New primary network from scratch!

[denzal2k4]

So we have a new primary school opening up in September, brand new building brand new school so only about 60 little darlings. Just looking to get ideas of what other primary's have as there network setup as I have only worked in Secondary's.

 

So I'm after how many servers you have and for what roles and what spec, what storage capacity do you have, which switch's, bother with vlans, wireless, level of redundancy, desktop pc spec, classroom systems smartboards, touchscreens, ipads?

 

Currently thinking:

 

2x hyper v hosts for file, print servers etc

1x physical DC

HP switches, probably not bother with vlans

Ubiquiti wireless

1 x 10-20tb SAN

Nas in outside building somewhere for DPM backups

Possibly Smoothwall

i5, SSD, 8GB staff desktops

Clevertouch or similar screens

 

Alternatively also looking into cloud services if anyone has hosted servers or exchange would be interested to hear from you.

 

 

Any opinions, or in other words if you were given a blank canvas with sensible (yet unknown) budget for a school that wont be at capacity for 3/4 years what would you go for.

 

 

Thanks!

[sparkeh]

We are a primary with about 700 users, 150ish machines and currently:

 

x1 2012R2 Hyper V hosts with x2 2012R2 DC - the host has 120GB SDD to run the VM OS and 2TB for storage. Host is backed up by VEEAM to NAS in another building then mirrored to a NAS in a 3rd building

No physical DC, no need now.

Physical server running SCCM 2012R2 (though this could be moved to VM host when I have time)

Procurve switches, no vlans as yet but considering it for the future

Ruckus wireless

Smoothwall

Desktops are i3, 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD (don't this we really need higher spec than at the moment)

Smartboards with Casio projectors

 

This I would currently add/change:

2nd Hyper V host for replicating the VMs

Touchscreen rather than the Smartboards/projector combo

 

Fell free to ask any questions

[denzal2k4]

Thanks for that @sparkeh so you find 2tb storage is enough for your network? Also do all students have logins or do you have generic class logins or what? Also do you have leased printers or a general mish mash?

 

The other things is do we kit out all the classrooms even though some will be empty for a couple of years, or kit them out as and when they are needed and risk having different kit in each room, which I guess would help with phased upgrade rollouts...

Edited November 6, 2015 by denzal2k4

[NB9457]

Depends on budget, but honestly for a primary seems a bit overkill to me!

 

We look after a primary with 500 people on one physical server and they've not yet managed to fill 4TB of storage and they are relatively heavy users.

 

My ideal system would be:

-Server 2012 DC (4/8 Core with around 32GB RAM) hosting everything and SIMS

-Given SSD prices, I'd chuck quite a few in a server to host SIMS, server based Apps, user profiles, server OS and have things like shared drives and backups on mech drives where access times don't need to be as quick

-Agree on the UniFi, nice and easy!

-Exchange, again for a primary it is an unjustified cost, Google Apps and 365 are free for education.

-Switches, yeah HP, you can't really go wrong!

-As fire as backups go, we just have RAID set up in the servers, a monthly backup which is took off site in a caddy and a daily backup in a fireproof caddy on site.

 

 

As for displays, in a new build I wouldn't bother with projectors, the touchscreens TVs now are brilliant, virtually no maintenance and a longer life span, paired with i5 desktops and you'll have an easy life and some happy teachers.

 

Dependent upon the budget now and long term plan, it could be a good idea to CAT6 the whole school, the cost now is a fair bit more than CAT5, but in the long term it'll be a hell of a lot cheaper.

[hardtailstar]

At the primary schools I worked at, they all had:

 

2 servers - 1 Sims server and 1 for everything else.

Ruckus wifi

HP Pro Curve switches

Laptops for teachers or computers in classrooms

Promeathean IWB with speakers etc

 

That was the basics. I would suggest that you over engineer the back bone of the network, One of my old schools was a small school which expanded quite quickly but no money was spent on network improvements.

 

If you over do it now, you wont have to extend later.

[sparkeh]

Thanks for that @sparkeh so you find 2tb storage is enough for your network?

Currently yes. But I went for a server that was easily scalable so sticking extra drives in if required is a doddle.

Also do all students have logins or do you have generic class logins or what?

They have generic class logins and get a mapped drive to their class folder with their own folder in there. The pros and cons were discussed at length and we went down that route.

Also do you have leased printers or a general mish mash?

We are gradually removing the printers in school and eventually will just have leased MFDs

 

-Server 2012 DC (4/8 Core with around 32GB RAM) hosting everything and SIMS

I would always have at least 2 DCs for replication in case something goes wrong. And I would host SIMS separately but that's just me

-Exchange, again for a primary it is an unjustified cost, Google Apps and 365 are free for education.

Yeah we have GAFE and am perfectly happy with that

-As fire as backups go, we just have RAID set up in the servers, a monthly backup which is took off site in a caddy and a daily backup in a fireproof caddy on site.

Important to note that RAID != backup

[mikeprice]

When I started here I was amazed to find there is only 1 server which has only 500GB disk space in total

 

I assumed that I would have to increase this fairly soon but the usage is still well within limits

 

I did have to ask the staff to check for and delete old files before the summer (especially the one with over 400,000 files!!!!!) but all is fine again now

 

I have asked for a second small server to be included in next year's budget as backup though

 

We are also upgrading the network to have Ubiquity access points on a properly designed network as soon as we can