Putting SIMS out in Azure

[Dave_O]

I have been working with Azure cloud services recently for backups, identity and web services and wondered if anyone had tried putting SIMS out there or if Capita would help or support schools in doing this?

[Marshall_IT]

Capita offer a hosted service of SIMS, mainly for primaries I think, which I think they just in azure.

They definitely host their Teacher App stuff in Azure.

[Dave_O]

Capita offer a hosted service of SIMS, mainly for primaries I think, which I think they just in azure.

They definitely host their Teacher App stuff in Azure.

 

Mmmm, yes, I have seen this in action and I can't say I'm impressed with the speed or the high cost. No, I am talking here about schools doing it themselves (with Capita support as per now with on premises SIMS)

[Steve21]

Think it depends what you're expecting from it and why.

 

As an example, doing it yourself means you could just install any third-party link apps directly on the Azure cloud etc rather than requiring VPN access etc. Obviously a bonus

 

But as you'll be the one doing all the maintenance etc, more issues with printers and fun like that (yay for FMS) on it what's the benefit you're looking for?

 

If it's more for a DR scenario where things break locally surely you could fire up your Azure backups to a live server "as needed"

 

Generically apart from the "remote factor" assuming your local services are fairly robust you'll end up paying more for a worse service, you'll still need the same level of Capita support paid etc and gain nothing overall. (Apart from the remote aspect as mentioned).

 

Steve

[CyberNerd]

I think much of the cost with hosted SIMS is the terminal server licensing: you get MSOffice bundled in "free" and don't need to pay MS directly as I understand it.

If you're just looking at hosting a cloud based virtual machine the Capita would support it because it's no different than in-house virtualisation (and check the pricing differences between Azure,Google and Amazon). If you're planning to do something with Azure-SQL then I'm not s sure about how the support would work.

[matt40k]

and check the pricing differences between Azure,Google and Amazon

 

They all price match. Still Microsoft tends to throw free credit at you as part of your schools agreement

[CyberNerd]

They all price match. Still Microsoft tends to throw free credit at you as part of your schools agreement

 

I know there is a bit of a price war but I did check this out only a couple of weeks back and Azure was still significantly more money based on something running 24/7

[mattstevenson2005]

does anyone know roughly how much it would cost to put a SIMS server in Azure? spec e.g. 12x 2ghz cores 40gb ram 300gb storage running 24 hours a day 7 days per week?

[matt40k]

Is this for an LA? Cause that would be overspec for a school! Also, whats the usage? You could cut the infra costs in half if you switched it off out of business hours.

 

Capita charge something like £500 for a primary school - and thats the infra costs, backups and maintenance costs (the latter being the most expensive)

[mattstevenson2005]

no this is for a academy (1000 students, 150 staff) we have around 50 staff that use sims all day with many staff logging on throughout the night doing reports, assessment/mark sheets and entering data etc. Our current SIMS server is a VM on our VMware platform and has its own dedicated physical host with 10 x 2ghz vCPUs, 40GB RAM and can still peak at 80-100% of CPU use and runs around the 30-35GB RAM (SQL takes around 25Gb, with other SIMS services eg. discover, solus etc.. taking about 5GB the rest is system use) throughout the day when our data team start analysing data and generating reports which they do all day every day.

 

What spec are you running? what and how are you using sims?

 

We are considering a new physical VMware host and adding SSD storage to our SANs for our SIMS server to give it more resources as performance is just not quick enough at times when people are doing SQL intensive actions and can cause other users to get the white not responding screen for a few seconds which they find very frustrating.

 

Any thoughts are very welcome!

[matt40k]

How big is your SIMS.mdf?

[CyberNerd]

does anyone know roughly how much it would cost to put a SIMS server in Azure? spec e.g. 12x 2ghz cores 40gb ram 300gb storage running 24 hours a day 7 days per week?

 

I think the best way of doing it is to have a much, much lower spec machine for the base server and boot up machines as a load balanced service. You don't want to be paying for that sort of spec machine running 24/7 if you only use it at full load for a few hours per day.

[Matt_Renato]

You can use the Azure Pricing Calculator to get an idea of the monthly running costs. I don't know if running a SQL instance would work out cheaper than running SQL Server on a VM, or if Capita even support such a setup.

[mattstevenson2005]

SIMS is currently around 6.5GB

[CyberNerd]

if Capita even support such a setup.

@PhilNeal it would be really useful to know what cloud options Capita does support or is Capitas offering the only option here?

[PotNoodleTech]

You can use the Azure Pricing Calculator to get an idea of the monthly running costs. I don't know if running a SQL instance would work out cheaper than running SQL Server on a VM, or if Capita even support such a setup.

 

Based on that calculator it would cost a LOT to recreate our virtual setup in the cloud, even if I reduced the CPU and RAM counts down as low as I dare.

 

Ouch!

[Dave_O]

In the spirit of adventure and armed with 4 quatloos of Azure credits, I am going to build a SQL instance, put all the SIMS stuff on it and attempt to run with a few clients both via the internet and through a p2s or s2s vpn link. Not sure how/if this will work with Solus, document server etc but hey if you don't try you'll never know. Might even try publishing as a remote app through our VMWare View presence. Unless of course someone has already done it in which case I'd love to hear from you so I don't waste my time.

 

Will keep you posted.

[foofighterjim]

Might even try publishing as a remote app through our VMWare View presence.

 

Please update if you get success with this, I always presumed it would never work as a remote app due to the absence of the SIMS share.

[Tefters]

does anyone know roughly how much it would cost to put a SIMS server in Azure? spec e.g. 12x 2ghz cores 40gb ram 300gb storage running 24 hours a day 7 days per week?

 

Is it me or does that spec seem absurdly over the top?

I don't run anywhere near that spec and I have the SIMS DB sitting on a VM with a shared SQL instance running about 6 DB's in total and the doc storage on a seperate VM as a file share.

FYI - Environment is 1300 students, 150 staff, inTouch, FMS, Exams module, the works...

[Tefters]

no this is for a academy (1000 students, 150 staff) we have around 50 staff that use sims all day with many staff logging on throughout the night doing reports, assessment/mark sheets and entering data etc. Our current SIMS server is a VM on our VMware platform and has its own dedicated physical host with 10 x 2ghz vCPUs, 40GB RAM and can still peak at 80-100% of CPU use and runs around the 30-35GB RAM (SQL takes around 25Gb, with other SIMS services eg. discover, solus etc.. taking about 5GB the rest is system use) throughout the day when our data team start analysing data and generating reports which they do all day every day.

 

What spec are you running? what and how are you using sims?

 

We are considering a new physical VMware host and adding SSD storage to our SANs for our SIMS server to give it more resources as performance is just not quick enough at times when people are doing SQL intensive actions and can cause other users to get the white not responding screen for a few seconds which they find very frustrating.

 

Any thoughts are very welcome!

 

I presume you've got your SQL instance memory capped and run SQL queries against the instance/s to see how much each database is realistically using?

I had over spec'd mine for years out of laziness due to having ridiculous amount's of ram to hand in hosts and then upon querying SQL instances noticed that although SQL was eating up to 90% of the resources that the DB's were really using bugger all so dropped the cap levels from the defaults.

[Marshall_IT]

SQL is written to use up pretty much all the RAM available. So no matter how much you give it, you'll always use around 80-90%. Like the post above states, query your instances see what the DBs are using.

[matt40k]

Another thing to mention is that it is better to make clear the cloud options that Capita supports

 

Capita (in terms of the software, not the hosted solution) it doesn't support clouds, it doesn't support virtualisation, it doesn't support your pc or your network or your server.

 

Capita supports running their software on top of other software, ie Windows with Office. They recommend hardware spec in order give an idea of hardware requirements for best performance, but really, they dont support your hardware. They don't even support the software they on top of, they just tell you what they require. You don't phone them if you have a problem activating windows do you?

 

So it really annoys me when people ask which virtualisation system does Capita support? The answer is none, just like they don't support physical hardware. It also highlights they don't understand virtualisation, the idea is that it presents the OS level and lower with the same environment as if it was physical. How will SIMS know it virtualised? It wont! Thats the point, it doesn't need to care, it just needs Windows, how you give it that OS, it doesn't matter!!

 

Oh course you get the folks who dont get virtualisation and get SIMS errors which translates to SQL errors that translate to Windows errors which translates to oh look you've setup the storage incorrect, its the physical equivalent of putting a 1TB 5400rpm laptop hdd in your new 96gb 40core server and you wonder why your getting problems. Cloud is no different to virtualisation, only its someone else's tin your virtual server runs on.

[pcstru]

Capita supports running their software on top of other software, ie Windows with Office. They recommend hardware spec in order give an idea of hardware requirements for best performance, but really, they dont support your hardware. They don't even support the software they on top of, they just tell you what they require. You don't phone them if you have a problem activating windows do you?

No. But if we were running SIMS and SIMS was running very slowly and I phone up Capita for help and I have SIMS running on a stack that is not on their list of recommended stuff, they might just refuse to investigate or break off an investigation before the root problem is identified. That may or may not matter to you so you might or might not consider it when choosing the hosting platform.

[matt40k]

Wrong, capita has no list. If you system is running slow, they SHOULD investigate that its not their software - check your database doesn't need reindexing the log file isnt huge. Once they are happy its your environment, they'll tell you as such and you have go fix it (or get you third party too)

 

Put it another way, if I was HP (or whoever) and my server was on Capita list of not recommended, I'd be suing the arse of Capita.

[CyberNerd]

Wrong, capita has no list. If you system is running slow, they SHOULD investigate that its not their software - check your database doesn't need reindexing the log file isnt huge. Once they are happy its your environment, they'll tell you as such and you have go fix it (or get you third party too)

 

Put it another way, if I was HP (or whoever) and my server was on Capita list of not recommended, I'd be suing the arse of Capita.

 

By this rationale MSSQL on linux would be fine too, and SAMBA as the document server. The application wouldn't care.