100% Cloud

[PotNoodleTech]

Moving everything into the cloud is always going to be more expensive than just keeping servers on site. Local servers are very cheap, local hard disks are very cheap, internet connections are very expensive, cloud storage is VERY expensive.

 

Ask you're business manager if he/she is going to provide you with the same yearly budget as the free school has, so that you can recreate their exact setup in you're school.

 

... that's probably where the conversation will end and possibly not rear it's head again for a good while.

[Sagima]

So, had quote, £7206.48 / year (inc vat)

 

With education adjustment = £6551.35 /year

 

Well that's far to much so I'll just rule out app and file stuff in the cloud completely. If I'm doing that I'm just going to come back to this in 12 months and see what's changed

Edited July 1, 2016 by Sagima

[mavhc]

I guess it depends what you have. Our main SAN is a dual node, active/active OpenE software on mostly Dell hardware (we have a couple of SATAboy arrays) - all in all about 50TB of raw storage. I guess we could change components on that but after 5 years I would expect benefits from all areas of hardware so replacement is likely to be competitive in terms of performance benefits. Our file server storage is a single node but we also have a hot standby which copies overnight (because restoring that ~30TB from backup to a replacement device will take a while). Overall, our backup is D2D2T or D2T with an emphasis on having multiple generations of files going back a year and yearly snapshot archives going back several years. All of which is expensive and demanding of staff time and skills. I'm not saying it is more expensive than Azure - but I don't see it costed in along with server, licensing and electric costs and it may be a fairly significant omission.

 

I was mostly talking about the backup side at that point, SAN is moving faster I assume, due to tiering with flash.

 

How often do you replace your d2d2t backup system?

[SchoolsBroadband]

The biggets issue that currently stops this is the reliance on an Internet connection. Often Leased Lines are as much as server licensing and server hardware replacement costs over a period. To go fully into the cloud you need 2 leased lines (hoepfully that would be fast enough) but probably from two different providers, one using Virgin, the other BT. As soon as you put that price in, it just isn't viable yet.

 

you'd be surprised at how little a 100Mbit leased line costs now. We can do them from £4,500pa near enough nationwide and that includes firewall and content filtering. Add onto that an ADSL or FTTC backup and you're talking about £5kpa.

 

Dave

[mavhc]

you'd be surprised at how little a 100Mbit leased line costs now. We can do them from £4,500pa near enough nationwide and that includes firewall and content filtering. Add onto that an ADSL or FTTC backup and you're talking about £5kpa.

 

Dave

 

Thanks for some solid numbers. Do you have any figures about reliability?

 

http://www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/16.04.01-Terms-and-Conditions-Updated.pdf is a broken link btw

[Steve21]

So, had quote, £7206.48 / year (inc vat)

 

With education adjustment = £6551.35 /year

 

Well that's far to much so I'll just rule out app and file stuff in the cloud completely. If I'm doing that I'm just going to come back to this in 12 months and see what's changed

 

 

Yep That's about what I expected, works out near enough £35k on a 5 year cycle, vs like £10k locally Dell server etc (And that £10k is much better spec than the cloud one I was looking at).

 

Steve

[SchoolsBroadband]

Thanks for some solid numbers. Do you have any figures about reliability?

 

http://www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/16.04.01-Terms-and-Conditions-Updated.pdf is a broken link btw

 

Thanks for pointing that out. We've just moved web servers so that may be the issue.

 

Leased lines should have a 99.999% SLA

 

Dave

[pcstru]

I was mostly talking about the backup side at that point, SAN is moving faster I assume, due to tiering with flash.

How often do you replace your d2d2t backup system?

Our backup strategy is subject to a full review every three years. That doesn't tend to result in wholesale replacement - but most of the system has been replaced over the last 6 years.

[mavhc]

5.26 minutes downtime per year, not bad. Assuming no JCBs in the area.

 

Does that include access from ISP to internet, or just from you to ISP?

 

Meanwhile on Azure:

 

We guarantee that at least 99.9% (99% for Cool Access Tier) of the time, we will successfully process requests to read data from Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS), and Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) Accounts.

 

So that's 3 days for Cool, and 8 hours for Hot

[SchoolsBroadband]

it's you to ISP. We have no control sometimes as to what happens on the Internet once traffic leaves our network. If you took a Microsoft Express Route interconnect then we could also do an SLA all the way into Microsoft.

 

We may do this if enough schools want it, but its not cheap.

 

Dave

[jmak]

If you're going 100% cloud, I'm not sure why you wouldn't use Google Drive with unlimited free storage instead of a file server in azure that you pay for. I can see why you'd stick with MS if you're going for a hybrid solution. You'd probably still need some other cloud servers, although I'd go for hosted services rather than try and run a replica of my existing set up on remote servers. To get value, I think it takes a change of approach to get the most benefit.

[mavhc]

Agreed, best to switch to chromebooks. Problem is the switching costs, exams that are sponsored by Microsoft, converting legacy files, and retraining everyone.

 

So first you get people using Google Classroom, etc, put new things on Drive, create a system to avoid printing, then make sure they're charged for every legacy print.

 

Give new pupils and their teachers Chromebooks, then wait for the old pupils/teachers to leave.

 

After about 5 years the project is complete.

[mikkydoos]

You've paid for your infrastructure already. Its not costing you anything apart from licenses.

 

Sounds painful to me.

[klop]

Hi Dave, can you PM me details - if you can quote us around that price we can look to leaving lea - but our previous quote from you guys was a lot more.

Thanks.

 

it's you to ISP. We have no control sometimes as to what happens on the Internet once traffic leaves our network. If you took a Microsoft Express Route interconnect then we could also do an SLA all the way into Microsoft.

 

We may do this if enough schools want it, but its not cheap.

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

PM'd ..........

[kearton]

The old maxim holds true: you can at most get two from good, fast and cheap, but you'll never get all three.

 

Yep. Refer RFC1925, Section 7a...

[KevByrne]

Hi Dave (Schools Broadband),

 

We've just taken out a 200Mb leased line with yourselves and the cost with ADSL failover and filtering was £12,495 per annum.

 

I know the 1Gb bearer is more expensive however the difference between this and the £5K you quoted for the 100Mb line is vast.

 

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as to whether we have been overcharged?

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi Kev,

 

sure I'll send you a PM. But in a nutshell gigabit bearers cost a lot more than 100Mbit, content filtering licences cost a lot more for secondary schools than primary schools and you're on a 3 year deal.

 

The cheap offering we have is for primary schools only and is 5 year term, not 3 year and is a special deal for us from our carrier partner. There are quite a few other differences too.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

 

Hi Dave (Schools Broadband),

 

We've just taken out a 200Mb leased line with yourselves and the cost with ADSL failover and filtering was £12,495 per annum.

 

I know the 1Gb bearer is more expensive however the difference between this and the £5K you quoted for the 100Mb line is vast.

 

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as to whether we have been overcharged?

[KevByrne]

OK - Thanks Dave,

 

Just thought it was worth checking and also clarifying for any other secondary schools out there.

 

Regards

Kev