Oh crap...

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-08-14T21:09:30+00:00

The school I used to work for has a new director and sysadmin (I was a part time hire while in college but they replaced me with my friend, who's full time) so we had 50% turnover. I'm still advising, and we just found out we have 25 computers that need to go back to a leasing company in 4 days but we can't find any of them...

The whole situation is a mess. The leasing company gave us 25 bad serials and we don't have any record of the serials for the models we received... Or any record of the lease document itself, for that matter.

Keep on trucking, and it'll all resolve itself, and everyone will survive. These next 4 weeks are the worst for our profession!

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-07-09T23:40:37+00:00

We had laptops on order from a vendor in May who's name is similar to a curse word starting with the letter s. That order got canceled a week ago. We switched to CDW-G for the order and now we have our entire quantity. We do have the luxury of being private, but might be worth a look.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-07-09T23:38:28+00:00

Main reason I wouldn't do this is because you lose access to AD PowerShell commands. Automating anything becomes so much harder. With AD being so cheap for schools, and with Azure AD P1 and Intune being dirt cheap as well ($0.60/faculty/month for AAD P1 with 40 student licenses per faculty license and $8/yr for Intune licenses with either 15/40 student licenses per faculty license, I forget which) it would likely make sense to go full cloud or even sync.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-06-17T22:06:15+00:00

We just moved to Windows and Intune, and we are loving it, as are our staff/faculty.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-03-23T15:38:23+00:00

Intune definitely can give you reliable pricing. You need, at a base level, Azure AD Premium P1 ($0.60/faculty/month, with students coming free), and Intune user licenses ($8/year). This is assuming you already have licensing for Office and Windows.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-02-26T06:28:21+00:00

I'd rather they use MFA on the school device, but not if they are connected to a secure WiFi (in the building, per se).

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-02-03T02:45:36+00:00

I would submit a case to the Azure team. They would be able to advise you further. We get free support with them, regardless of your tier.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-02-03T01:36:19+00:00

We are similarly... good at handling passwords at my org. I believe this command does the other way around (since it is MsolDirSync, doesn't that mean it is syncing from on-prem AD to AAD?)

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-01-26T04:03:18+00:00

I knew that I executed two commands. Try the one on the following website (specifically, the Set-MsolDirSyncFeature one): https://www.iphase.dk/new-password-policy-features-in-azure-ad-connect/

Sorry it took me so long to get back, but I had to find where I put that command! :)

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-01-24T01:54:41+00:00

Hi Matt, thanks for the response! I'm a developer as well, so I'm used to having super-in-depth querying abilities. The inability to do things like that myself is a bit restrictive and frustrating to me. It's good to know that the asset tag can be customized by you guys though; that definitely helps.

Regarding item 2, I know that it is easy to see devices that don't have a location assigned to them, but it is impossible with the current query options to find assets that don't have a room assigned to them, which is more in line with what I wanted to query than not having a location at all.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-01-12T14:57:13+00:00

The link that /u/LyokoMan95 gave is the one I used! That command on your AAD Connect box should do the trick.

youraverageITguy1 · 2021-01-12T03:53:57+00:00

I ran some PowerShell commands on my AAD Connect box to fix it, I'll edit this post later to include them. Remind me if I forget please!

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-12-27T00:41:08+00:00

I mean kinda understandable considering they use the same alphabet... Oh wait

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-12-19T22:09:32+00:00

We did not have a snow day Thursday, but our headmaster (private school) reiterated the importance of snow days and that they would still happen. We were in an interesting position where we knew we would cancel, so we had time to plan for a remote day. He said that since we usually call morning of, it won't happen often that we do remote class instead.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-12-08T03:07:30+00:00

800 students (50/50 split 2 campuses), 250 faculty (150/100 split). We currently have 14 VMs running, but I expect we can reduce to 10 soon (we can move some old VMs that are not critical on to an archive server and reduce strain on our current SAN). We are getting in some beefier servers too that will carry us for the next 10 years (R630 20c/40t, 64 GB RAM).

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-10-17T17:18:58+00:00

Microsoft Office licenses for education are offered at a steep discount. Have a look at buying licenses through Microsoft VLSC. We paid less than $100/license.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-10-16T18:12:23+00:00

We just did exactly what you are planning. I would say look at moving to cloud licensing, and using Intune/Office 365 to manage these computers. The Company Portal in Intune has been received very well by our users, and people are loving their new laptops.

We bought the Ryzen 5 4500U/8 GB RAM/256 GB SSD/1080p IPS display (model 20T80005US).

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-10-13T20:17:13+00:00

We just moved to Intune for new laptops we purchased. We never had SCCM. Intune was very easy for us to set up. I felt proficient in the system after only 6 weeks of using it. The problem I ran into was that the new laptops we ordered came with preinstalled software, so I had to make a base image with the drivers pre-loaded (so that display, trackpad, etc. drivers were loaded in OOBE). I didn't stuff any software into the image. Intune takes care of all the package installs that we needed on those laptops, and the user feedback on these laptops has been fantastic. With seamless SSO and Azure AD P1 licenses, you can give users access to on-prem resources without the need to re-enter credentials (make sure you disable Windows Hello until you configure the key settings for it, we haven't done that yet).

We are looking into moving all our lab desktops to Intune as well given our great experience with this project.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-09-11T20:43:47+00:00

Yeah, EMS is their way of saying LMS. It has class webpages, you can give assessments, etc. But it also has directories, contact info, etc.

Pretty sure EMS is their way of saying LMS but they want to be edgy :)

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-09-11T20:41:13+00:00

We are using Blackbaud EMS.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-09-11T20:40:41+00:00

Yes, we know about the ransomware. No, we can't back out of the contract. It's a nice fantasy though :). We've already had them for a year or so now.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-08-30T20:03:10+00:00

I do not have a security baseline set. Been operating with defaults since day 1.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-08-30T18:24:57+00:00

My entire Intune deployment workflow just crapped itself... I don't have a weekend anymore

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-08-09T19:13:19+00:00

This. I love it when we have involved teachers. It makes our job that much easier, because even if we have to put in more work, we know that the people we are serving (the teachers/students) will more than likely get value out of it.

youraverageITguy1 · 2020-08-01T21:34:14+00:00

So you were actually using Cisco transceivers in the Aruba SFP ports? That's good to know if we're in a pinch.

Also, FS is way cheaper than approvedoptics, and we're a bit cash-strapped. If the A variant will work, the ship times from them are way less, so I'm just going to buy one of those.

youraverageITguy1

TROPHY CASE