Insatlling a new network

[nicholab]

Are there any companies that will come in quote you for installing a new network based just on GPO's. So they will come in and do the whole migration. So like an RM CC3 just works 8O will a company do this with just standard tools or pro tools.

[Ric_]

Most specialists have some 'value added' tools. Some companies that spring to mind are Novus, Ramesys and CSE. The Novus guys were very nice to us at BETT and seemed rather clued up.

 

Purely out of interest, why don't you want to do it yourself?

[GrumbleDook]

I would also recommend Innovit.

 

You could also look at 'Partners' of people like HP, or directly with Dell.

[Joedetic]

http://www.class-technology.co.uk/

 

I /think/ that's who we had come into rebuild our network after the origional network manager messed up and left. They had used to be the UK branch of Tulip computers but i /think/ there was some stuff to do with liquidation or something. I could very well be wrong so dont quote me on it!

 

We had an engineer on site a few days a week and i must say the three techies we got through from them were awesome! Very helpful and did the job really well and also great guys to work with.

 

Purely vanilla network. No managed nonsense. GPOs and MS solutions throughout aside from the web server (which was from elsewhere).

 

The only thing i can fault them on was that there was only really one of them that liked the FOSS ideology and had a good opinion for the software etc.

[kestrel1]

We use Precedence Technologies & Surftec. They work together & have some very good ideas.

http://www.precedence.co.uk

http://www.surftec.com

The support we receive has always been excellent.

[webman]

Why not just go for CC3 then?

[john]

or just DIY it using us lot for help as anything you can do I can do better (sorry im in a musical mode from my trip to London)

[nicholab]

I would do it my self but the NM would not and CC4 is round the conner. I what to try to make people stop and think just jump on the bandwagon.

 

CC3 has issues you can not migrate the forest root rolls you need to shut down for 2 days.

 

CC3 build process has problems custom drives don't always add properly and it takes 1/2 day to build a machine.

[snrweb]

Teksys are a Microsoft Gold partner so they will use GPOs unless you specify something else.

[webman]

We have no issues with CC3 and will probably be migrating to CC4 next year.

 

The migration process... 2 days - is it really that much of a problem?

 

Build process - every time we've added drivers it has worked flawlessly. Complete re-build (including installing software) of our CC3 machines takes about 2 hours. Restoring from image afterwards is less than 10mins.

[nicholab]

We might see that build speed in a brand new top of the range workstation. So that a complete build in 2.5 hours (restore image as well). A hand crafted work station take even longer. The other problem with remote restore is it can be knacker if it is not booting.

 

I don't know how the two day is not a problem for you. Server restarts are bad enough it means that the full time staff have have issues doing there work. Supposedly we are having RM upgrading a who lot of things and there is going to be no network for a week!!

[webman]

Well yes I can understand older machines will take longer to copy files - no different network setup will speed that process up. But once you have a machine built you can take and restore local images.

 

The issue of downtime is just one of those things. Schedule it in, speak with the people involved and find a time that suits the majority. Eg. we need 5 days' downtime (maximum) in October to move our servers which was arranged earlier this year as other holiday times weren't OK.

 

Just to make it clear we have had half a day unschedule downtime on our MIS server due to a disk array failure; and another day downtime due to no power 8) At no other times have we had any unscheduled downtime

[Guest Guest]

5 days downtime! Since i started we havnt ever had 5hours downtime never mind 5 days (max). Infact i dont think we've ever had an hour.

 

When we moved from 2000 to 2003 we did it here and there out of hours, causing 0 downtime to the users. Why RM expect you to manage without a network for 2-5days is beyond me, rather unprofessional imo when there is no need for it when using a free* vanilla setup.

 

*obviously not free, but only the cost of licences.

[DMcCoy]

5 days downtime! Since i started we havnt ever had 5hours downtime never mind 5 days (max). Infact i dont think we've ever had an hour.

 

When we moved from 2000 to 2003 we did it here and there out of hours, causing 0 downtime to the users. Why RM expect you to manage without a network for 2-5days is beyond me, rather unprofessional imo when there is no need for it when using a free* vanilla setup.

 

*obviously not free, but only the cost of licences.

 

How do you cope, or are you refering to *unscheduled* downtime? I've hardly had any unscheduled downtime in the last few years, but I have had to have plenty of scheduled downtime.

 

I can't move server racks and reconfigure the entire network without taking most things offline for example. Some changes will take serveral days no matter what you might want to do. I don't have any out of hours access to the site and still need most stuff running in the holidays so I tend to cope for the year and have lots turned off in the summer.

 

There is a huge difference between simply going from 2000 to 2003 which can be done without downtime, but if its a migration from one distinct network to another then there is going to be some interuption.

 

I'm not an RM fan but I don't think I would call it unprofessional, its simply a unavoidable interuption without an enterprise budget. If you have had no more than a few hours downtime, perhaps its because nothing with sufficiently big an impact has been changed?

[nicholab]

There forest root migration process works like this they image there server and then they more the image to the new server. They then upgrade the server to Windows 2003. For this they give it two days. We may not have enterprise budget but we should strive for and enterprise culture.

[Guest Guest]

How do you cope, or are you refering to *unscheduled* downtime? I've hardly had any unscheduled downtime in the last few years, but I have had to have plenty of scheduled downtime.

 

I can't move server racks and reconfigure the entire network without taking most things offline for example. Some changes will take serveral days no matter what you might want to do.

 

If you have had no more than a few hours downtime, perhaps its because nothing with sufficiently big an impact has been changed?

 

 

No im talking about *any* downtime. Why would you want to move a server rack? And why would you want to reconfigure the entire network? Either case thats not what we are talking about, we are talking about upgrading an OS and adding and configuring any new features.

 

Thats my whole point exactly. Why can i a lowley network tech be able to migrate from one version of an OS to another, when RM think its a "sufficiently big" task to warrenty days of downtime.

 

Seriously i cant for the life of me think what can be so big to take down a whole network when MS server has all the tools and features to allow you to have next to no downtime.

 

Guess my point is I have no downtime and i pay nothing. You have days of downtime and you ac tually pay for the priveledge

 

 

Oh and btw when i say "out of hours" im talking about the 45mins after school when all the teachers have left, im not talking about spending weekends sorting things out.

[DMcCoy]

I'm not just talking about OS changes, there are big physical changes that will always cause some service interuption.

 

I know you can migrate users and machines, but what if you don't want to migrate?

 

I cannot avoid the downtimes that have been scheduled because the changes are too far reaching to be done with the system online.

 

Core switch replacement.

ESX version upgrade, this required reformating of all LUNs on the san without enough space to move all the machines with them online.

Complete subnet change for all services

vlan implementation

Port Authentication

Emergency shutdown testing (heat/power)

Domain name change

SAN software upgrade

 

There are many things that make life sufficently difficult that it is easier and less disruptive in the longer term to warrent some scheduled downtime. Most will not involve windows, but some will.

 

During the term services are kept online, apart from the odd sims update.

[Guest Guest]

Well yeah fair enough, i wasnt talking about things like that. No OS can avoid the implications that hardware changes like that bring. But they can avoid bringing down teh network for simple software changes.

[webman]

I don't think a complete migration is a few simple software changes. Their 2-day window probably includes preparation, the actual migration, and verification.

 

Personally I don't see 2 days as a huge problem when carrying out a migration from one platform to another. Things take time.

 

If you did it on a vanilla - what work would you have to do to make sure everything worked again afterwards and how long would it take? How many servers? What tools would you use?

[Guest Guest]

If you did it on a vanilla - what work would you have to do to make sure everything worked again afterwards and how long would it take? How many servers? What tools would you use?

 

Id let the students test it Na id use either virtual machines or an isolated network of old PCs, testing as i go. Then obviously test afterwards, but if you are methodical in your working you should get (atleast) all the major things right first time, the only thing that should really be a problem is educational software

 

How long? Well id obviously prepare things but after that; 1hour for file server, 2-2.5 for a DC, and how long is a peice of string for the app server. I could even do it faster.

 

Tools? The ones that are free from MS and maybe a few other free ones. I can hold my hand on heart and say i have never asked for software to be purchased for my (techy) use. 1 we dont have the money and 2 theres plenty of free ones if you look.

 

When we moved upto 2003 on the DCs (we have 2) it was as easy as unplugging the "backup" one. Install 2003. Connect up, wait for replication and transfer the roles. The take down the other one, and install 2003.

 

File server - export shares etc. Install 2003. Create shares. Liteterally is a 5min job once the OS is installed.

 

The only pain is the app server but if it is organised (not like our old one) it shouldnt take too long.

[webman]

Lucky you've got spare machines then or ones powerful enough for VMs

 

I think you have been a bit liberal with the time slots there - there was no allowance for Things Going Wrongâ„¢

 

But at the end of the day; even though it may take 2 days - there are other benefits that come with an RM network that vanilla networks don't; which have been covered, in depth, elsewhere...

[Guest Guest]

Our Pcs powerful?!! Ive *just* got a P4 1gb slow assed peice of poo.

 

I was just being hypothetical about the time. Obviously if things go wrong it will take, well, as long as it takes. But if things work as they should first time i think i was reasonable.

 

Benefits? Na, fair enough some people like them. But im glad we didnt have them as im sure i wouldnt have learned half as much as i know now. Thanks to the printer script on here and the fact that once you get your head round msi's packaging up most apps is a doddle, thats (what im led to believe) 2 of RMs major advantages over vinilla that are sorted.

[DMcCoy]

Vanilla here, but so many other flavours

 

I have a number of processes that slow down or speed up deployment.

 

I can deploy a blank server VM from a template in VirtualCenter in around 20 minutes. I can test patches and things like the move to sql 2005 in sims by making snapshots of my VMs and reverting if I am at all unhappy with anything and have another go.

 

This is a good thing

 

Adding a printer. My new process will be this:

 

1) Decide on which port it will be connected to

2) Enable MAC based port access for that port

3) Create a User with the relevant mac address as the name

4) add this user to the printers Radius group so that radius returns the printers vlan to the switch when it authenticates

5) Add the printer to the print server (it has a second vitual adaptor on the printers vlan)

6) Share the printer

7) Deploy the printer in the client printer scripts.

 

This is not so quick. It does make the network port as secure as I can manage without standing in front of it.

[webman]

Adding a new printer is a breeze for us.

 

• Set static IP either using front panel buttons or web interface
  
• Install printer on server by creating new TCP/IP port
  
• Name printer
  
• Share printer
  
• Allocate to workstations/rooms via RM Management Console
  

[DMcCoy]

Thats how mine was, except I used a reservation for the static ip and I added it to a printer script. Security seems to come at the expense of ease of use