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Be Wise Like Solomon: Ask for Wisdom not Wealth or Long Life

Be Wise Like Solomon: Ask for Wisdom not Wealth or Long Life

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1-kings-3-9I’ve forgotten to only ask for wisdom.

I’ve been asking for health, wealth, happiness, and an abundance of the Fruits of the Spirit.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. – Galatians 5:22-23

Today’s Quiet Time was a good reminder.

Not sure if God blesses in the same way or in the same magnitude.

Might as well imitate the good from Solomon.

5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” – 1 Kings 3:5-14
How to Setup Google Apps for Education Email with PowerSchool

How to Setup Google Apps for Education Email with PowerSchool

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I wanted to write this up so people can figure out how to do it quickly and move on with their work.

It’s too much work trying to find where all of the information is and debugging it when I could have done it once before and just do it again.

This is my third time setting it up and I would have finished a lot faster if I just had written it down the first time.

  1. Step One: create a school Google Apps for Education Email address for PowerSchool for example: [email protected]
  2. Step Two: Login to the new email address you created and go through all of the security features and introductory Google emails.
    1. Optional Step Two A: For good customer service. Setup a Vacation Responder saying that you don’t check this email. You don’t want parents, students, or teachers emailing you here. I wrote something along the lines of:

      If you need help with PowerSchool please contact Mr. Paul Kang at [email protected]

    2. Click Save Changes. Log Out.
  3. Log into your PowerSchool Instance or for quick access add this to your web address (admin/systemsettings/emailsetup.html)
  4. Click on “System” on the menu under Setup
  5. Click on “System Settings” under Server
  6. Click on “Email”
  7. Fill it out like below:GAFE Email PowerSchool Setup
  8. Click “Submit”
  9. Send out a test email to yourself in the “Test Email Tab” and see if it works. Hopefully it does for you as it did for me.

How to Activate Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard from the Evaluation Version

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We purchased a new server from our vendor.

I asked them to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and update everything and setup RAID before delivering it to us.

However when I went to activate Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard it didn’t work.

The vendor installed the evaluation version which made it a little complicated.

I had to do some light Googling to find out how to get it to work.

I wanted to consolidate all of that information in one location so its easier for me to find the next time I need to do this.

Naturally, I already purchased a legitimate education version from our volume licensing partner.

Here it is:

Try an SKUUPGRADE – the eval issue can as such not be activated.

To determine the installed edition, run:

DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition

To check the possible target editions, run:

DISM /online /Get-TargetEditions

Finally, to initiate an upgrade, run:

DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition> /AcceptEula /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

For me  I used: DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerStandard /AcceptEula /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

I hope this post was useful.

Thanks to Andrew Schulman, TomTom, user282317 from Serverfault.com.

GoFlex Driver for Mac

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I purchased a 1TB GoFlex Drive several years ago. It said it was supposed to work with both Mac OS X and Windows PCs. Unfortunately, I forgot that you need to install a piece of software to get it to work simply on a Mac.

Or reformat into a format that works for both platforms seamlessly.

If you’re looking for it. It’s called Paragon Driver for Mac you can find it here.

Hopefully this will save some time and heart ache for you.

 

 

 

How to backup your Google Apps for Education Account

How to backup your Google Apps for Education Account

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Update January 25, 2017: Google sent me this:

Your domain now has access to a new tool which allows students to copy Drive and email files when they leave your domain.

Hi there,

We are writing to let you know that your domain now has access to Transfer your content, a new extension of Google Takeout. With this tool, your students can copy their Drive and email files from their G Suite for Education account to another Google account before they leave the domain. This will enable students to easily retain their email, essays, resumes, science projects and any other files stored on Google Drive if your school removes access to their old account. Learn more.

Sincerely,

The G Suite for Education Team

 

Your Google Apps Education account will come to a close. You might be graduating or leaving for a new school.

Our digital life is complex.

Best case scenario: you want to store things and find them fast and easy. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet.

Method 1: Backup Only The Important Things

This is where you backup specific files on your personal cloud. Use services like Google Drive, DropBox, or Evernote.

Pros: 

  • Takes less space than a full backup
  • You know exactly what you are backing up

Cons: 

  • Its time consuming to organize everything
  • You might forget something important

Method 2: Backup Everything

This is where you backup EVERYTHING. All the files your computer uses, programs, program preferences, and other miscellaneous files.

Pros:

  • Peace of mind that you backed everything up

Cons: 

  • Takes a lot of space
  • Takes a long time to backup everything
  • Takes time to find what you want after you backup

You should already know how to do Method 1. If you need a refresher email me or stop by the IT office and I can show you how.

How to Backup Everything on Google Apps for Education

  1. Log out of ALL your Google Accounts
  2. Only log in to Google account you want to backup
  3. Go to: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
    Note: Google TakeOut does not backup Gmail. Google “How to backup Gmail.“
  4. Choose which Google Services you want to backup and click “Next”
  5. For File Type choose “.zip”
    If you are technical choose the other formats
  6. For Delivery Method choose “Send download link via email.”
    If you have space on your other cloud service providers use them.
  7. Click “Create Archive”
  8. Depending how big your archive file is-  it will take hours or days.
    Mine was 12 gigabytes and it took 3 hours to receive a link. Your results may vary.
  9. After you receive the email download that large file somewhere. It will take hours if it is several gigabytes. My 12 gigabyte file is still downloading… it’s been 2 hours so far. I’ll update this if I remember to.
  10. To access your backups. You need to extract that backup file on your computer some where. Then search for what file you need.

Conclusion

I haven’t figured it all out yet either, but this is what I do. I try to focus on Method 1, but in emergency and last minute situations I will do Method 2.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email.

PowerSchool Hosting Services Comparison

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I was recently asked to do research on PowerSchool hosting solutions. Here’s the information I found and what I have gathered so far. Please feel free to add to the conversation below. Our international school has 1,100 students at elementary, middle, and high.

PowerSchool Recommended Specs

Combined Application Node and Database:

  • Processor: (2) Six-Core CPUs
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • Disk: 100 GB 15k Serial-Attach SCSI (SAS) (OS, Tomcat); 250 GB 15k Serial-Attach SCSI (SAS) (Oracle Database)
  • RAID: RAID 1 (OS, Tomcat) and RAID 10 (1 plus 0) (Oracle Database)

Comparison Table

Self-Hosted (On-site) Self-Hosted Cloud (GCP/Rockspace) Self-Hosted Cloud
(AWS/Rockspace)		 PowerSchool Hosted (Rackspace)
Costs Hardware Server Costs: $8,000 per 5 years Hosting: $720/Monthly

SSD Storage:

$60/Monthly

 Hosting:

$1290/Monthly

SSD:

$45/Monthly
EC2:

$1240/Monthly

 $3,850/year
Hosting Fee: $3.50 /per student @ 1,100 students
Windows Server 2012 R2 License 440,000 KRW (Education price) OS Licensing. $351/Monthly N/A N/A
SSL Price $20/year $20/year $20/year $400/year
Migration N/A Inhouse migration Inhouse migration Additional $1,000 one time for migration
Hardware Management Managed Inhouse Managed by Google/Rockspace Managed by Amazon/Rockspace Managed by PowerSchool
Hardware Location Seoul International School Cloud Cloud (Seoul) Cloud (USA)
Software Management Managed Inhouse Managed Inhouse Managed Inhouse Managed by PowerSchool
Network Speed Onsite speed fast connection Cloud – Unknown Speed Cloud Korea – fast Cloud – Slower Speed
Security Purchase separate firewall/ Managed Inhouse Builtin / Managed Inhouse Builtin / Managed Inhouse Managed by PowerSchool
Notes

Definitions:

GCP – Google Cloud Platform

AWS – Amazon Web Services