(Another) CC4 to Vanilla thread

[foofighterjim]

Morning All

 

Having spoken to a few of you here directly I thought I would open this up to get a wider range of ideas. We are giving serious consideration to moving away from CC4 in the summer and taking the Vanilla route. Our physical server infrastructure (3 x VMware hosts, 1 x SAN, 1 x Backup server & 1 x Tape Library) is due for replacement in the summer and the cost of replacing this and updating CC4 to Server 2016 is way beyond our budget. There is no point in just upgrading the physical infrastructure as we are still on Server 2008, so frustratingly this move is cost driven as we are not unhappy with what CC4 does or how it does it.

 

Straight off the bat I do have a skills problem, I have only ever worked on RM networks as have the rest of my team. What are the recommendations to us bridging this skills / knowledge gap (i.e. specific courses)? Because of our lack of experience we are also looking into companies to assist with the process and provide on going support as and when we need it, I have been speaking with CSE and Stone so far, I'd be interested in peoples experiences for using either company in this capacity.

 

For those that have made the move from RM in the CC4 era, is there anything in particular that caused you issues or anything that you couldn't find a suitable replacement for? How do you deal with bulk user management, workstation builds, software deployment and the countless other things that the RMMC does in one place? I think it is a no brainer to move from VMware to Hyper-V, (I think) we are covered for this in our OVS-ES agreement. I think we would stick with the Server SAN model as I am not wholly convinced by S2D, if you ever need to start replacing nodes with potentially dissimilar specs.

 

Another big question would be should we look at sticking with Windows 7 in the short term? With the frequency of feature updates for Windows 10 and the volume of people here with far more knowledge than I (i.e. any) of Vanilla management struggling with it, it would seem logical to me to stick with a desktop OS that we know well, is stable, is plenty of documentation for and isn't going to drastically change every 12 months, I know this is delaying the inevitable but I fear it may be too much change at once. Of course if we were to go Windows 10 we could jump straight in with UE-V and not have to re-learn everything when making the jump from 7 to 10 on a system that as it stands we know little about anyway.

 

Any input welcome, thanks for reading.

[yac2016]

Having done plenty of these migrations it's a no brainer to make the move. Outsourcing to any company is a risk as they usually make it far to complex and you then rely on them for ongoing support and maintenance.

 

You could easily setup a test based system internally with Server 2016 and a win 7 and win 10 station and set this up with your own requirements. Doing it first time will never be perfect, but you can use CC4 as base point of how you want your shares configured etc.

 

There are a host of solutions you could use SCCM to manage deployment, or MDT and GPO for builds and software deployment.

 

My best advice is always keep it simple, from hardware setup, to software setup to backups.

[foofighterjim]

You could easily setup a test based system internally with Server 2016 and a win 7 and win 10 station and set this up with your own requirements. Doing it first time will never be perfect, but you can use CC4 as base point of how you want your shares configured etc.

 

There are a host of solutions you could use SCCM to manage deployment, or MDT and GPO for builds and software deployment.

 

My best advice is always keep it simple, from hardware setup, to software setup to backups.

 

The thing is that it would be very difficult to do a test setup like this. We have no spare hardware capable of doing this (the server part) and in turn I could not be confident of doing it when the time comes. I also worry about doing things that aren't best practice out of ignorance because it was in blog x, y and z; and it was the only way I could get it to work at the time. I have looked at SCCM and it seems that Microsoft are heavily pushing this and In Tune at the moment.

 

Simple is what I do best

[yac2016]

Any chance of you doing the Microsoft Server 5 day course as this would fill in some blanks and give you confidence. I understand though as going from CC4 to vanilla is a big step.

 

I have done both setups using SCCM and just the basic tools, just see how much you use the current features of CC4. Most of the classroom management software solutions now cover most of the RMMC tools.

 

There is nothing out there you can't do without CC4. However you do miss the RMMC way of things, but you also have so much more flexibility to add and change things very quickly.

[ReverentCreature]

Does your LEA do a cheaper alternative to CC4? At least if you went down that route you would still have a certain level of support and help for things like build and user management rather than being in the deep end. For example we have EIS.net

[foofighterjim]

Does your LEA do a cheaper alternative to CC4? At least if you went down that route you would still have a certain level of support and help for things like build and user management rather than being in the deep end. For example we have EIS.net

 

Unfortunately our LEA provider would be Link2ICT , I would rather take my chances on my own than let them near anything.

[simpsonj]

Having gone through vLanning with you a few summers ago, I would be very surprised if you couldn't handle a vanilla network

 

I went from CC3 to Vanilla a fair few years ago, and the transition wasn't too bad, and we moved to Windows 7 at the same time. Other than completely messing up the student profiles (no students could login!) it went as fine as could be expected. If there's anyway you could get the new domain up and running at the same time as your current CC4 network, I would highly recommend it. It gives you the capacity to test DHCP, DNS, AD, GPOs, profiles and your build images. I haven't used InTune or SCCM, we moved to WDS and then MDT later on, which are a bit less daunting to setup.

 

Also, I highly recommend getting a book if you're looking for best practice. I picked up Mastering Windows Server 2012 R2 and it's been really useful in giving an overall approach to setting up a network. Also picked up Windows Server 2016 Unleashed, but have been less impressed with it's writing style...

 

To be a bit more specific:

 

Software installs - .msi and Group Policy wherever possible, otherwise we try to incorporate the software into the build.

Bulk User Management - Bulk AD Users from wisesoft and Active User Manager, though that one may be a bit hard to find now...

 

And personally, I would stick with Windows 7 until you and your team are happy with the new server setup. Mind you, that might just be because I'm slightly bitter at Windows 10 after it's recent update decided to uninstall Office.

[simpsonj]

The company that helped us migrate was Softegg, though I'm not sure they cover Birmingham...

[supawat1]

How about running your test system and CC4 in parallel, this what I did a few years ago. You do not have to disconnect your CC4 in the summer, just let it run and give yourself a bit more time to test and learn your new system.

 

When you have got a new budget then you can buy a new server that capable of running 1 DC and 1 SCCM server and over the period of time, when you are confident with your new system, you can buy more hardware and expand your system how you want.

 

Get yourself a few books from Amazon and training, I am sure will be much more confident.

[NB9457]

Having worked on Vanilla and RM systems, I couldn't really go back to RM, separate systems seem to work better, catered exactly to the school and there's a big saving usually. One thing I will give RM and their by the book rule, is if that anything happened to the network, or one of the time, an RM tech could come in and know the setup and fault in no time. With that, make sure you document everything, I know my network inside out, but I still document everything incase anything happens to me or maybe the day comes and I forget, all categorised and so on, again, seen so many schools that haven't and it will cause problems one day.

 

Software recommendations:

Server OS: Hyper-V Data centre 2016, this allows unlimited VMs on your hosts.

 

Print Management: Paper Cut, bargain, works great and has a lot of functionality

Imaging: WDS and MDT. Keep it simple for now and use a 'fat' image, whilst no longer best practice, in your current position, it'll help you get going quicker, thenyou can come back and look to using something like SCCM as this can just be added to a live network whenever.

 

Classroom Management: Net Support DNA. They usually having some good offers and Al is very helpful. It covers safeguarding, software deployment, classroom monitoring and more. In fact, I'm sure RM Tutor is repackaged Net Support.

 

Software Deployment: A mix of NetSupport, GPO and PDQ Deploy. PDQ Deploy is like black magic, in most cases it can deploy exe files silently and best bit is it's only around £200 for a licence.

 

Antivirus: This is an each to their own. Whenever we renew we shop about, last time Avast! came in cheapest for us, around £4k for 1000 devices for 38 months. Again, you can use Windows Defender, but you'd need to setup SCCM for a full solution. But as I said, shop around and read reviews.

 

Backup: DPM if you're on a budget, it is good, never really had an issue with it, but if you have a better budget than us, I'd recommend veeam, it's simple to use and literally does the job.

[yac2016]

How about running your test system and CC4 in parallel, this what I did a few years ago. You do not have to disconnect your CC4 in the summer, just let it run and give yourself a bit more time to test and learn your new system.

 

When you have got a new budget then you can buy a new server that capable of running 1 DC and 1 SCCM server and over the period of time, when you are confident with your new system, you can buy more hardware and expand your system how you want.

 

Get yourself a few books from Amazon and training, I am sure will be much more confident.

 

This is what we did as well and then you can go live when you are ready, in the early days. I also agree I think you are far more capable then you think.

[yac2016]

Unfortunately our LEA provider would be Link2ICT , I would rather take my chances on my own than let them near anything.

 

Link2ICT...bad times. Agree stay clear, they are part of Staffordshire now to!

[AlanD]

So RM also support vanilla installations - and will "remove" CC4 from existing servers leaving behind a vanilla installation (for a price of course).

 

Its something we have been looking at....but we would want to be assured we have some kind of external support - which needs to be really good ...and that can prove to be expensive - particularly when vanilla installations are randomly configured...

 

I do think RM support is not cheap - but I'd have difficulty complaining about their lack of expertise and capability - which has always been first class and spot on.

[foofighterjim]

How about running your test system and CC4 in parallel, this what I did a few years ago. You do not have to disconnect your CC4 in the summer, just let it run and give yourself a bit more time to test and learn your new system.

 

When you have got a new budget then you can buy a new server that capable of running 1 DC and 1 SCCM server and over the period of time, when you are confident with your new system, you can buy more hardware and expand your system how you want.

 

Therein lies the problem, we don't have any hardware that could be used for this and our current hardware is out of warranty in the summer. So yes we could buy new hardware but we would still be in a situation where we have our "current" system on the old hardware, with no firm guarantee of when / if we will get the Vanilla network up and running. From a governors perspective this would not be money wisely spent.

[foofighterjim]

Software recommendations:

Server OS: Hyper-V Data centre 2016, this allows unlimited VMs on your hosts.

 

Print Management: Paper Cut, bargain, works great and has a lot of functionality

Imaging: WDS and MDT. Keep it simple for now and use a 'fat' image, whilst no longer best practice, in your current position, it'll help you get going quicker, thenyou can come back and look to using something like SCCM as this can just be added to a live network whenever.

 

Classroom Management: Net Support DNA. They usually having some good offers and Al is very helpful. It covers safeguarding, software deployment, classroom monitoring and more. In fact, I'm sure RM Tutor is repackaged Net Support.

 

Software Deployment: A mix of NetSupport, GPO and PDQ Deploy. PDQ Deploy is like black magic, in most cases it can deploy exe files silently and best bit is it's only around £200 for a licence.

 

Antivirus: This is an each to their own. Whenever we renew we shop about, last time Avast! came in cheapest for us, around £4k for 1000 devices for 38 months. Again, you can use Windows Defender, but you'd need to setup SCCM for a full solution. But as I said, shop around and read reviews.

 

Backup: DPM if you're on a budget, it is good, never really had an issue with it, but if you have a better budget than us, I'd recommend veeam, it's simple to use and literally does the job.

 

I think we would need to look at our licensing for Hyper-v Datacentre as I don't think it is covered by our OVS agreement. We are already using PaperCut, fantastic software. I need to do some reading on MDT, I'm familiar with WDS as we currently use it for our RM builds. I do feel that SCCM with In Tune may ultimately be the way to go with the way Microsoft seem to be messing up with Windows 10 GPOs. I have looked at Net Support but we don't want / need the safeguarding section which I don't think can be unbundled from the rest of the system. If we were to go SCCM we almost certainly would use Windows Defender for AV. I have been looking at Redstore for backup as it includes the online storage, once you factor in the costs for Veeam software and then a approved cloud storage partner it does get very expensive.

[mikes]

our old NM went with RMCC4 when it just came out (against my advice) and it was a disaster, added to the fact our old NM bought these slow ecoquiet core2duos it barely worked tbh. Building machines worked for about 2 weeks then whenever you built a room at least 50% would fail. It would take 10 minutes from pressing the power button, to getting a usable desktop. The whole thing was a mess tbh. Network shares randomly didn't appear so I had to write a VB daemon that checked for drivemaps and mapped the drive if it had failed.

 

When he left we decided to go vanilla; we did it during the summer. this was about 4 or 5 years ago now ?

 

I only work 2 weeks in the summer and there was only the Data Manager helping me, we decided to go with a local firm based in Cardiff. We went with VMware, 3 physical hosts running Server 2008 or 2012 (i forget which), and SCCM for software management. SCCM works pretty much like CC4's software deployment process, you can deploy MSI's or .exe's with the correct unattend configuration. e.g. we used the office customization tools to configure office for unattended install; same with adobe CS4's unattend tools. building a machine involves PXE booting, it then installs an unattend install, the SCCM software manager installs and installs all the software; WSUS handles updates.

The cardiff firm installed the physical Vhosts and all the VMware infrastructure, they also set up the domain controllers. I handled the software packaging and print servers. Can't remember how we did the mailserver.

 

Our bigger problem was replacing the RM MMC, we use impero as a replacement for RM tutor; it also comes with a CSV user import tool. we import the CSV, assign them all mailboxes, takes about 30 minutes. we also have SSO with office 365 using ADFS / web application proxy. (this was set up a year later)

 

we had some teething problems the first week back (user profile permissions were wonky so profiles weren't saving), print mapping was a bit funny, but otherwise it went pretty well, wouldn't go back to RM at all now.

edit - we also use Veeam for backup, which works very well with VM's. we can restore an entire VM in a minute or two, restoring guest files is v easy (we also use shadow copy).

with RM they supplied Symantec Backup Exec which was total trash. it would randomly fail to backup, would randomly fail to restore, and I tested out its bare metal restore which did not work at all - if we had a catastrophic server failure with RM, we would have been there for days setting it all back up.

Edited January 9, 2018 by mikes

[foofighterjim]

So RM also support vanilla installations - and will "remove" CC4 from existing servers leaving behind a vanilla installation (for a price of course).

 

Its something we have been looking at....but we would want to be assured we have some kind of external support - which needs to be really good ...and that can prove to be expensive - particularly when vanilla installations are randomly configured...

 

I do think RM support is not cheap - but I'd have difficulty complaining about their lack of expertise and capability - which has always been first class and spot on.

 

It is something I will be looking into but RM have let me down a number of times in the last 24 months and that has shaken my confidence in them being able to spec and deliver a solution like this. Things like selling the school backup software and CC4 Anywhere to only have it go EOL 3 years into a 5 year lifecycle doesn't help either. As I said the key factor in this is the cost, the Server 2016 version of CC4 could be the best system ever made, however the money is simply not there.

[DJ-1701]

I think there is a mistake there...

 

-Hyper-V by itself is free.

-Windows Server is the item you may want to purchase Datacentre for unlimited VMs on the box.

[supawat1]

Just to give a guide price on what I paid. For Microsoft Core Infrastructure Suite Datacenter per 8 core CPU, cost is £370 yearly. That’s including windows server OS and system center suite.

[foofighterjim]

I think there is a mistake there...

 

-Hyper-V by itself is free.

-Windows Server is the item you may want to purchase Datacentre for unlimited VMs on the box.

 

Ah so I could just have Hyper-V but with a limited number of VMs?

[clareq]

I did the same a few year ago at my last school. Look at Salamander for user creation. We used Impero for classroom management, and went with SCCM for builds and deployment - you can just use the packages you created for RM. Staff and students are used to the RM shares, so I just used the same drive letters and copied across the data.

[NB9457]

I also forgot to mention Salamander. This does a lot of automation between AD and SIMS. It also ties in with our 365 and GSuite tenancies. Couldn't be without it.

[DJ-1701]

Ah so I could just have Hyper-V but with a limited number of VMs?

 

Hyper-V Server is just a very cut down, no frills, Windows Server Core interface, needing the use of Hyper-V Manager on a PC to configure the VMs.

 

To my knowledge, with Hyper-V, you can create any number of machines on it... it's just that you have to make sure your OS licensing (i.e. Windows Server) is correct.

 

It used to be with Windows 2012 R2 that you could by one copy, and have up to 2 instances on a server. That meant a few of us installed the free Hyper-V Server and installed 2 VMs. Those of us that wanted unlimited copies, purchased Windows 2012 R2 Data Center. However, licensing changed for Windows 2016, hopefully someone here can explain how that works.

[foofighterjim]

I did the same a few year ago at my last school. Look at Salamander for user creation. We used Impero for classroom management, and went with SCCM for builds and deployment - you can just use the packages you created for RM. Staff and students are used to the RM shares, so I just used the same drive letters and copied across the data.

 

I also forgot to mention Salamander. This does a lot of automation between AD and SIMS. It also ties in with our 365 and GSuite tenancies. Couldn't be without it.

 

Ah, we use RM Unify for that. Despite everything I am not sure we would move away from that for now at least.

[yac2016]

For VM backups take a look at Altaro Unlimited for HyperV, very simple to use and more cost effective then Veeam. Per host is around £300 for unlimited VM's with 1 year support.