Chris and Daves SharePoint and Tech Blog

  Last week myself and Chris where showing what we do with SharePoint at Twynham on the Microsoft stand at the BETT show it seemed to be a massive success and was really good to meet all the people that dropped by our pod, we have received quite a lot of feedback via email and twitter so I thought I would write some posts on what we presented so hopefully we can show a wider audience. We tried to show as much as we could but we had limited time when we give full presentations it generally takes in excess of an hour so I thought I would try to break it down into bite sized chunks.  

Revision Gateway Frontpage

The GCSE revision gateway was an inspired idea easy to achieve and as we found very student driven, we created subsites for each subject area and laid out the sites in roughly the same order this eased navigation for students and giving a common layout helped student concentration we structured the sites in the following way

 Notices

What you need to revise

Exam Technique Guide

Revision PowerPoints

Revision resources

Past Papers and Model Answers

Links

History Revision Gateway

On some of the sites we also put on Audio and Video resources where we streamed video and audio files to the students. The student uptake for the revision gateways was great and as I said previously very student driven we found that students started to encourage the more reluctant departments to upload resources for them. This year we will be launching an A level revision gateway and hope it has the same impact the GCSE gateways have had.

 As Charles Caleb Colton said “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” so why not give your students a great revision resource and copy what we have done an easy win with SharePoint in schools any questions please feel free to contact us.

Dave

This week is the BETT show in London the biggest education show in Europe myself Chris McKinley and Mike Herrity will be on the Microsoft stand but I started to notice last week the a lot of people where using twitter to spread good tips for BETT #Tips4BETT so I thought I would gather 50 tips together in this blog post so please read the tips act on some and you will have a great show. And the one tip I left off was pop by the Microsoft stand and say hello and enjoy the show  

1. If using an iPhone, take a backup battery device, USB charger and mains charger.
2. 4goggas: If an online app runs slowly during demo, you can bet a dollar it’ll do worse on a school network. Avoid, despite sales pitch
3. grumbledook alternatively arrange for others to see sessions you can’t get to so you at least have some feedback on things
4. merlinjohn Be cool. Keep mind open/suspend prejudices so you get pleasant surprises. Avoid conflict and paper (heavy). Duck n dive. Weave
5. grumbledook try to arrange with others you know to see similar demos so you can compare notes later. It’s good to get different viewpoints.
6. ianaddison change your avatar to a proper pic and/or add your twitter name to your badge so we know who you are
7. grumbledook explain to colleagues that BETT is not a junket, but preparation for the expedition to the south pole! Fun but taxing!
8. deepexperience1 Hide the barcode on your badge or face a barrage of phone calls every Friday afternoon
9. orunner Take photos not brochures
10. orunner Has anyone said bring your own sandwiches yet … or take out a loan in order to buy lunch
11. chrisrat I guess the most important thing is to try and enjoy it. If you don’t, Bett is a loooonnnggg show.
12. digitalmaverick: take lots of stickers with your details on them easier than filling in lots of forms with your tel no & email
13. chrisrat if you want to save your back, a small backpack!
14. chrisrat along with a pinch of salt, take an open mind
15. lisibo – fill your pockets with raisins – they’ll fight off hunger pangs and work better than bread crumbs when want to find way back out
16. chrisrat plan, plan and plan again. If you don’t it can take days of wandering to find your way out!
17. chrisrat for exhibitors: stop staff members wearing perfume/ aftershave – if you are a large stand, it can be like walking into  
18. lisibo if you fail to wear comfortable shoes + get blisters, there’s a chemist over the railway bridge that sells blister plasters
19. lisibo – wear comfortable shoes – your feet will thank you (with thanks to @chrisrat for the reminder of last year’s agony
20. billgibbon – Don’t let techs see *any* educational software until after teaching staff have bought it, or they’ll find ways to ban it
21. martin88 Don’t let teaching staff see *any* educational software without asking tech first, they’ll want it!!
22. martin88 – Take away as much free pens, mugs, freebies you can get your hands on.
23. ClaireAshton – drink lots of water, don’t wear much – it’s really hot in there, get some fresh air, exercise in the hotel at night, if you
24. iusher wandering halls aimlessly is either (a) exhausting & pointless or (b) serendipitous – frequently both (the best tip!)
25. ClaireAshton: as a visitor avoid picking anything up off stands, other than pens, sweets and the odd mug. Bags of literature are dumped outside
26. ClaireAshton: come to stand D20, if only for a one in three chance to win a coffee and/or cake! And to spot me in uncomfortable shoes
27. grumbledook: – Don’t be worried if you don’t recognise people. Not everyone looks like their avatar. Some would worry you if they did
28. lisibo – meet up with virtual friends for moral support – helps you not to be freaked out by size of it – in my experience!
29. grumbledook Use a video camera (eg Flip) to make short 30 seconds comments to listen to later. You could also send yourself SMS about stuff!
30. grumbledook use a camera to photograph things that excite you. Make sure you get the stand name / number. More stand details from show mag
31. grumbledook don’t be scared to leave space in your plans. Many stands have fantastic demos so that you need to decide what to see on the day!
32. RayFleming Make sure you’ve spaced out your presentation viewing schedule to last the day. Better than all AM sitting and all PM walking
33. RayFleming Don’t wear new shoes. Better old, scuffed and comfortable than new and shiny – and painful by day
34. billgibbon Try at least to smile at the stallholders, even if you’re not interested in what they have to offer. They’ve got a hard job…
35. domnorrish If coming from cent. London, avoid the poorly served & very. crowded Olympia branch of the District line – walk 10 mins from Kensington high street
36. ianaddison: visit the Espresso stand – they had great chocolate and free bottled water last year. Much cheaper than buying!
37. deerwood don’t take a bag of any sort. If you see anything interesting, note details on your phone and get back to them afterwards
38. dannynic forage for food amongst the stands. Can last the day on mints, sweets and some stands even gave away water last
39. billgibbon Don’t think you can see it all in 1 day. Plan what you want to see, but allow time for some surprises
40. iusher if you can’t afford Olympia food, there’s a Tesco Express here http://bit.ly/8ZY8QQ -it sells out of sandwiches early-be swift
41. billgibbon Don’t rely on hearing your mobile phone if you’ve arranged for a contact – put it somewhere where you’ll feel it vibrate!
42. dannynic grab as many free pens as you can to last you the rest of the year
43. dannynic coordinate with friends to find out who’s giving away the best freebies
44. billgibbon Carry a bottle of water – talking a lot at a louder level (it’s very noisy) will do your throat in.
45. billgibbon: Wear your most comfortable shoes – the floor is really hard
46. theokk bring a wifi dongle and corkscrew
47. dtester: Take a sturdy rucksack to put the brochures and info THAT YOU WANT in, know why you are going and focus on that when there
48. iusher: better to come away with a couple of good, useable, ideas for use at school than umpteen 2GB memory sticks. Seek the former out
49. dannynic don’t grab every single flyer and brochure you are offered. You’ll end up weighed down
50. iusher: [1] pre-register so you can get your badge mailed to you [2] bring a chair [3] bring lunch so you don’t get ripped off

As i said in a previous post in our preparation for SharePoint 2010 we have started to invest in virtualisation technology using Microsoft HyperV R2 based on Server 2008 R2. This for me has been a big shift in thinking in taking this technology on and trusting it to run our servers but thanks to some of the tools available this has been made a lot easier for me, and with the release of HyperV R2 even easier with some of the benefits being live migration, Processor compatibility mode and dynamic storage being just some of the reasons. Over the next few posts i would like to take you through some of the features that made this decision a no brainer for us and hopefully explain some of the benefits for others.

  Through these posts i will talk to you about HyperV R2 on Server 2008 R2 the hardware that we have purchased to enable us to use this. HyperV manager, System centre virtual machine manager including the live migration feature and also the physical to virtual conversion which i hope to show you in a video.

First of all the hardware to achieve the fault tolerance that i require for Twynham School we purchased 3 x Dell PowerEdge servers with:-

2x Intel Xeon X5570 Processor (2.93GHz, 8M Cache, 6.40 GT/s QPI, Turbo, HT)

To include RAM: 72GB Memory for 2CPU (18x4GB Dual Rank RDIMMs) 1066MHz

Hard Drives: 2 x 300GB SAS 15k 3.5″ HD Hot Plug

 Also to allow us to setup the shared clustered volume we purchased a Dell MD3000i http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pvaul/topics/en/us/pvaul_md3000i_landing?c=us&l=en

Now this was not a cheap exercise with the servers coming in at £5000 each and the MD3000i box at around £6000 but now we run 19 virtual servers on these 3 boxes and bearing in mind that i used to pay anywhere between £2000 and £3500 for each server i think you will see that it makes sense long term financially. Also please bear in mind the power savings, we do have a range of server with differing specs and age but now we are running 3 servers compared to 19 previously that must equate to quite a saving on our power bill and not forgetting our  air conditioners as we can go from 2 to 1 unit.

  These virtual servers also enabled us to set up Office Communication Server 2007 R2 during the summer this software required us to have 1 OCS front end server and also an OCS edge server previously we would have had to go out and buy 2 physical servers but with HyperV we just created 2 virtual OCS servers.

Next week myself, Chris McKinley and Mike Herrity will be at the BETT show at Olympia 13^th – 16^th January  http://www.bettshow.com/ on the Microsoft stand we have a pod on the stand, show casing the work we have been doing with SharePoint 2007 and answering questions not only on SharePoint but also HyperV, Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and Server 2008 R2. We will be trying to blog about what we see there but if you are attending the show why not drop by and say hello.

Earlier in the week i posted on GodMode in Windows 7 after a bit of Googling i managed to find some more GUID’s for you to try. 

As i said in the post earlier in the week if you create a folder and name it :- GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

This gives you access to all 283 command/config options in Windows 7.

Below is a list of other GUIDS that are more specific give them a go

GODMODE.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
GODMODE.{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
GODMODE.{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
GODMODE.{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
GODMODE.{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}
GODMODE.{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}
GODMODE.{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}
GODMODE.{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43}
GODMODE.{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
GODMODE.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
GODMODE.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
GODMODE.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
GODMODE.{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}
GODMODE.{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}
GODMODE.{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0}
GODMODE.{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}

Dave

Not sure how new this info is but i thought i would share it with you anyway

1) Create a new folder

2) Name the folder  GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

You then end up with an icon that looks like this 

When you open the folder all admin shortcuts are there as below

 If you create it on a pen drive this gives you access to all admin tasks on each Windows 7 machine you open it up on.

Back in June I and Mike Herrity visited Seattle where we had the opportunity to meet up with the SharePoint product team and also the Education team at Microsoft Redmond.  After a presentation to the SharePoint Product group we were fortunate to spend some time with Brenda Carter to discuss our thoughts for SharePoint 2010 in terms of our planned SharePoint Farm.  We intend to be early adopters of this platform so in readiness we have started to plan our architecture for this version. 

We have already started the planning and purchasing so we were very much ready for the public Beta which became available in November 2009. Along with a testing farm we have already planned a school demo site for people to try and see the power of SharePoint 2010 http://ict.twynhamschool.com/SitePages/Home.aspx. For this setup of our SharePoint farm we will be using Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V R2 to deploy our web front end servers and with this in mind we have purchased three Dell Poweredge R710 servers with the following spec. In a future blog post I will run through the rationale of making such a significant purchase.

Server: 2x Intel Xeon X5570 Processor (2.93GHz, 8M Cache, 6.40 GT/s QPI, Turbo, HT)

To include RAM: 72GB Memory for 2CPU (18x4GB Dual Rank RDIMMs) 1066MHz

Hard Drives: 2 x 300GB SAS 15k 3.5″ HD Hot Plug

Within the Farm we will have 2 SharePoint front end servers and also an SharePoint Application server the big debate is whether or not to virtualize the indexing server with the processor overheads associated with the indexing service how will that work on our virtual servers  We have also purchased a Dell MD3000i with 2TB of storage which we can expand up to 10 TB for storage of our images and video files in readiness for the production setup of our farm  This server specification may seem over powered but these servers are not just for SharePoint as we plan to virtualise a lot of our server stock we have over the coming year so you will also see a post on Hyper-V R2.

 The biggest debate is whether to virtualize the indexing server or not, well the beta programme will give us the chance to try lots of different scenarios including a virtualized indexing server which I will tell you about in future posts. One other scenario we will try is a virtualized install of SQL 2008 to host our SharePoint databases this is something that Chris McKinley is not keen on but I do think that while we are going through the testing phase it would be worth considering and trying all installations types so hopefully we can report back on the best and worst.

  Myself and Chris McKinley have been posting the occasional guest blog post on Mike Herrity’s blog www.sharepointineducation.com over the past year, these have been mainly end user focused posts so through this blog we hope to bring you more tech focused posts mainly on SharePoint, not only 2010 but also SharePoint 2007 as we realise that not everyone will upgrade as soon as 2010 is released, but also on other technologies for example Exchange 2010 HyperV R2 but also hardware reviews ranging from netbooks to phones and everything in between. So please check back and enjoy the blog.

 Chris And Dave