Aprice

We've put Verkada in a good few schools now. The product works well, getting staff to react to it seems to be the harder part. We've got it working well with floor to ceiling cubicles successfully, quite surprising actually with only about a centimetre clearance at the top of the door and the ceiling. Also have our own in house hardware in the pipeline.

They do tend to work loose over time if just left, we like to put a dab of threadlock on them. Also have found them to be stronger than some of the doors / walls. Ended up having to rebuild a door frame the other week after a kid tried a flying dropkick on the isolation room Maglock 1 wall nil. Doors slamming too hard against them also doesn't help.

Have a look at HostiFi. Alternatively we run our own instance in Digital Ocean, If you've got the skillset to manage a linux box and want it offsite.

Hikvision would sit well in that price range, probably less. I know everyone has a bit of an opinion on the Chinese brands, with the correct precautions taken I think they're OK and are pretty robustly built. Hanwha is another we've installed for those customers that want something similarly priced but not Chinese. Bosch, Axis, Mobotix, Pelco etc. all tend to be quite pricey.

Applicaa here as well, don't think they minded it.

It was out of control for us and becoming a real pain. We check every suite twice a day. Since fitting CCTV in each damage has plummeted, we're yet to actually need to check it really. The school intends to bill anyone caught damaging anything and fair play to them they have billed a few that were caught before the cameras went in. The kids are very aware of the presence of new cameras. We're not sure how it will go in the long term, but for now we're quite happy. The rooms are still left in a mess at the end of lessons, but we can't win every battle.

Our main school has a pretty decent BenQ large venue laser in, it's a really nice piece of kit. It's always being left on overnight / over weekends, I'm sure if it was lamp based it would be burned out by now. One day I'll get around to programming the RS232 controller to turn it off automatically. Previous job had a load of the Casio lasers in classrooms which were virtually maintenance free, and were getting on a bit. They weren't the easiest to clean. Unless we had a really good reason we wouldn't be putting more projectors in, except from halls.

Most of our schools are layer2 at the edge, with a layer 3 switch at the core - typically an Aruba 5406ZL chassis. We find this fairly typical for most secondary sites. We have one site where we are looking at doing L3 at the edge, but only because the site is split with about a mile between each, and to minimise / isolate traffic going between them. (both sites only have 3 or 4 switches). Our go to option if stacking is required would be a 2930M or a 2930F where it is not needed. More cost friendly option would be something like Cambium. Unifi would also be OK, we have a bit of a mixed opinion on them but if you have spares should be fine (I Wouldn't use them at the core, as L3 has always been a bit naff) Take a look at the DFE technical standards, that may swing the view on cheaper switches. WiFi 7 I wouldn't be overly focused on, especially as it doesn't really seem to be fully ratified yet, and your cabling is only 5e so unless that's getting overhauled.

We use Smoothwall currently across the estate, I believe it is currently enabled for Safeguarding alerts for both staff and students. I suppose it's just the way it's always been setup. That said going through a member of staffs entire search history maybe viewed a bit differently to the odd safeguarding alert. I believe the schools have it in their policies that school devices are monitored for safeguarding reasons. We're external so don't really have to get involved with that side of it, only from a technical advisory side.

Same here, clearing the cache did seem to sort it.

At the end of the day the Ubiquiti's will work, that said personally our failure rate is quite high across multiple sites. It turned out they were using power supplies that had a bit of a reputation of going pop. I know this won't be everyone's experience and there's plenty of people that swear by them. The Aruba switches and the old HP branded equivalent have been bullet proof and have a strong warranty. Aruba Central sucks in my opinion, we just use Zabbix for centralised monitoring and CLI for management. Works fine for us. I personally think Unifi has a place in some environments, but it's usually a fair way down our list. Something like Cambium we'd probably tend to go for over Unifi and propper support is there, which I really want in a production environment, especially when working with paying customers.

Same with the Dell devices here, simply not worth repairing. Work ok as doorstops.

Always liked the newer Toshiba machines, just worked and look quite nice. I've worked with some ancient Kyocera's that just worked, school had bought them refurbished for something like £150 each with a decent price per click. Nobody could justify replacing them as they just didn't go wrong enough to be a problem. Couple of Ricoh machines, which were fine. On the other hand Riso, is a nightmare. We've got an ongoing case with it just dropping off the network and PaperCut falling over on it, needs a reboot every time. PaperCut client isn't really fully integrated, so scan to email doesn't work via PaperCut. I'm sure it might be cheap to run, but it isn't a great machine and winds us up!

The standalone is basically going / gone. So it's the full OS now. Have to say I do miss working with VMWare, never really found Hyper-V to be as solid. All the chatter at the minute sounds like VMWare is trying to run itself into the ground.

We're mostly an Aruba house, but also work with Ruckus which were also great. We use Unifi on occasion, however try to avoid rolling it out unless it really makes sense for that purpose.

Yeah, You've licenced the prerequisite software. IE Windows Server & SQL. The database schema itself is their property, which the school licences under ESS's terms and accepted. one of which is apparently you must delete upon termination of the contract. I suspect most enterprise software that runs on a Microsoft SQL or Oracle server for example has the same sort of terms. Have to say I'd be nervous deleting a schools SIMS instance and all the backups of it, but if that's what the school has agreed to then the choice is to act as per the agreement or go rogue and not. I do wonder what the rules are about migrations are, Are ESS actually obligated to make migration to another platform possible. I presume the CMA would step in if it was proved that it wasn't possible or reasonably practical to migrate from them legally? If the approved methods really don't work and the CMA have to get involved surely ESS is just going to have to invest development time in moving customers off rather than working on improving the product.

Yes, very. We work with PeaSoup for our customers, their paying a lot less than that per TB inclusive of Veeam licencing.

Currently all our customers are running Smoothwalls. At the end of the day we know the product well and are comfortable with it. It does the job it needs to. On the whole I think it's a good product, I've said before I'd like the reporting aspect improved on the box. Instant notifications it sends out have been a big confidence win with the safeguarding staff and heads we work with. Full reports are very rarely used we find, but could do with some work. We've always stuck to the hardware appliances from them, just eliminates any support concerns. Its their box with their software on. Do miss the LCD displays on the newer ones if anyone from Smoothwalls listening. Support overall is OK, sometimes it can be a long wait. But they do have some really good engineers.

We're also getting some strange issues with sites not blocking. We've got a student that is only allowed access to 365 and blocks 'everything' else which mostly works but still seems to allow some games through. Policy Tester shows as blocking, however real time logs show not blocking. Just had a session with Smoothwall and waiting for a new plan. Tried both the QUIC modification and the Firewall rules.

So Net2 can release all doors if a fire alarm relay is connected to one of the NET2 boards. However this is dependant on the server being online and working. Essentially it shouldn't be relied on for life safety. That said if the doors are really close, you could swap the power supply in the existing door so it is sufficient to feed both doors and use the single fire relay to cut the supply to both locks. AN1031.pdf

Not sure that the encryption is going to reduce that risk at all. We just ban them across the board.

The post I've just been reading regarding ESS's policies on sharing database backups for migrations seems to suggest that you must delete all their software upon ending your relationship with them. I.E no spinning up SIMS to check something 3 months down the line. I'm surprised they haven't put some sort of activation step in so if the licence isn't valid SIMS won't run. Quote from their migration note: Provide access to the SIMS, FMS or SIMS Document Store databases, or a backup copy of these databases to any third party at any time, nor are you permitted to retain copies (including backup copies) of the databases or the software itself after the end date of your contract;

We have possibly the worst office going. Probably 3m wide by 5m long. No ventilation or windows, by this afternoon it will be 25C in here, On the really hot days I just move to the server room to work. Just space for our desks and a short run of benching at the back, half of which the CCTV PC takes up. Unfortunately that is one of the downsides of outsourced IT, there's little incentive to spend money improving it. The schools only a few years old but just doesn't seem to have been built big enough. A4 paper boxes for storage, as they were free!

Second exam accounts for us. We ask the teacher to provide a class list report, quick PowerShell script creates the accounts in a separate OU, job done. If they want the accounts enabled / disabled then either logon hours or just manually enabling / disabling them. Harder task is getting the kids to actually save the work, there's always one that just doesn't or never did any work in the first place as we've found too many times! We have a Veeam job to backup the exam directory every hour. I also take a copy of the folders and send it to the staff via Sharepoint every now and then, so there's no excuse at the end of the coursework when nothings in their folder and the finger gets pointed at us.

Yep, just a straight swap. Definitely makes cost sense, we fit them as standard for all our customers as they then have both options.