Possible Refresh for Local Firehouse
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My big concern here... which may not be valid. What happens if your recommendations go, excuse the expression, tits up? Do you have the knowledge and backing to be able to get these guys back up and running or would you have to call in outside help. If you have to call in outside help, why didn't they just go with them in the first place?
As for your ideas, what else are they using? Is it just the aging XP "server" does the vendor offer any updates to this, building control/maintenance generally doesn't, If you are going to virtualize the XP machine you will need to ensure they have special licensing to accommodate that.
Are they printing enough to warrant a contract with an "msp"? I know a good one in the area that specializes in printing and printer leasing. They have excellent techs but ,if you are qualified, will generally ship parts for you to do maintenance.
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Security -
Don't forget to take security into consideration. My limited exposure to the Firehouse is that they will have some information. Incident reports, names, addresses. -
Is the firehouse independent or part of a town/municipality? Around here they are part of our local town and get support/maintenance from the town's IT specialists.
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Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
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The guy you "talked to"
Does he have a budget in mind? You are leaping from what sounds like a very low budget legacy network to quite a high cost system by comparison. If you do all this work, will they just say, oh yeah too expensive, thanks but no thanks.
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Are you working for NTG again? Why not just have them do the refresh and recommendations? Seems like going to them after the fact is not really the right way of doing it. You could potentially cost the firehouse a lot of money if NTG decides what you did wasn't the best thing available and has to redeploy.
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@coliver said:
My big concern here... which may not be valid. What happens if your recommendations go, excuse the expression, tits up? Do you have the knowledge and backing to be able to get these guys back up and running or would you have to call in outside help. If you have to call in outside help, why didn't they just go with them in the first place?
As for your ideas, what else are they using? Is it just the aging XP "server" does the vendor offer any updates to this, building control/maintenance generally doesn't, If you are going to virtualize the XP machine you will need to ensure they have special licensing to accommodate that.
Are they printing enough to warrant a contract with an "msp"? I know a good one in the area that specializes in printing and printer leasing. They have excellent techs but ,if you are qualified, will generally ship parts for you to do maintenance.
Yes, I've considered that as well. This would be something I'd probably do in stages, not all at once. I'd probably work from the bottom up, so start with printers and workstations, then work my way up to the network and their "server".
What is the special licensing I'd need for the XP machine? If I wanted to move these services to, say, a Windows 7 VM, is there special licensing I'd need for that?
I doubt they print enough to warrant a managed print contract. I don't tend to care for those anyways.
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@coliver said:
Is the firehouse independent or part of a town/municipality? Around here they are part of our local town and get support/maintenance from the town's IT specialists.
I honestly am not sure. I believe they're independent.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
The guy you "talked to"
Does he have a budget in mind? You are leaping from what sounds like a very low budget legacy network to quite a high cost system by comparison. If you do all this work, will they just say, oh yeah too expensive, thanks but no thanks.
No budget was discussed as of yet.
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@coliver said:
Are you working for NTG again? Why not just have them do the refresh and recommendations? Seems like going to them after the fact is not really the right way of doing it. You could potentially cost the firehouse a lot of money if NTG decides what you did wasn't the best thing available and has to redeploy.
Already been talking to @Minion-Queen about it. I will be going out at some point to do some preliminary work for setting up a printer. If the scope seems to be more than I feel comfortable with, even a little, I'll pass them on to NTG for everything right from the get-go. Otherwise, I'll do the refresh personally and then have NTG do ongoing support.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
Almost every virtualization solution allows you to start the VM when the server starts... it would be as simple as hitting the button to turn on the server.
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@coliver said:
@handsofqwerty said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
Almost every virtualization solution allows you to start the VM when the server starts... it would be as simple as hitting the button to turn on the server.
I am not sure if you can set this in ESXi Free. I don't remember having it when I was using the Free but I can't confirm that.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@coliver said:
@handsofqwerty said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
Almost every virtualization solution allows you to start the VM when the server starts... it would be as simple as hitting the button to turn on the server.
I am not sure if you can set this in ESXi Free. I don't remember having it when I was using the Free but I can't confirm that.
If it's possible, then that would be fine.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@coliver said:
@handsofqwerty said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
Almost every virtualization solution allows you to start the VM when the server starts... it would be as simple as hitting the button to turn on the server.
I am not sure if you can set this in ESXi Free. I don't remember having it when I was using the Free but I can't confirm that.
Why limit yourself with ESXi free? Hyper-V has more features in the free platform without any of the restrictions.
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First though would be to get an MFP/Copier under contract.
Secondly why uses ESXi free with so many limitations, if you need free hyper-v is a better option.
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@coliver said:
@handsofqwerty said:
@coliver said:
@handsofqwerty said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
Almost every virtualization solution allows you to start the VM when the server starts... it would be as simple as hitting the button to turn on the server.
I am not sure if you can set this in ESXi Free. I don't remember having it when I was using the Free but I can't confirm that.
Why limit yourself with ESXi free? Hyper-V has more features in the free platform without any of the restrictions.
Ok, well that's an option. I assume this is where I'd get it from?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2012 -
@thecreativeone91 said:
First though would be to get an MFP/Copier under contract.
Secondly why uses ESXi free with so many limitations, if you need free hyper-v is a better option.
Again, it's something we can look into, but we'd have to see.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Because something like powering on the VM would be too much for them. Virtualization would obviously be the preferred method, but if they don't want to have ongoing IT support, I can't keep helping them power on a VM, etc all the time. Thus why if they can't get NTG's ongoing support, they have to be able to do it themselves, ie going physical.
Why would they need to power on a VM? If they can't do that, they need assistance all the time regardless of the solution.
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@coliver said:
Why limit yourself with ESXi free? Hyper-V has more features in the free platform without any of the restrictions.
ESXi can't even work here. The Proliant MicroServer has no RAID so ESXi would have no way to do RAID. ESXi also can't do free backups. So you lose a lot. HyperV for sure on that hardware.
