Primary School looking for hardware / software forward planning advice

[speckytecky]

I’m looking for some advice on forward planning for ICT hardware replacement.

We currently run a Server 2003 and XP Pro workstations. Plus a Linux server which gives us the Espresso service.

We are a 240 pupil primary school with 9 classes – each classroom has an IWB which is run from a HP notebook which the teacher is able to remove for PPA / Home use.

Our main ICT is delivered in an air conditioned, dedicated suite which has 33 workstations.

The workstations (Fujitsu Siemens Esprimos)and HP notebooks are under warranty till June 2012.

We have a lone vanilla server Dell PET300 (tower) running MS Server 2003 R2 (SP2) – this is out of warranty in May 2011.

Mindful of certain budgetary constraints I think all kit is going to need to have an extended life out of warranty but any suggestions on what would be an ideal way forward would be really welcome. My thinking would we need to be thinking of a new server next summer for starters and having the T300 running some roles for it. The existing kit is covered by a decent APC unit and lives in the corner of the ICT Suite, the switches are in a ceiling mounted half cabinet which BT have conveniently (for them) placed the broadband incoming sockets below. In a redesign though a full cabinet might be the answer with all the kit in there.

[SYNACK]

If we had a rundown of the type of system specs involved it may be easier to see the best way foward. CPU speed/number, RAM ammount, GPU type for the primary types of system in use.

[speckytecky]

Thanks for the reply Synac,

The existing kit is all pretty straightforward, the workstations have 500GB Harddrives, the Dell PET300 server is a decent bit of kit with a 3 disk 1gb raid, backing up to a LTO 200/400GB tape.

It's what to be looking at next that I seek feedback on - what spec of server to buy in (server 2008 64 bit I presume) an Windows 7 replacement workstations qwith probably some sort of external storage handling the back up. I'm just trying to get a feel for what other primary schools are looking toward.

If we had a rundown of the type of system specs involved it may be easier to see the best way foward. CPU speed/number, RAM ammount, GPU type for the primary types of system in use.

[BrianG]

I look after 5 primary schools across my area with each school getting one days visit per week. I'm planning a server install for either just before christmas or just after. One of my schools has a 3 year old HP Proliant and as it's running out of warranty very shortly I'm going for a replacement. I'm looking at server 2008, keeping the workstations as XP for now, to keep costs down ( not all in one bulk) and so I can start the migration to Windows 7 slowly over a period of a couple of months, so staff and students have chance to get used to it. I'm going for another proliant, the ML115, 4Gb RAM with a 160Gb drive for system and 500gb drive for data. Backing up all data to an external ( networked) drive which is kept in a different part of school. We don't bother with Raid as, with a backup, a rebuild of the server can be done in a matter of a few hours so the cost implications aren't worth it. The external drive back up isn't ideal but as it falls under the councils guidelines the schools won't pay any more for a proper back up procedure.

[smalls001]

I'm looking after 7 primaries all getting 5 hours per week, i have planned in, to replace a couple of the primaries with new server. At the moment will keep them windows 2003 x64 server. One of the Junior's schools i look after has a 5 year rolling program for replacing old kit. At the moment they have 110 laptops for students access all running Xp pro. These laptops have been bought over the timescale by buying 30 laptops each year. Most of the backups are done to 2 external hard drives in rotation they are swapped each week and the other one taken offsite. I mainly use robocopy to backup the system.

Hope this Helps


Dave

[Will1976]

Thanks