ICT Infrastructure in School Advice!

[ICT_Pro]

What are the best practices for Schools?

We are secondary school, about 1400 users and 1000 node network. Netgear Layer 3/2 Switches, H3C Wireless Controller.

We are using HP 8x DL380 G4/G6/G7 and 2x DL320 Storage Servers. One VMware Host running 8 VM Servers. Windows 2008/2003 Servers, Windows 7 Client. Microsoft TMG 2010, SharePoint 2010, Office 365 etc.

Two domain, parent for staff and child for pupil.

What we are thinking to achieve:

3x Host VMware or Hyper-V cluster together fro redundancy and fault tolerance.

2x Storage Server cluster together for VMs and Data

Setup some VLAN to reduce the broadcast and multicast while imaging.

New solution to replace TMG 2010 as it is going to end.

What you can recommend for virtual environment which is most reliable and cost effective?

 

 

Thanks

Edited July 10, 2013 by Dos_Box

[witch]

Why do you want to know?

Are you planning a new system?

[ICT_Pro]

Yes, I am looking to find the best options and make a plan for next 5 years if I manage to get some budget

[tmcd35]

It's going to depend a lot on the size of the school and the knowledge/experience of the team maintaining the system. I don't think there is one true "1 size fits all, best practise solution" for schools to follow. But that said, here's my thoughts...

 

CORE ICT? Logon directory service, Internet provision, filtering, e-mail, finance system, management information system, print management.

 

How meny services do we run? We have about 30 servers and try for 1 service per server (virtualised).

 

Each service runs on it's own virtual server, with have 3 vhost servers of varying capacity.

 

We use Hyper-V. Basic redundancy - virtual hard drives are stored on a SMB share accessable by all three hosts.

 

Our storage is a Windows 2008R2 server with 16x450Gb 15k rpm SAS drives (2xRAID-1, 2xGlobal Hotspare, 12xRAID-50). This is connected to 2x 2Gb(bonded) networks. One network for Hyper-V VHD access, the other for user data access on network shares.

 

Yep, one central storage server for the whole lot! (probably not best practise )

 

Any Audio/Video is on the same storage service - but not much of it. If we were serious about Audio/Vidio I'd buy a QNAP box and dedicate it to the task.

 

We use Barracuda Yosemite backup doing disk backup to a QNAP NAS box. We also take a robocopy mirror offsite once a term.

 

Firewall? We will be using our Smoothwall box when all is set up properly.

[maark]

Do you have a microsoft EES agreement for your school? - if so then you can save a lot of money by using server 2012 datacenter running hyper v for virtual machines, DPM for backups, forefront endpoint protection for anitvirus. Virtual servers can be backed up using dpm or veeam who offer a free version and this can be a lifesaver.

Worth setting up vlans if you are a large network but depends on what you have now and what your switches are like - had no problems with hp procurves.

We use clickview for videos but would not particularly recommend iit as I always seem to be fixing something on it.

[uffy2000]

Its all down to what you need to do/run and how many students/staff/devices your delivering the services too

 

Virtualisation is the Future! so its best to get it in ASAP. Datacentre is good for loads of VM's (if you need them) but standard you get to run 2 VMs per physical host and its cheaper! (again depending if you only need a few VM's and you have the Hardware that can support these) DPM is a part of System Centre which can be expensive but if you have quite a few VM's then its a really good tool to have.

 

VLANs I think should be used more even in small scale environments, its an added layer of security and gives you more options on your network

 

These are all just my opinions but I would recommend getting as much info as you can about what you need to provide (and maybe what you WANT to provide), what direction your school is taking in terms of ICT curriculum....