Migrating everything off site

[MattDLEA]

Im busy spec'ing out a new server set up for us, I'm busy getting hardware costs etc. But I was talking to my mate who works as a software dev and he was saying the company he works for is moving everything to the cloud and how it works for them.

 

So has anyone moved there set up totally into the cloud. AWS or Azure?

From what I can see the school currently is over spec'ed but on aging hardware so an upgrade is needed.

 

There will be 1000 users but only 150 clients in school at one time and I'm guessing normal useage will be about 60-70 and maybe peak at 100.

As we are a primary there is now much we do to be honest. Basically I think we would need a DC , a File server with lots of space and a MIS system so as anyone done this? We have a 100Mb line.

 

Other then the line going down is there any draw backs?

[mjk]

It is something we are seriously considering here.

Our budgets are being cut hugely and the prospect of renewing bladecenter and SAN on a rolling replacement is looking quite unlikely.

 

So far we have moved shared drives, email and calendars to GAFE.

The next likely candidates will be webservers, Moodle and print servers.

If that all goes well I'll then look at moving Citrix, domain controllers and ultimately the proxy server.

 

I think the drawbacks are going to be the leased line capacity and redundancy - So we'll be putting the server 'budget' into this and see how things go over a couple of years.

[Steve21]

Was looking at this before, and unless you have a huge internet line or don't use much I think it'll struggle personally. Was talking to a college near us and they use dual Gig internet lines (22k a year ) to host all their stuff offsite under the logic that a) it's likely to break and take network out, b) whatever your normal in-house network speed is would be what you need off-site to keep up to scratch

 

eg. If you're running a 1gig network with internal servers, really should be 1gig external. (Their quote, but I get the logic to an extent obviously some bits like backups etc don't come into that)

 

Steve

[mjk]

^ I think this is true for a lot of things, but remember that working online using technologies such as Citrix and Google apps actually requires surprisingly little bandwidth - and redundancy is key in this situation. Video editing and similar will have very different requirements.

[dhicks]

So has anyone moved there set up totally into the cloud. AWS or Azure? From what I can see the school currently is over spec'ed but on aging hardware so an upgrade is needed.

 

We're aiming to have VMs running locally but mirrored to Azure / AWS (probably AWS, looking at pricing). That way we should get local network performance but be ready in case of local hardware failure, and conversly it shouldn't matter too much if Internet access conks out for a while. Our server hardware is around about the same as yours (capable but aging), and we have around about the same usage, although somewhere under 600 in total (staff and pupils).

[mjk]

We're aiming to have VMs running locally but mirrored to Azure / AWS (probably AWS, looking at pricing).

 

Out of interest, did you compare Google compute engine? Just we have a lot of Google services and in some respect it seems a good idea to keep all in one place (and a bad idea from another perspective!)

How does the pricing/SLA compare ?

[PotNoodleTech]

SO if you were setting up a new server room would you have a 100MB connection into the server room for your entire school to run off?

 

I would suggest it can work - particularly if you used VDI across whole school in order to keep all data "in the cloud" (so you're always just viewing the cloud data/os via RDP) but you'd still need a 1GB link IMHO.

[dhicks]

Out of interest, did you compare Google compute engine?

 

I was looking at this a month or two ago, and at the time Google didn't support Windows Server R2 (they do now). Also, there doesn't seem to be an available easy-to-use mirror-all-VMs-to-the-cloud feature for Google Compute Engine as there does for AWS and Azure for Hyper-V. Google's model of computing isn't really your enterprise IT bunch-of-Windows-servers stuff, they seem to be concentrating on providing a platform for distributed cloud-based applications.

[mjk]

SO if you were setting up a new server room would you have a 100MB connection into the server room for your entire school to run off?

 

I would suggest it can work - particularly if you used VDI across whole school in order to keep all data "in the cloud" (so you're always just viewing the cloud data/os via RDP) but you'd still need a 1GB link IMHO.

 

It's probably not the bandwidth that would be the problem with the VDI - latency will be the issue here.

 

[mjk]

I was looking at this a month or two ago, and at the time Google didn't support Windows Server R2 (they do now). Also, there doesn't seem to be an available easy-to-use mirror-all-VMs-to-the-cloud feature for Google Compute Engine as there does for AWS and Azure for Hyper-V. Google's model of computing isn't really your enterprise IT bunch-of-Windows-servers stuff, they seem to be concentrating on providing a platform for distributed cloud-based applications.

 

ok, thanks. I didn't get that impression because they seem to support the whole stack:

 

[h=3]Eligibility requirements[/h]To take advantage of this benefit, the following conditions apply:

 

• All Microsoft Server application products migrated to Google Cloud Platform via the License Mobility through Software Assurance program must be covered with active Software Assurance (SA).
  
• The server applications must be on the list of eligible products. The list includes:
   
  
  • MS Exchange Server
    
  • SharePoint Server
    
  • SQL Server Standard Edition
    
  • SQL Server Enterprise Edition
    
  • Lync Server
    
  • System Center Server
    
  • Dynamics CRM Server
    
  • Dynamics AX Server
    
  • MS Project Server
    
  • Visual Studio Deployment
    
  • Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
    
  • BizTalk Server
    
  • Forefront Identity Manager
    
  • Forefront Unified Access Gateway
    
  • Remote Desktop Services
    

[localzuk]

Looking at data usage onto our storage server, I can safely say that this is a long way off for us here. We'd be looking at needing at least a 1Gbit line out to the net to handle the data we go through,and we'd then want redundant lines so we could still operate properly if the one line in went down. We'd still need fat clients all over the place, so the data going back and forth wouldn't reduce much by putting it all in the cloud.

 

A dual 1Gbit line set up would outprice our server costs by, well, £240,000. And that doesn't take into account the costs of the actual cloud stuff.

[mjk]

Looking at data usage onto our storage server, I can safely say that this is a long way off for us here. We'd be looking at needing at least a 1Gbit line out to the net to handle the data we go through,and we'd then want redundant lines so we could still operate properly if the one line in went down. We'd still need fat clients all over the place, so the data going back and forth wouldn't reduce much by putting it all in the cloud.

 

This is how your mindset is working now, but it doesn't have to be this way in the future. If all of your data is already in the cloud and the workstation is in the cloud then it changes the data requirements significantly.

[localzuk]

This is how your mindset is working now, but it doesn't have to be this way in the future. If all of your data is already in the cloud and the workstation is in the cloud then it changes the data requirements significantly.

 

Really? Our classes will stop simultaneously viewing bunches of videos, editing videos, creating multimedia presentations, creating 3D games, and many other things like that? They'll stop creating songs in Sibelius and similar?

 

Nothing to do with mindset, its to do with how people use ICT!

 

Are you seriously saying that we won't increase our internet usage past our sometimes saturated 100Mbit line that we have already? A 1Gbit bearer is over £25k here. Put it up to 1Gbit on that bearer and the price hits £30k+ per year. We don't spend anywhere near that for our servers. We also can survive if our internet connection goes down right now. We wouldn't be able to if everything was in the cloud - meaning we'd need redundant connections.

 

So, we'd end up needing 2 x £30k+ internet connections.

 

I have absolutely nothing against cloud. My point is that it is not just a bandwagon that everyone should or can jump on. It isn't the golden bullet that will solve everyone's issues - every school will differ. Every location will have a different set of needs on their IT infrastructure and to deny it is naive.

Edited May 15, 2015 by localzuk

[mjk]

Really? Our classes will stop simultaneously viewing bunches of videos, editing videos, creating multimedia presentations, creating 3D games, and many other things like that? They'll stop creating songs in Sibelius and similar?

 

So in the olden days people would download a file from a share, open it, add some images and the like and then re-upload the file (and all of it's associated xml gubbins) back to the server. This requires a certain amount of bandwidth. Nowadays people can edit the files directly in the cloud, since they are adding video/images directly in the cloud the amount of bandwidth used is LESS than it was using the old model. I suspect the same is possible with VDI where you just see the screendumps of the desktop images (small) and not the entire files (large) and all the processsing/files are stored on Microsoft/AWS/Google So that is my vision of how it will look in the future.

BTW try and not take everything i say so aggressively. It is only a suggestion/vision.

[localzuk]

Think of it less as aggressive, more as incredulity. You discounted my thoughts by basically waving your hand and saying "but the future".

 

Your idea that data doesn't transfer back and forth only holds true for, well, word processing documents and spreadsheets. As far as I'm aware, there is no full fledged video editor in the cloud, especially one that handles input from a camera over Firewire. I'm also not aware of audio software such as Sibelius or even Garageband.

 

Also, if I'm not mistaken, a service such as Office 365 of GApps for EDU is unlikely to ever support the proprietary formats that are often used in our schools. Notebook files for use with SMART Notebook for example. So, that therefore means that SMART would have to offer their own cloud solution to this, otherwise cloud use for this will mean uploading and downloading files all the time. Therefore, we'll also end up having our school's files scattered across multiple services all over the web - making continuity and safe long term retention of our data increasingly difficult. At the moment, I just have to back up our servers. In this new future, I'll end up with a bunch of different cloud services, all with their own data retention rules and capabilities. Ensuring we keep hold of all that data relies on third parties to work with us - something that often just doesn't happen.

 

So, whichever way I look at this, it would either cost us a heck of a lot more for internet connectivity, as files will still have to transfer back and forth, or we will end up losing control of our data...

[teejay]

Blimey, we may have differences over our political views @localzuk but I'm in total agreement with you on this. I've gone through costing this as well after some member of SLT decided cloud is the way to go, worked out over double the cost of our current server infrastructure.

[bossman]

We looking towards a "Hybrid" solution which will allow a reasonable cost for us which will be sustainable over the next 10 years with 2 x 5 year refreshments of backend hardware (If required) utilizing one of the cloud based solutions for VM's mirroring and GAFE, giving us the best of both worlds, as @loculzuk has stated "Its the way in which schools work" currently the "Cloud" is not cost effective for us at the moment but eventually when the time comes I feel education will definitely move into the cloud fulltime as costs are driven down.

 

We are moving some of our services to the cloud, E-mail, Website and VLE plus document storage and collaboration, Sims will over the next 5 years become web based and therefore this will be moved to a centralised hosted solution which will probably be managed by Capita.

 

Our LEA tried a few years back to move all our services to the cloud, 53,000 VDI solution which unfortunately for them failed to materialise as "Latency" issues due to flash and other video problems.

 

Money is the key factor I feel for the moment.

 

I don't have much longer left to work and probably won't see the school move completely into the cloud but who knows?

[Steve21]

Big problem I see with the whole cloud move (aside from the already mentioned redundancy issues etc) is that it still relies heavily on the local services. We only have 100Mb switches around the school currently (apart from a few core ones), so even replacing 30 of those would be what £45k~ for some decent edge switches, added to normal licensing/subs etc and there's a year budget gone. Before end devices/internet connections etc etc.

 

In terms of full usage (and not just using few email services/storage) it seems the cloud only really ("currently") benefits the big players with the money in the first place. You need that big internet connection (and in reality a spare), you need the money to setup in the first place and migrate all to cloud etc.

 

Currently on our next few years most the budget is assigned to local infrastructure e.g. switches/wireless, and end-user devices. None of which the cloud really helps resolve in the first place, and I can't see us being allowed to spend money on a service which at the end of the day won't substantially improve service for the near future.

 

Steve

[mjk]

Also, if I'm not mistaken, a service such as Office 365 of GApps for EDU is unlikely to ever support the proprietary formats that are often used in our schools. Notebook files for use with SMART Notebook for example. So, that therefore means that SMART would have to offer their own cloud solution to this, otherwise cloud use for this will mean uploading and downloading files all the time.

 

This exists already. SMART-AMP runs entirely in the cloud, students can interact with the whiteboard software on their own devices and it all runs from GAFE.

 

I'm also not aware of audio software such as Sibelius or even Garageband.

http://www.risingsoftware.com/cloud/

Edited May 17, 2015 by mjk

[localzuk]

This exists already. SMART-AMP runs entirely in the cloud, students can interact with the whiteboard software on their own devices and it all runs from GAFE.

 

Excellent. Another cost, on top of the purchase of Smart Notebook licenses we made a while ago... However, that is interesting!

 

[quot]Auralia and Musition Cloud Edition

 

I'll have to run that one by our music teacher.

 

However, both those things don't negate my point - there are still systems that are simply not in the cloud. And on top of that, systems that are currently a one off cost for a good number of years become an ongoing cost - something I know a lot of finance managers will not accept. Capital is easier to justify than a commitment for the future.

[mjk]

I don't think we can regard anything in ICT as a 'one off', pretty much everything has an ongoing cost and more and more school software is moving to subscription based.

[localzuk]

I don't think we can regard anything in ICT as a 'one off', pretty much everything has an ongoing cost and more and more school software is moving to subscription based.

 

True. I think of one off costs as every 5 years. Capital expenditure, rather than ongoing costs every year.

[dhicks]

All Microsoft Server application products migrated to Google Cloud Platform via the License Mobility through Software Assurance program must be covered with active Software Assurance (SA).

 

I couldn't find a handy one-click mechanism to mirror local servers to Google Compute Engine, though - both Azure and AWS would seem to have services that you install and leave to run, mirroring your current live servers into the cloud for you to switch over to as needed. I couldn't find a Google equivilant anywhere, although I'd be very interested if there was one!

[mjk]

Thanks for that, I was thinking of doing a HA cluster and building the machines from scratch (moodle, webserver to start) then shutting down the local ones if it looked feasible.

[localzuk]

One thing that everyone has discussed here is moving to various public cloud setups. Has anyone considered a full private cloud setup, such as these https://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated-cloud/packs/customised/?