Aprice

In our experience they to allocate subnets to you, having said that that's only based on the sites we've moved off LGFL and similar. We've just got one customer left on one of these (not LGFL specifically) and they are going with Smoothwall and a leased line this summer. Can't say how much time has been wasted this year with Netsweeper and messing around with CRFs for firewall rules. Having local control of this certainly makes our lives easier and our customers have had a much better experience since.

The new kit we're putting in is mostly Aruba Usually 5406 at the core with dual management modules, PSU etc 2930M at the edge or the newer 6200 / 6100 series Ubiquiti would then be our alternate option if budgets are really squeezed. That said we have had a few blown PSUs over the years, mostly on the ToughSwitch 150w and two of the original Unifi switches. I tend to prefer the edgemax stuff over Unifi. I do like the Cisco kit but it's increasingly difficult to justify when firmware updates are effectively behind a paywall. I don't think it really offers anything better than Aruba either for schools.

My main advice with Unifi is always, Don't run the controller on Windows! it's fine for a few APs but I wouldn't consider using it for anything like 200 APs. I would suggest looking at this for guidance on installing on linux: https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Installation-Scripts-or-UniFi-Easy-Update-Script-or-UniFi-Lets-Encrypt-or-UniFi-Easy-Encrypt-/ccbc7530-dd61-40a7-82ec-22b17f027776 The script also lets you update just by entering: sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade You could also look at hosted options, We run a few instances in Digital Ocean for some of our customers, which works well and doesn't cost a fortune either.

Yep, sounds like the firmware versions are different, can you upgrade the new or existing AP/ APs to get them on the same build?

I've been through AB Tutor, NetSupport and Impero in the last two years or so, have to say Impero is probably the preferred although I still think it could be a lot better.

The machines I've worked with have been pretty good from Kyocera. The previous school I worked for bought them second hand then just paid per click on them. In fairness they were outstanding value for money but getting towards the end of their lives.

I suppose ideally all straight back to the core, although taking diverse routes give some advantage. If you have two cabs close together you could run a fibre between giving you another route back to the core.

Not really a fan of Stone kit to be honest, I've never really liked the system integrator type systems after having numerous issues and having to mess about with drivers for various makes and model motherboards. While that can still be said for HP and Lenovo on a few occasions, it usually is a smoother process. I've had a few Stone AIOs on a previous site that looked like someone had forgotten to screw the heatsink down onto the CPU, eventually looking at it found the heatsinks were flapping around and the fan running at top RPM. My preference is usually HP then Lenovo and Dell, most of them have configuration toolkits available to things like BIOS passwords and other Motherboard settings can be done remotely by script or SCCM, which makes getting them deployed much faster.

Another vote for Freshdesk from me, The free plan is probably fine for schools. We're planning on moving away now to something more suited to ourselves now.

I bought a Smart IDP 15 a couple of years back, and used a few with other Paxton Sites. Overall very pleased with them. It works straight with Net2 without any messing about.

Yeah, some sort of Power distribution, it's got a 5V voltage regulator on. It looks like some sort of microcontroller board can plug in next to the relay.

I believe it is difficult now to get hold of the Pockethernets in the UK since brexit. Thankfully I bought one just before they stopped shipping, also managed to get a Fluke linkrunner from ebay for about £200. The Fluke is worth it's weight in gold if you can get one at a sensible price. There's also Netool, however I believe it doesn't support POE.

I have hosts either on their own domain if using Hyper-V with S2D or if it just needs a domain. Single hosts I would leave on a workgroup, off domain.

From our experience, no real criticisms. Just works. BenQ and Viewsonic would probably be my our go to.

Aruba would be my go to, budget permitting. As already said supply can be an issue. Alex

Purely a guess, I suspect that was a big underestimate of the unit cost.

We've got a metered DB for the server room which covers AC as well as the racks in both comms rooms. In the last week we've used 506 KWh. This is a medium sized secondary new build with a 2 host S2D setup. I'm not sure what the electricity price is for schools / business , at 13p per KWh it would work out at £65 a week or £3,420 a Year, assuming that the load would be constant throughout the year. Has anyone got any better information on what the cost per KWh is for your site? Alex

iPads would be my suggestion, every alternative I've seen in the schools I've worked in ended up in the back of the IT office covered in dust. I just don't think any of the Android tablets are worth while, just seem to cause more issues than they are worth and get abandoned. Plus you can manage the iPads and lock them down easily with something like Mosyle so they stay in a usable state.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, Just found this after an entire day of trying to work out why I couldn't get these to work, unfortunately its a newish school with everything Acer ARGGHHH!!! Trawling though logs thinking it was a SCCM problem, and every device here being Acer was exhibiting the same problem apart from the VMs which added to the confusion. I don't suppose anyone knows if the SCCM driver packs on the Acer website have the fixed drivers in? Thanks, Alex

I'm sure it's possible as I know of someone who did use Nova without SIMS. However I think they too ended up getting rid of it for timetabler.com. I do wonder if it is part of one of these SIMS packages build it in with other stuff you don't need as you don't have the core SIMS bits. I think I would probably look to ditch in your position, but that's easier said than done.

I'd probably just try 2 X usb C to VGA adapters. One one each usb C port.

Hi Setro, Have a look at this: I believe it's what I uses to set mine up at the house. Alex

For monitoring I've started with Zabbix, however was a little disappointed with the lack of detail I got off our Aruba 2930M's. However I suspect it just needs a different SNMP library for it. I'm sure putting some more time into it will lead to something a little better. Management wise just the CLI and a backup script that copies the configs of the stacks nightly. Alex

This would be the way to do it, although it's not as easy to manage leases as something like DHCP on Windows server or other routers. Probably fine though for a small site though. vlan 1 name "VLAN X" untagged 1/1 ip address 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.0 dhcp-server dhcp-server pool "VLANX-Pool" default-router "192.168.10.1" dns-server "8.8.8.8,1.1.1.1 network 192.168.10.0 255.255.255.0 range 192.168.10.10 192.168.10.250 exit dhcp-server enable

Mix now of Cisco Mobility Express (Just converted to after 2504 WLC failed), Aruba IAPs (without central) and Unifi. Aruba's are my preferred.