherited Full control from ownership. Full control from ownership will only happen if in some way the files and folders in question are inheritting the "CREATOR OWNER - FULL CONTROL" permission from somewhere. It is the windows default both server and Client to have this inherit from the Drive/Volume level of the file system. I set my "home" folder to not inherit permissions so that I can start fresh bellow it without this and restrict pupils so they don't have permissions to change attributes or permissions. We had a spate of pupils setting hidden on they're own files and claiming "the computer lost my work". As a general rule now I tend to remove inherited permissions from any folder that will get shared on the network and start fresh for my own sanity if nothing else. I'm really intrested in the quota management in R2. I'll need to impliment a new storage server for home space soon as we're adding a number of machines to the network and I'll get to use R2 on that.

I have also done this for an open night demo. Had half the machines in the 2 most up to date ICT suites (so kids could play on the other half) + the old ICT suite we don't like to let them near running Folding at home and Seti @ home on knoppix + mosix build I found in a link on Digg once. All booted from CD and using a couple of shares on the fileserver for storage needs. It ripped through work units at a great rate. The @home type apps are a great demo for it because they have a bit of graphical output and they're completely floating point bound.

My concern with actually giving them command line access is things like Fdisk which could cause me to need to re-image alot of machines I don't supose VMware is free for educational use at this point?

a VM is a nice idea actually I think they should be exposed to Linux as part of operating systems instead of the idea of operating systems that aren't windows being all in theory. I'll have a test run and see if our P4s with 1gig ram make a credible job running something like Ubuntu in a VM.

ok I got asked an intresting quetion this morning and said "yes no problem" having thought about it a bit I'm not so sure it can but I thought I'd ask here first so here goes. The ICT course has reached the operating envirmoents stage and a teach wants pupils to use a command line environment to contrast with they're experience of GUIs. Easy I thought but then it occurred to me if I turn off dos prompt blocking for her class it will go off for the whole student body and I can't exactly have kids on the command prompt can I. No problem I thought I'm sure somone has written a simulation for teaching just this kind of thing.. but I can't find it if they have. So do any of you have a solution to this to let pupils use a command line enviroment. I want to make sure the teacher doesn't teach it as "GUI good easy to use", "Command line bad complicated to use". I'd like to see it taught properly that command line is powerful for experienced users. That of course means letting them run a batch process of some variety. How do you do it? / Do you do it?

I'm a solo tech in our school but I do use delegate to allow teachers to change passwords. I haven't worked out how to delegate just the unlock account option I'd like to give em that too.

1. File open security warning can be gotten rid off by adding your own domain or for that matter any other server/domain to the trusted sites in internet options. It can be done by GPO too its part of my base user/workatation policy I forget which. 2. Check event log for errors related to folder redirection. I'd bet its permissions. 3. Mandatory profile wise again check event log and check permissions. At the very least it should give a reason and we can try and help you with that.

continuing with this tack. My friend is wondering if the activation hack also deals with genuine advantage so that you can get the updates and if it then extends to gadgets and ultimate extras.

It comes down to private, comercial and educational eventually. THey want to make they're money from private individuals and the commercial sector because they know they can afforde it. At the same time they realise that while giving it to schools free is crazy but giving it to schools cheap makes great business sense as the graduates of these schools will all be MS trained when they head into industry and that will keep they're cash cow mooing. Depending how big a school you are select or open agreements are the way to go I think last time I looked into it... its swings and round abouts tho.

Extended repositories to get the "cool" packages that are rather grey in the legal department require the internet too. Things like DVD support, xvid, writeable NTFS are not on official repositories but people has published them to what they call Univers repositories and you can apt get them from there.

I've installed edgy and dapper from DVD without it forcing an internet connection. It asked if I wanted to check but I just said no because the machine was stand alone.

Its the "free as in lunch or free as in gratis" argument always when it comes to windows and Linux. A vista upgrade will cost us all a fortune in hard cash but in time? I think I can deploy Vista on my network in a tiny proportion of the time it would take me to go to linux. In fact I can't even picture getting a windows to Linux switch done in the 2 month summer break. Now of course we then have the argument that "With all that money you save you can employ more staff". Take a look at your schools wage bill some time. 3.2million of our 3.7million budget is wages. Linux qualified IT personel cost more because there are less of them. I honestly believe anyone that could really impliment and maintain a secure Linux education network is out of the budget range of a school. Maybe yours is different. I will continue to develope my Linux skills while I work here by implimenting new backend projects on it. I may even get brave and introduce some front end Linux desktops at some point recycling old hardware for internet kiosks for example. With my skills a unified logon infrastructure with centralised file storage is just not a realistic goal while supporting the existing windows network. On a single desktop for office tasks and internet Linux is there now I believe it can absolutely compete. But in our workd of a school network Linux is a long way from the desktop and so it will be Vista in 3-5 years time for me.

I deployed it to 2 out of 5 rooms I have on wsus today. It went fine and the templates are setting everything sorrectly now. (getting the default page to not be the MS intro to IE7 took a bit to update). Everything seems to be running smoothly now

As regards to GPO and encarta I tried to package it several times but it insists on running its own dotnet framework installer and the installer refuses to run silently it always wants to interact wiht the console session and the install fails.I wasted a day or so on it back in June before deciding it could just go on before I ripreped the image to the server. Problem solved. djm968: THats a whole thread / forum of its own. We were meant to be getting loads of money for a proper infrastructure and proper level of supporting personael with our new school build. BUt money is running short and guess where its being cut from at a rate of thousands per week. Yep. Curriculum IT. Of course they still "need" the same number of PCs per suite and the same number of suites. They'll just happily cut support and software. Anyway back to the point. I think I'll leave the home folders as they are then. Maybe just impliment replication of them rather than the robocopy schedule if I can work out how. I haven't messed with replication other than AD in 2k3 yet. Start menu wise I'm more than pleased with the login time at the moment so I can afforde to lose a few seconds. I think I'll try something in between AJs suggestion and redirected and see if I can get games at lunch no games the rest of the time thing running. ONce the groundwork is in place thats the kind of thing I can "tinker" with ona daily basis till I'm happy.

I knew when I bought the DCs the chances of money for a third server was gonna be long way away or not at all so each one has 1 Drive for OS and 2 x 3 drive arrays that share a hot spare 1 is used for packages RIS whatever and the other array is home folders.

Ok so far my week of half term is going great. After implimenting a completely new network in the summer holiday I've got a chance for some refinement. New builds on all the desktops to refine a few niggles the initial builds had especially the build for the first set of desktops which was missing Encarta amoung other things (I assumed at the time encarta 2006 would be GPO installable but it wasn't). Anyway I have 2 days left and I'd like to add some polish. At the moment students all share 1 mandatory profile and teaching staff share another. They're start menus are in this profile but obviously not every suite has the same software bundle and some individual machines have 1 offs like CNC machines or scanners etc. Currenly I have all the programs in the star tmenus and they are just non functional if the machine doesn't have the app. I'd like to make this alot tidier and I assume redirected start menus is the way to go. I'm just wondering which way is best. I'd like to A have them relavent to the machine, B easily updateable when apps are loaded or removed, C which is optional really easily updatable IE adding boardgames to kids start menus at lunch but getting rid of them when the bell rings. So local start menus on the machines with the apropriate shortcuts for that room maybe copied there by a logon script to allow updates. Or server side start menus in which case how do I make them room / machine specific. What do you do? Next up home folder load balancing across servers. I have 2 DCs which are also the file servers. Currently I have years 1, 3, 4 on one and 2,4,6,U6 on the other as a quick and dirty load balance. The home folders are replicated between the servers after school by a robocopy script as teir 1 of the backup strategy. I'm wondering about using a DFS replicated with both servers and a potential 3rd dedicated fileseerver that may come online soon for the home folders. Does the DFS loadbalancing work well? Will replication be too much of a load? is there a better way on vanilla 2k3? I've looked at some books but they really are all aimed at corporate networks were everyone has a roaming profile. THe challenges ina school and the scale of the users per machine I think changes the goalposts dramatically.

definetly want to do that with no users logged into that profile. I generally do copy server/profiles$/Stundent to server/profiles$/student2 rename the .man to .dat in student2 make student 2 the profile for my profile creation/ editing account and log in Make all neccesary changes and then log out again. rename the .dat to .man assign student2 as the profile for all students. after a few days when I'm sure its 100% delete te old profile.

Yea no plans to impliment Vista until "Vista server" rolls out and has some realworld benefit to running it over 2k3 etc. Then I'll do the whole lot hopefully by then enough of the school with have built up a familiarity with it at home. And as for windows classic. I get that all the time here too. Pupil mandatory profile has the blue and green theme, teachers get silver and green and Admin accounts get windows classic. Easy to see whats logged on where when you glance ina door.

Indeed. WEP is less than useful as an actual security measure. A few friends went through 3 years of UNI without paying for broadband One enterprising one had 4 hackable networks overlapping his student house and built a linux box from an old pharmacy PC to loadbalance across them. In school I use WPA2, Macrfiltering or a combination of both depending on the area of the school.