Cloud experts ( not the fluffy ones)

[MattDLEA]

Just wondered if there is any body here that could spare me a few minutes talking about migration to the cloud and what it really entails.

Particularly someone that works in a cloud migration roll.

 

Cheers

[snagrat]

Might need to give us a bit more info.

 

I've done lots of Office 365 migrations which is cloud but you might be talking about Azure etc which is a different type of cloud

[Lonix]

Not the only one after information regarding this - here's my questions if some one can answer. Did put this in the Cloud forum but no responses @snagrat Our option at mind is Office 365 considering we already pay for it (as part of our Office annual fee).

 

Assuming in total it’s 5GB for Microsoft (recently saw the email) and 15GB for Google. Also assume this includes email/drive/photo storage?

 

Easy to share content? I know Google Drive allows it.

 

Backups and Restorations? This is important because we do weekly restores for Students who “accidently” delete their own or others work…

Once they are full? Does the School easily have an option to pay per user for the increase?

 

Whats the broadband impact? I’d like to know what it was before and after the switch. We are currently sitting on 100MB with two thirds consistently being used but our Scheme is being scrapped so should decrease to 30-50%.

 

What’s the average file size? We have one dept that relies on saving GB of data (Film Studies) and art on their photoshop files can be up to 150MB. How long will a student wait for those files to download on the 100MB or what ever connection you have?

 

Now I am very 50/50 on Cloud and my main niggle is all the Students eggs in one basket – external. Currently our Internet has an up time of 98-99% and when we lose it, it’s like hell has broken loose. If relying on that for our data storage – it will be worse. Although we are looking at new broadband suppliers who have an even better “up time” and will allow us better connection at cheaper cost.

 

Hoping someone can answer the above because we are going to replace our current data storage within 3 Years. I keep hearing about Schools that have gone Cloud but not many seem to be willing to tell me about it J

[Norphy]

1) Office 365 for Education offers 1TB of storage per user. I think that mailboxes are considered separately, our O365 users get 50GB.

 

2) Extremely easy to share content if it's stored in Onedrive for Business or SharePoint. If you're using Office on the desktop, you can share it through the individual office packages as well as through the web UI.

 

3) OneDrive for Business is based on SharePoint online. You can enable a VSS-like service so accidental deletions can be easily recovered

 

4) Hard to judge

 

5) I would recommend against moving all of your user storage to Office 365 or any cloud service for that matter. Keep using your local data storage for anything which isn't an Office document and use cloud drives as a transport medium rather than your primary storage medium

 

6) Arguably, you're not putting everything in one basket, you're just changing the basket that you're using. What would happen if your current file servers went down? Have you mitigated against that by using a DFS-like service? With internet connections being more and more critical, it could be worth investigating redundant links.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Norphy

[MattDLEA]

My question was more about a job that I have applied for , the only real info I have is that the company are looking at doing cloud migrations and you need an infrastructure background.

 

Anyone have any ideas on what they are really after.

 

Do you think this would be just the normal lets get exchange and the websites and apps into the cloud or something more advanced like lets move everything over

[Lonix]

Brilliant - thank you that actually makes going Cloud based much better (it's information specifics that put me more at ease).

 

1) Is that your annual office fee? (sorry I cant remember which agreement it is for us, I know we pay for faculty staff). I'm just shocked at the high amount of Storage they are offering, 1TB for Education with no additional costs.

 

2) and 3) That's great, really useful to know. Better than expected as well.

 

4) I think this is my primary remaining concern.

 

5) I am considering a single Year to start off with and migrate every new "Year 7" as time goes by. Possibly a solution for Media (Film/Art) because they are the largest storage users.

 

6) My consideration for everything or not going cloud is to avoid a new data server. Otherwise we would still need to purchase one at some point and we currently have 3 separate servers dealing with different user data (mainly because of storage limitations). Which is why I am considering all options at the moment.

 

We couldn't potentially do as you recommend, all office files on OneDrive but this option gives two locations that Students will be saving data (I foresee people not being happy about this, particularly Staff). Must admit I do like this idea.

After all the main reason I am considering Cloud is to save money. We could still stick to my idea of Year 7s going Cloud and allowing them an internal drive as well for Media files etc.

 

It's all at the stage of considerations, possibilities and getting all the information. As I said before I am very 50/50 at the moment, we have even asked our possible new supplier if we lose our current link - what next. They are looking in to this.

[Norphy]

Storing things like video in the cloud just isn't practical. You'd have to download a multi-GB file from the internet at the beginning of a lesson, store it somewhere, work on it and upload it again when you've finished with it. With 30 kids at a time doing this, half of the lesson would be taken up with the up/downloading alone. By all means, keep the finished result in the cloud (there is a YouTube-like service in Office 365) but works in progress? No.

 

The alternative is to use a solution like Azure StorSimple which is a hybrid local/cloud file storage solution. It's a tiered data solution, it keeps the new and frequently used stuff in an SSD cache, the less frequently used stuff in SAS spinning rust storage and archives everything else into Azure. But you'd have to spend approximately all of the money to get it.