Google Apps for Education - without Gmail?

[Cache]

Evening all

 

Is it possible to signup for Google Apps without using gmail? The reason being I want to evaluate Google Apps and Office 365 using our existing domain but without transfering anything across from our existing services. Is this possible and easy to do or am I just asking for trouble?

 

Thanks

[ass17]

My colleague had setup same, we used our domain name for emails on gmail, but not used as a mail service. I'm not sure how he did it. But it is possible for google apps.

[ass17]

We found google apps better than 365 for the reason we could sync users home directory to their google drive for use on tablets operating systems.

 

What you have to ask yourself although google documents and spreadsheets provide the basic features, is it enough for most users? The answer is nearly all cases is yes.

 

Why have all the bells and whistles for office when you don't use all features and probably never will?

 

Going back to the point about mail, I don't think during the sign up process does google ever change the MX record to point mail to google, so it should stay as it is, your existing host.

[ZeroHour]

Currently EduGeek has both o365 and google apps (the old free one for business) and email routes to o365.

When adding the google dns entries just dont add the MX ones basically and the rest will work. Google respects the dns records and will send mail to the relevant non google server without issue.

We actually can have both o365 mailboxes and google apps mailboxes with our setup here.

[Simcfc73]

I set this up last week and just denied them access to gmail and left the Mx record as is. Seems to work fine. Only done staff up to now as kids don't have an email address in AD. Next job is to work out how to sync AD groups rather than distribution groups.

[Cache]

Perfect, thanks for the replies guys. I'll go set it up and have a play.

[edutech4schools]

We have not even used our domain name or MX and Gapps for ed still works fine.

[Wilderbeest]

We found google apps better than 365 for the reason we could sync users home directory to their google drive for use on tablets operating systems.

 

How do you sync the users' home folders? I thought that google drive did not allow network drives to be synced?

[ass17]

We sync using google apps directory sync, our home directories on on the D drive of the server the sync is running

[Simcfc73]

Tempted to do this but we only have fibre and even some if the staff have several Gb in their home directory.

[Wilderbeest]

We sync using google apps directory sync, our home directories on on the D drive of the server the sync is running

Thanks for the quick answer. I can see that G apps directory sync will sync the LDAP info, but can't see how the home folders get sync'ed. Can you let me have a little more detail? We'd love to get this going.

[Wilderbeest]

Does anyone have tips on how to sync users home folders with google drive?

[ass17]

I didn't set it up so can't offer any help without spending time to go through it myself.

 

But

 

This I'm sure will help

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106368

[AngryTechnician]

I didn't set it up so can't offer any help without spending time to go through it myself.

 

But

 

This I'm sure will help

Google Apps Directory Sync - Google Apps Help

 

I think you might have the wrong idea about what Google Apps Directory Sync does. It doesn't sync file directories, it syncs data from Active Directory.

 

Any file syncing with Google Apps would be done with Google Drive, but this would be done on each individual client, not on the file server.

[ass17]

Apps directory sync is part 1 of 2. I wasn't able to post part 2 as I've only got back to work this morning.

 

Syncing the actually home directories can be done, I've played with it on an iPad, works really well. I'm waiting to speak to my colleague for further instructions on how he did it.

 

Watch this space.....

[Wilderbeest]

Watching, with bated breath! Google drive doesn't want to sync from a network drive, so syncing from the client is not going to work. I've seen a couple 3rd party sync apps that do it (insynchq and syncdocs) but the costs are too high for typical primary schools.

[ass17]

We didn't sync from a net drive, we did it on server which holds our home dirs, so local drive.

[ass17]

He is a technical genius, to cut a conversation short, google drive was used to sync the local folder that houses all the user home dirs. thus new files created in the cloud are synced back to us, so we can keep a local backup.

 

Each individual user has it mapped to the google account. I'm not sure exactly how it was achieved, never went into detail. We are due to roll it out to the whole school when our BYOD goes live in September.

 

I can hopefully supply exact detail nearer the time, but first, I'm upgrading our edge switches to 2920 PoE+ ready for the ruckus wireless to go in summer.

 

I'm just the messenger boy, it can be done, I've played with it, but as yet haven't seen how it is all put together.

[CyberNerd]

He is a technical genius, to cut a conversation short, google drive was used to sync the local folder that houses all the user home dirs. thus new files created in the cloud are synced back to us, so we can keep a local backup.

 

that's how we do it too. Goggle Drive syncs to homedirectory and vice versa. The homedirectory is then backed up.

[Wilderbeest]

Sorry, still not sure I get it... :-(

 

I understand that it's possible to sync the home folders share on the server with a single Google Drive account. My understanding breaks down after this.

 

1) If we have 300+ home folders on the server, does that mean that all users' data share one user's 25GB allowance?

2) Does the sync operate as a service or does the server have to be logged in?

3) How do the pupil accounts access this shared G drive? Do the iPads all authenticate to google drive using the same account? If not, then how is access from individual accounts to the correct folder in the shared G drive enabled? Manually, one by one?

[CyberNerd]

How we are doing it:

 

Install drive on the staff users machine using msi file.

They authenticate to Active Directory and SSO to Google.

A subfolder of their homedrive (H: ) is synced to their Google drive.

Allowance is 5GB per user (25 for email), but Google documents are unlimited.

You can pay for extra space if you need it.

When they log in the service starts, when they log out it stops.

Clearly this doesn't work en mass for students using different machines. For student 1:1 with ipads it works perfectly though. And it works well for staff too.

[Wilderbeest]

Thanks for the clarification CyberNerd!

 

I've played around a bit more and this is what I've found:

 

1) G Drive sort of works with the home drive set up through the AD user object, but not on a mapped network drive.

2) The MSI installs but won't run unless you also have Visual C++ 2008 Runtime SP1 installed.

3) G Drive syncs, but then fails to monitor the network location, bombing out with a "Sorry, Google Drive needs to quit. Error:(1784, 'ReadDirectoryChangesW', 'the supplied user buffer is not valid for the requested operation.')". This seems to be a well known issue, to which Google responds, "Typically we recommend setting your sync directory, the Google Drive folder, on a local, internal disk. The application was designed for such use and while some users are able to install to network drives, it may result in unexpected errors." (Google Groups)

4) Settings don't appear to be scriptable, GPO'able or MST'able. So users have to go through the advanced setup.

5) Settings for a user are not part of the roaming profile, so users have to go through the advanced set up at each new system they log in to.

 

Perhaps, I've missed something. (I'm not normally quite this dull!) But, this hardly seems like a production solution for schools.

[ass17]

I agree it's not good for schools, but the applies to apple based products. Products created for a single user use, then when it has a worth while use within a networked/ business/edu environment they do little to change it other that than to fudge a custom solution by us techies!!

 

Gotta love those multi-billion dollar companies :-)

[CyberNerd]

I've not seen error 3) that you describe - perhaps its something to do with how the network shares are setup? ours are on samba.

[ass17]

May be its to do with:

 

ReadDirectoryChangesW fails with ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER when the buffer length is greater than 64 KB and the application is monitoring a directory over the network. This is due to a packet size limitation with the underlying file sharing protocols.

 

I can monitor files/dirs more successfully over a network with the .net file/dir monitor