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Hello, I have a couple of questions, but I'll try and provide a bit of background first: The majority of primary schools I support (which is quite a few), have a user base of less than 500 and less than 100 client devices, in most cases considerably less. They are currently setup up with 1 Physical server, generally of medium spec (couple of quad core CPUs, 8-16GB RAM, 4-8 Sata HDDs with about 1-2TB space), with all roles and services installed to this. Some schools also have their previous server set up as a member server, as we generally advise replacing them after 5 years, running wsus and anti-virus deployment, but if not these go on the single server. E-mail fortunately is handled off-site, by the LEA and/or either Office 365/Google. Clearly there is an issue with the above setup...Single point of failure. If the server fails, whether due to hardware or software issue, the network will be down until I can get it back online, which in general is about 3-5 days (not great, I know). What do you do? What do you advise? Personally I would like more failover/resiliency in the system, we're not talking the 5 9's here, they're primary schools, they don't remote access anything (although hopefully that could change in the future, at least for staff) and so long as they can login and access their work from 7am-7pm most of the schools I look after would be fine with this. It has to be said, failures are rare, but are they avoidable (I know they are at a price, but I think that price is probably beyond most of my primary schools)? I know a lot of people on here would probably say I should be looking at virtualising and/or multiple servers, which I'd love, but we are in a recession, if budgets for IT were tight beforehand, they're practically none existant now. I'm not saying it shouldn't/can't be done, but the budgets I'm talking about are around 10-15K per year, for all IT requirements, including clients, IWBs, Projectors, Printers, Toner (which they get through a lot of) and software, it will be tough to achieve I think, though I am willing to be proved wrong. Also, they entire system would need to be managed on a ongoing basis in approximately 3 hours a week/fortnight, although the installations would be done normally in a 1 or 2 week school holiday, or over the summer. Anyone who does a similar roll will know how hard this can be, in most cases I am the sole IT support, so I do the roles of Network Manager/IT Technicain/Trainer all within 3 hours a week/fortnight. It's challenging, but it's mostly enjoyable. Thanks in advance for your advise/help, it may go a long way in help a good number of schools in the area.

Good Afternoon Edugeekers! There appears to be an increasing trend in a lot of the clients I maintain reporting "slow networks". On deeper questioning I think its really the schools broadband connection (supposedly 10mb) thats at fault. Almost all of the networks are running with Gigabit switches (there may be the rare 100 speed switch as a n/w extender dotted about), and all are on Win 7, Server2012R2. Wifi on a couple of sites is provided by Ruckus but the majority are powered by Unifi (love it). What I had in mind was to go from room to room with a laptop and running a PING to the DC as well as Google for example as well as running an online Speedtest - but not sure though if that would really help as technically thats between the router and an external server(s). I'd also check the NICs are indeed connecting at 1000mbps from the wall socket as they aught to be. I want to run tests that will prove that the internal network is running at full speed and that it is definitely the broadband thats the fault. What I'd like to ask to ask you is what other software or tools would you have to hand for thorough top-down infrastructure testing. For example is there a more advanced Ping software that can delve deeper into the cabling for example? I look forward to your suggestions and learning some new tools, Many thanks in advance Canaan

An opportunity has arisen to spend some money so long as it is spent quick. At the moment I have a single 3COM 5500G as my core switch, that connects all the servers and ultimately all the switches. This is both old and without a failover of any kind, which makes me nervous, as it is the very definition of a SPOF. The rest of the school is 3COM switches of varying ages and decrepitude, and they are, generally speaking, a bit flaky and a pain in the proverbial. So this is what I'd like to do, with your advice kind EduGeekers: I want to pick a new brand of switch (nominally one of HP, Cisco, Juniper, but feel free to make suggestions), I want to have a redundant core, and I want to be able to slowly roll out a replacement program over the course of the next few years using that same brand, to generally improve the network infrastructure. These core switches in particular would be best if they had 802.3ad support, for proper load balancing on servers. There's a good number of fibre runs around the school that at the moment, connect to other switches that then Cat5 into the core, which can be a bottleneck; any way of improving this would be appreciated, be it multiple fibre ports or 10Gb ports to connect to other switches in the rack, removing the bottleneck. The core only needs 24 ports to cover the servers (currently 2x6 for virtual hosts, 2x2 for other physical servers, but I want room for expansion to another virtual host in future, possibly); it may then need more depending on how the other switches will connect (currently 4 other switches in that cabinet). Any particular recommendations? The core switches specifically I would rather do right and not cheap out, but the brand in general should be fairly good VFM if possible, as I'm going to have to scrape and scrimp to get the rest of the kit in across the network over the coming years...