Future support issues in new build at school

[macster]

Hi I currently work for an adult educational institute and shortly we will be losing a site. There will be a new school built where the Adult education centre will have about ten rooms for our use in the school.

Our main site is Windows 2003 domain and we have our own file servers and exchnage servers etc.

The problem is that when the new site is up and running the computers will be supplied by us but another company will be supporting them. The school will have an outsourced IT.

The school will also need to be able to our computers in the evening and weekends or when we are not using the classrooms.

What is the best solution here. How can our users login and get their profiles and settings logging into our domain on the computers in the new build and when the school want to login they get their settings. i am sure they will have their own domain on site. There will also be provisions for mac suites as well.

Im not sure how this is going to work without major problems..

[kylewilliamson]

If your luklcy you can get a domain trust relationship. If not, you might be able to do this, but it's messy - its possible you could physically 'switch' the network uplink across if you can get your ten rooms on a seperate switch - and have seperate cradled hard drives to switch them over.

Alot of this depends of course, on getting access to the outsourced IT agreement before it gets accepted.

Kyle

[GrumbleDook]

Ouch, if the school's outsourced company are providing them then I think they will only be set up on their domain.

An option to put forward is to have a child domain of the school domain that is you own and you have admin access to (it relies on trusting the company too!)

The other option is trusts between domains (multiple domains, single forest.)

Will your servers be on the same physical network or a different one?

[kylewilliamson]

http://www.provantage.com/qvs-ca284e2s~7QVSS00C.htm

That might be right up your street for switching the rooms between the physical adult ed and physical school network.

Kyle

[macster]

Ouch, if the school's outsourced company are providing them then I think they will only be set up on their domain.

An option to put forward is to have a child domain of the school domain that is you own and you have admin access to (it relies on trusting the company too!)

The other option is trusts between domains (multiple domains, single forest.)

Will your servers be on the same physical network or a different one?

i think we will def need have a domain controller there in case the link goes down. Also we use admitmac which relies on a AD domain being present for the two mac suites.

btw the outsourced company will have 2 support guys on site for 900 computers and support our bit of the school too,lol, crazy i say.. having said that its still in negotaition i believe.

[macster]

http://www.provantage.com/qvs-ca284e2s~7QVSS00C.htm

That might be right up your street for switching the rooms between the physical adult ed and physical school network.

Kyle

Thanks for this.

the computers in the class can only be joined to 1 domain at a time if i am right. i suppose they will have to have 2 hard disk and a boot option for either the schools hd or our hd

[Oops_my_bad]

never mind about the servers - how is your job affected by all this?

[kylewilliamson]

http://www.provantage.com/qvs-ca284e2s~7QVSS00C.htm

That might be right up your street for switching the rooms between the physical adult ed and physical school network.

Kyle

Thanks for this.

the computers in the class can only be joined to 1 domain at a time if i am right. i suppose they will have to have 2 hard disk and a boot option for either the schools hd or our hd

Theres some software you can to switch between two domains, or you can use lockable hard drive cradles in a 5.25" slot - or indeed, a dual boot.

[macster]

http://www.provantage.com/qvs-ca284e2s~7QVSS00C.htm

That might be right up your street for switching the rooms between the physical adult ed and physical school network.

Kyle

Thanks for this.

the computers in the class can only be joined to 1 domain at a time if i am right. i suppose they will have to have 2 hard disk and a boot option for either the schools hd or our hd

Theres some software you can to switch between two domains, or you can use lockable hard drive cradles in a 5.25" slot - or indeed, a dual boot.

Would be interested to know which software product that will allow you to change domains.

All this dual boot, swapping cradles adds complexity. Guess it wasnt ment to be easy.

[macster]

never mind about the servers - how is your job affected by all this?

Cant really say at the moment how are job will be affected. I think that our support to the school will increase but im not sure how much access we will have to the network and workstations