dcwhitworth

I'm not telling anyone until I have clearer information, don't want any knee-jerk reactions/decisions going on. A delay of a few days (or even weeks) isn't going to make any difference.

Unfortunately they don't really deal with the issue of backups. If the only recourse to finding dodgy images is to delete your backups (because I don't think trying to manually hack the images out of them is likely to be viable) then I have to say I can't guarantee the integrity of the network because at any point we might be called upon to destroy our backup library. Also in the modern IT age can you truly delete anything ? There are going to be so many backups and shadow copies and persistent disk images that can you *ever* be sure you've deleted them 100% ?

True, but as an IT professional I want to be prepared to advise on this decision. My concern is that the knee jerk reaction will be to delete all backups and I want to know whether this extreme step will be required or if there is any advice I can get/give to avoid this.

Interesting, it basically says that the illegal act is knowingly making (or copying) of an image. No criminal act would occur in us backing up images of whose existence we did not know. However, presumably therefore once we did know of their existence, backing them up would technically be illegal.

Well no, but we would be knowingly storing the images.

Yeah, but then the images would still be stored on the tapes, that's the point that concerns me.

Just thought I'd chuck this out here to see if anyone has any experience in this. If we were to encounter an unfortunate situation where some seriously inappropriate/illegal images have been found on our network clearly once appropriate steps have been taken we'd want to remove them. But we would also have multiple copies of them on our backups, does anyone know of the legal implications of this ? Are we required to remove them ? And how the heck would we go about it ?

Reading the latest Azure status update I'm thinking they are having to manually roll out changes to all their Azure AD servers, so things should gradually improve over time as they work their way through them. That explains the current on again / off again experience, it depends if your AD request hits a fixed server or not.

Yep, personally I'd review my DR plans before a major change but hey ho !

Fixed it !!

They sort of are being made ill by the wifi, or more specifically being made ill by believing they're being made ill by the wifi. It's called the Nocebo effect, it's the opposite of the placebo effect.

Fair point. Clearly Google's attitude to tinkering and changing stuff has pervaded the industry

Oh and I've just finished some documentation with screen shots showing staff how to change student passwords but now the interface is different - arrrghhh again !

Sorry, didn't mean to alarm. I'm not aware that is has broken any user functionality. But for instance if you want to add a user to a group from the user interface it just drops you into the groups list. If you want to add a user to a group from the groups list it just presents you with a dialogue box asking for the user name, no list, no autocomplete. Add user or group has changed to a floating blue circle at the bottom right of the window.

We've tried both. From a user point of view GA is probably easier to get into, 365 is much more sophisticated. GA reminds me of Windows NT. NT was a nice operating system but Microsoft slapped some basic admin tools on top of it and called it an enterprise product. GA feels similar, nice set of products individually but the tools to manage them are really basic and don't give you much control. I've found managing GA very frustrating compared with 365 and the control and granularity that PowerShell gives. And now Google have changed the admin interface and stuff doesn't work - aaarrgh !

They're mostly Samsung, but we have some Dells too which have had some issues.

We're having real problems getting some new Chromebooks to connect reliably and I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on what might be the issue ? We're pretty new to CBs and Google Apps so don't have much knowledge and experience to fall back on. Currently we are getting - Chromebooks failing to pick up the wireless even though it's specified in the Chrome policy in GA In that circumstance sometimes when the correct SSID is selected it then prompts for a wireless passcode which it should be remembering. IPs are delivered by DHCP reservations and several of these entries have been replaced with BAD_ADDRESS entries saying there's a duplicate IP (which there isn't) Our set up is - Meru Wireless Smoothwall filtering DHCP delivered by Windows 2008R2 DC In order to deliver filtering smoothly we want the Smoothwall to identify and let through the CBs on basic student level filtering. To do this we are allocating fixed IPs by using DHCP reservations so the Smoothwall will be able to recognise them. The wireless settings are delivered by Chrome policy from GA To set up the CBs, we connect to a setup SSID we have created (only available in our office), enrol them and move them to an organisational unit in GA which has the wireless settings we want. They are then tested and delivered to the users. The SSID they (should) auto connect to is hidden. I'd be very grateful for any thoughts on 1. Whether our set up is a sound one and if not what we should be considering doing and 2. What might be going wrong. Thanks

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I've written up a report and will see what they think. The major hurdle will be getting an acceptable broadband service in the first place, it's a fairly remote location and broadband estimates are 2-3 Mb for ADSL. I'm proposing that we sort the internet connection, then try using wireless extenders for a while to check how good a coverage we can manage and to assess where best to place some APs, then after a while we can hardwire some APs in and provide a permanent solution. Luckily we don't need to provide coverage to the whole building in one shot as it will only gradually be occupied over the course of probably a year, so we have time to take things one step at a time.

I'm not too worried about the drop off in connection rate caused by using wireless extenders since the wireless is likely to be at least an order of magnitude better than the internet connection itself which is going to be the bottleneck.

Couple of thoughts someone has given me are to use wireless extenders, or ethernet over mains adapters to connect around the building both of which would save on needing to put much cabling in.

I've been persuaded by a very worthy charity to look into their networking / internet requirements on one of their sites. Unfortunately I'm operating a little outside my comfort zone so I thought I'd throw this to the EduGeek hive mind and see if you kind people can help me feel more comfortable about this. We're trying to get reasonable wireless coverage, largely for casual browsing, throughout a building. We want to take an ADSL link that comes into the building in one room and make it available via wifi in most places. I've done a crude wireless survey by setting up a home AP various places and then wandering around using a free wifi scanner program and seeing how the signal permeates through the building. I think we could possibly get away with three, possibly four APs. So my question is, what sort of kit should I recommend and what sort of configuration should we be looking at ? They are, like most charities, strapped for cash, so a 'cheap as chips' recommendation is needed, although I have also agreed to provide a more upmarket solution if they should be able to land some money. Anyone got any thoughts or experiences in doing this please ? The problem I have is I've little practical wireless experience outside of home wifi/routers and enterprise managed wireless, the former won't be adequate and the latter is serious overkill.

@spadam - thanks, yes I've got the SSO side sussed I think. You have to set an app password in RM Unify, which looks like it will be a PITA to manage. The alternative is to unfederate GA which will be a pain for us, because we'll have to manually provision accounts etc and there will be different passwords. @maark - Yes and no. I presume this means we don't have our licences yet ?

Can someone help a complete Google Noob ?? I have - A Google domain set up with all school accounts Single sign on service via RM Unify A pile of Chromebooks A set of Chromebook Management Licences have been purchased I literally have very little more knowledge than this, what the heck do I do now ? I've tried logging into a Chromebook with my user and it rejects the login. I've tried enrolling the device via ctrl-alt-e and it similarly rejects the login. Anyone got any ideas what I'm doing wrong ? Anyone got any good guides or pointers on setting up and managing Chromebooks and a Google Apps domain ? Thanks

Thanks for the comments guys, it's all useful input. I'm not wary of things too good to be true, well Ok I am, but I'm not looking to poke holes in Google Apps, just get a handle on what we might be facing. My major concern is that we already have an underutilised Office 365 tenancy that will in fact do everything that is being claimed for Google, so I'm torn what to do. Do I stick to my guns and say we should stick to 365 and it's silly to change or go stuff it and give them whatever they want.

Can anyone help me out please. I'm after some 'awkward' questions to ask about Google Apps and Chromebooks. I want to be able to uncover issues that people have had with them and need some good questions to probe this. I'm not really interested in going to see a demo where people claim its all sunshine and flowers, because we know IT isn't like that, and the sooner we identify likely issues the better. So - what questions would you not like to be asked about your setup ? ;-)