| Summer 2008 |
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Summer 2008 Update As always, we are keeping very busy and have just completed several great projects. A few highlights include:
Using HP Procurve switches (MDF and IDFs) and Sonicwall Pro firewall equipment, we first mapped out all network drops on the network for people in the organization that would need to be moved to newly created VLANs. Once each port was identified and tagged on all switches, we configured the Sonicwall with IP Helper to translate each DHCP scope from the Windows 2003 DHCP Server and route it correctly on the network and its various VLANS. Operations and Administration employees now live separate from Staff/Faculty/Students traffic on the network and can then be assigned different policies for login scripts, routing, protocol control etc. This was a great leap forward for this institution who had been living in a flat and static network environment for the past ten years, and also made management of machines and network traffic very difficult... We also act as applications developer for the school and have rewritten several C#/ASP.NET/SQL/Javascript online applications already so as much as possible would be ready for the new year (admissions, alumnae, store, payment gateways). This really made my summer a lot more interesting, thank you to all the great people I met there! Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart
Starting mid-June, we imaged, installed and configured the following: 1- Faculty Laptop program: all faculty are now mobile on the network with their own dedicated laptop, and whether wireless or wired, synchronize all their data at each login and logout. We chose Dell laptops (802.11n compatible) and Windows Vista. Contrary to much of the publicity out there, I find Vista to be as reliable as anything (at least as reliable as XP or Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, thanks for all the bugs). Teachers can now also work from home and login to the corporate network from anywhere via a Sonicwall VPN solution, and access/input their grades (java-based PowerTeacher gradebook) remotely as is convenient for them. 2- Desktop Replacement: we replaced approximately fifty older PCs running Windows XP Pro with brand-new Dual-Core Intel processor-based desktop PCs. The difference between the old machines and the new ones is like night and day... We selected a mix of Dell and HP hardware, and decided to leave Windows XP for students to minimize training on Windows Vista (and ultimately Windows 7) until Faculty/Staff are comfortable on that new system. Over the next few months, we will roll out Office 2007, which should be fun, but will also require training. 3- Finally, we also completed a fairly stressful construction project for De Marillac involving phone and network cabling for a brand-new office opening at De Marillac on the ground floor of their building. Of course, the new office now looks great, and I was glad to be involved in such a project, it's no fun if everything goes exactly as planned all the time! We reconfigured the Avaya Partner Messaging PBX to add new extensions, rerouted existing extensions to new offices so staff could keep their old number etc. De Marillac Academy
We've recently completed the upgrade of the entire wireless network to the 802.11n standard, as well the imaging and configuration of a full MacBook cart for Open Directory (10.4). The next step of course would be to migrate the LDAP database to OS X Server 10.5, it appears to be a lot of fun. My only question is: why won't OS X Server Leopard work with OS X Tiger for Directory Services? I read the marketing and it said "Open Standards"! St. Isabella School
Recovered a failed Exchange 2003 Server and reinstalled the database from backups. Fun, but we did it without losing anything. |
