Server replacement

[DESC-IT]

Hi all,

Some advice please for someone with enough knowledge to be dangerous but not enough experience of the heavy stuff to know what to do!

 

I need 2 new servers for our split-site Education Support Centre. Currently everything is on separate RM servers and we need to virtualise CC4, CC4Anywhere, SIMS, Print etc onto one Big Daddy. We've had a quote from our Tech Support company but I've been told to get 3 more and some second opinions due to the cost.

 

So, 3 questions (sorry!)...

 

1. What is the collective opinion on sticking with RM? We've spent 6 years getting it all working smoothly and while I'm not RM's biggest fan, I'm loathed to recommend abandoning CC4 as the cost and problems of making an alternative work as well would be massive. I have been asked to investigate alternatives and be able to justify my decision!

 

2. What's Hypervisor and why do we need it?

 

2. We've been quoted £14K for 2 servers (1 Dual Xeon 2.6GHz/32Gb RAM/4x1Tb HDD and 1 Single Xeon 2.6GHz/16Gb RAM/3x1Tb HDD), 2 NAS's and complete comissioning to virtualise and transfer all of our current data. RM Licences extra of course. I have absolutely no idea if this is good, bad or otherwise. Any feedback would be very much appreciated.

 

Thank you in advance for your opinions!

Steve

[zag]

1) Not many use RM anymore, they are relic from the past. Move along A well run vanilla system will be much better.

 

2) Hyper-V. Virtualization is a no brainer these days, there are so many advantages its hard to list but. Backup and restore time, less hardware required, easy to build new servers, better resource management, quciker to build servers. The list goes on.

 

3) I recently bought a new Dell R320 with 64gb of ram and a fast 6 core xeon cpu and 2 x 4tb mechanical disks. Cost was £2,000 and it took about 4hrs to setup with Hyper-V. Add an extra £800 quid if you want the large SSD option. I just used Veeam to restore the older virtual machines from the old server.

Edited February 8, 2016 by zag

[TechieWils]

Here goes:

 

1. Personally I would get rid of RM, everything you need is builtin into windows or can be purchased for the cost of CC4 (my opinion I know some love it)

2. Hypervisor is basically the thing that makes virtualisation work so you need it. You can go with Hyper-V or VMware as well as others.

3. For pricing I couldn't really tell you, I would prefer a SAN or built-in in storage instead of a NAS myself but I'm not sure on your budget.

 

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

[DESC-IT]

Thanks for the info, chaps. Clearly further investigations are required!

[hallb15]

+1 for getting rid of RM. Moving to a vanilla Server 2012 will be much simpler than you imagine. The price you've been quoted seems high for the spec you've described. I would also suggest that you go for more storage in the servers. You'll get far better performance rather than dragging files over the network to/from the NAS, and you can't easily expand the server storage once you've setup RAID on it.

Get in touch with some of the specialist education suppliers on edugeek who will be more than happy to offer solutions which we can sense check for you.

Keep us informed!

[CamelMan]

1. I took us away from RM last summer - I found RM bloated and actually prevented me from managing the network the way I wanted. Dont regret it but takes a bit of planning and testing. I did it on my own over the 6 week period in a school of 1200 students and 150 staff.

2. A Hypervisor is the server/ system that runs the virtualisation (Microsoft HyperV , VmWare, Citrix Xen etc). Its the system behind the scenes on which you run you virtual servers.

3. Ours cost were £15k for a SAN ( 2tb of fast storage available for os and 4 tb available for slower data with 2 x hots of each), £3k for hosts (bought 2) Intel Xen E5-26200 @2GhZ - with 16G RAM including VMWare

 

I would certainly look at both moving away from RM and saving the money (as long as you can still run your network effectively!) and virtualisation for central servers.

[Norphy]

As much as I dislike RM and CC in general, moving away from it is not a trivial operation. It will require a lot of planning and you will still need to spend money. You will need to find replacements for every little thing that it does. Some of it can be done well with built-in Windows functionality. Some of it can be done badly with built in Windows functionality. Some of it will require extra software to do, either from Microsoft or from third parties. If you've got CC working, can afford it and are not confident enough to set up and run a "vanilla" system (I use the quote marks deliberately, I doubt there is anyone on this forum or anyway who solely uses built in Windows functionality to run their networks in their entirety), I would suggest that you stick with it.

[cheesits]

+1 for moving away from RM. Vanilla networks nowadays can do most of things that you'll want to accomplish on your network. Depending on whether you use all of the functionality CC offers will depend on how easy it will be. One example is WDS, once setup correctly you can build machine in <1hr compared to the RM way of all day. We've moved (nearly) all our networks away from RM and the school's say it's now much better.

 

On the server side, we use a Dell T630, single Xeon, 32GB ram, 4 x 1TB HDD for £1991

[mthomas08]

Hi all,

 

1. What is the collective opinion on sticking with RM? We've spent 6 years getting it all working smoothly and while I'm not RM's biggest fan, I'm loathed to recommend abandoning CC4 as the cost and problems of making an alternative work as well would be massive. I have been asked to investigate alternatives and be able to justify my decision!

 

Used to be in a RM School a long time ago, walked away due to "their way or the highway" including equipment and high costs.

 

2. What's Hypervisor and why do we need it?

 

As others have said, Virtualisation. One of the first things I did at my current job was spend quite a bit on a virtual server. Redundancy which allows parts to fail with no downtime and Dell are good on the warranty (my experience) plus getting spares next day is easy enough. Allows us to build servers for anything instead of ordering a new box all the time. Also we scrapped some of the old crap, I don't really need to consider another one for 3-4 Years roughly.. maybe more.

 

2. We've been quoted £14K for 2 servers (1 Dual Xeon 2.6GHz/32Gb RAM/4x1Tb HDD and 1 Single Xeon 2.6GHz/16Gb RAM/3x1Tb HDD), 2 NAS's and complete comissioning to virtualise and transfer all of our current data. RM Licences extra of course. I have absolutely no idea if this is good, bad or otherwise. Any feedback would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your opinions!

Steve

Not bad but I think the cost can be cut down (I would have to get quotes to really compare). I’d be tempted depending on what money you get. To virtualize one big box and have a minimal simple box as the main DC/DNS/DHCP. Also shop around and see if anyone is willing to combat that 14K quote, you can usually shave around £1-2K if you do. With that money you can get more.

 

I would also go SAN not NAS, it’s expensive but it’s much more robust/future proofing the system. It’s our next step when space becomes an issue (either SAN or Cloud).

 

On another note, this is a great place to ask advice if you have minimal experience in this kind of a thing. There are a lot of people who would spend a good amount of time sending you a large list of things to go for.

 

One term I will always stand by – aim for the mountains and a lot of redundancy when it comes to servers. When it’s all setup, any issues will be your head or the next IT person. Depending on the size of your site, it’s usually best to go for it because you never know what you may do “in house”. Especially when you have more freedom away from RM and people see what other “Non RM” Schools have.

[DESC-IT]

Hi All,

 

Thank you all for your thoughts.

 

We don't have a full-time technician (I'm the IT teacher who also manages the kit!) so after looking at some of the pitfalls, I'll probably stick with RM as it currently works how we want it to and if something did go wrong with a vanilla network, there's no-one to instantly fix it. The repercussions for the school could be significant.

 

After further digging, I think I should be able to save some money on the servers - even if it means that the commissioning is carried out by a different company. With budgetry constraints next year, the Head should be pleased if I can save a couple of grand.

 

Thank you all again,

Steve

[Norphy]

That's probably for the best. One way or the other, without a full time tech on site you'd have to pay someone for support. It may as well be RM.

 

It's always worth contacting Dell directly for server quotes. They generally give good discounts for schools and with the right account manager, you will get a lot of money off RRP for them.