Putting SIMS out in Azure

[zag]

As for SIMS in Azure . You have to have a SQL instance, A server (basic machine 1 CPU 2 cores, 4Gb memory) on which this runs, an external IP and a VPN gateway. Once all of those were in place the initial cost for the first couple of days was £35. Left it running for a few more days, total cost after 1 week (7 days) was £76. If we exclude setup costs lets say £30 (minus 1 day). This means the cost was £46 for 6 days ie about £7.50 per day. This did not include any significant I/O. This equates to approximately £2737 for the year (who is going to switch SIMS off at night and over holidays?). Extrapolating and estimating bandwidth usage (we still need clear info from Capita about CPU and bandwidth usage in an average school to be sure) it will probably be around £3300 pa.

 

Given the SIMS application continues to pulls data down at random intervals, this will necessitate a change of usage pattern amongst users ie to reduce bandwidth they will have to log in and out of SIMS each time they want to use it rather than logging in at the beginning of the day and leaving it logged in. You can imagine how popular that will be.

 

At £3300 pa or even half of this, I do not consider this a viable option. Hence the reason for terminating the test.

 

Perfect! That's the info I was interested in.

 

Thanks!

[Dave_O]

As an update on my DPM test. It's 3 days since I posted the graph. Here's an update (see below) £17.53 consumed in 3 days (£5.84 per day). Looks like the DPM test will either be scaled down or abandoned. That and the plummeting value of the pound now that we have annexed ourselves from the rest of Europe.

[matt40k]

Question, in terms of your MIS, Sims .net, Capita. A profit making company can offer it to a primary school for £500 pa - thats alot less £7.50 a day, thats assuming they can fit it all into that 2 core / 4gb ram, you have to question if your just lift and shifting rather then adapting?

 

I agree about costs, but Capita won't be making a loss.

 

(Also I hope they've got their name down on the first adopters of Microsoft UK data centre !)

[Dave_O]

What do you expect? In the absence of any other solution what do you suggest that we "adapt" to? That's why I ask for some corroborative evidence or a more cost effective way of doing this. The Capita solution is just an RDP session to a server hosting SIMS. Where this server is, is anyone's guess AWS, Azure, their own servers? Do they host more than one school database on the server, probably. I'm sure the hosting costs of the instance will be around £5 giving Capita their standard x100 mark up.

[pcstru]

@Dave_O, thanks for doing the leg work. It is interesting even from the POV of someone who does not use SIMS.

[nathan]

Simple answer is to move away from Capita to a web based version ;p

[matt40k]

Maybe collaborating more then just words perhaps? (thats more a question in case that isnt clear) - It happens with bulk buying, its happening with my local primary schools joining together in a MAT. Maybe we shouldn't be buying servers for just a single school. Honestly don't know. Just as someone who has escaped, reading this, the level of entry (to make it cost effective) is too high for a single school? (again question), having said that, failed collaboration in the education sector isn't exactly uncommon.

 

Ps: you forgot the 100s of bolt ons you need to make it work work, not just kinda work

[Dave_O]

Maybe collaborating more then just words perhaps? (thats more a question in case that isnt clear) - It happens with bulk buying, its happening with my local primary schools joining together in a MAT. Maybe we shouldn't be buying servers for just a single school. Honestly don't know. Just as someone who has escaped, reading this, the level of entry (to make it cost effective) is too high for a single school? (again question), having said that, failed collaboration in the education sector isn't exactly uncommon.

 

Ps: you forgot the 100s of bolt ons you need to make it work work, not just kinda work

 

And this on the backdrop of a country which has just chosen isolation rather than collaboration! Schools historically have never/seldom collaborated, if they have it has only been at a cursory level. I tried for 10 years to work with schools across an authority to promote collaboration, the megalomaniacal nature of the heads and senior staff mitigated against this. In short they were looking after themselves, paying only lip service to the greater good.

 

Consolidating tech, yes good idea in principle but there will always be someone who wants to try and make a fast (or in Capita's case not so fast) buck off the back of cash strapped schools. Also you've just got to look at the failure of the IT managed services in BSF to realise that shared solutions even at an LA level do not work. This is unlikely, no very unlikely, to happen unless of course you are part of a MAT where this type of thing can be forced upon you. In which case it's less collaboration and more a fascist state.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Dave_O