New network for school - What do you think?

[Sonic007]

Hi,

 

I currently work in a primary school with two sites next to each other. (The infants school and the Junior school).

 

Current setup as I inherited it is two physical servers at each site. Each server is running as a domain controller handling dhcp, dns, etc at each site.

Each site is on its own network, different ip ranges, etc, different domains.

 

The two networks go back to the main modem/router which has been configured to allow each network to see each other. So I can remote in, ping, etc the other network.

 

Both physical servers run one hyperV vurtual server each.... which is the schools MIS Sims.

 

The setup isnt ideal and the technology is getting old running Server 2008 and Server 2012.

Im also concerned about the domain controllers being on physical machines incase they were to fail. There is no second backup DC.

 

How does the sollution below sound...

 

Ditch one of the servers and replace with one new Dell nicely specc'd server running Server 2016.

Create one virtual domain server (dhcp, dns, etc) to cover both sites so same ip range, etc. It would make it easier for people working at both sites too as it would mean only one set of AD credentials to remember.

Then purchase a second copy of Server 2018 to enable me to have an additional 2 virtual machines which would be the Juniors and infants MIS Sims systems which both run on SQL server but I should be fine with the XPress version.

 

What do people think?

Would this be a good way to go?

 

It would lower the cost of buying a second server as money is tight and mean easier to maintain too.

If a problem occured I can easily restore the VM.

 

Thanks for your input.

Edited August 28, 2018 by Sonic007

[Jamman960]

Sounds like a good plan, out of interest is there anything stopping you merging the MIS databases? might save a fair amount on licencing

[snagrat]

How are the schools connected? Via the internet through each ones Router?

 

If so, then you will need a DC in each school

 

You mention a main router but unsure if you mean each school has its own or if it is a single device

[Sonic007]

@Jamman960

I’d quite like to have one main MIS especially as our Sims system needs updating so often and it’s double the work...however the systems here need to be seperate. Maybe one day they’ll merge but at the moment all the data for staff and students needs to be kept on seperate systems.

 

@snagrat

The two schools are connected in a rather weird way. Each school used to have their own seperate internet connection and seperate modems.

They then had a fault and never renewed their contract so connected one schools Ethernet to a fibre converter, fibre over to the other school, converter back to Ethernet and into the second port on the modem/router.

Essentially using ones school internet for the two cutting costs. It has coped and isn’t a problem bandwidth so that’s ok.

 

Router is Configured on seperate ip for each port and that is the main way the two networks are linked.

I guess I would have to just plug the connection from one school into the other schools switch and reconfigure the router.

 

Thanks for your replies.

[mavhc]

So they're basically on the same LAN, might as well treat them as such.

 

Take this as a start from scratch moment, allows you to ditch legacy stuff no one uses.

 

So 1. Get a list of all software they actually use, create MSI installers for it if they need installing, or work out how to run them from the server directly.

2. Get a list of all static IPs that are programmed into various stuff, photocopiers, network scanning, MIS config, proxy, filter, dhcp

3. Decide on a new IP range, program mac addresses of those static machines like photocopies into the reserved IPs in the dhcp server (don't activate it yet!!!)

4. Setup WDS etc, create a thin image, basically take the win10 install.wim file, and automatically alter it via a script.

5. Test all the software and imaging on a test machine, take it to every teacher, get them to test the software they asked for.

6. Setup shared drives the way that works best. I have Resources (read only, I setup, apps in here), StaffShared, PupilShared (pupil read, staff write), OfficeShared, SMTShared, use DFS for all shared paths. Create a top level hierarchy that is read only, only you can add top level folders to the shared drive. Same for a Subjects folder. If you want assign say StaffShared\Subjects\English permissions to the head of English.

7. Decide on a username convention, automate creation of users from MIS/spreadsheet

8. During holidays reimage all machines and join to new domain.

9. Learn about USMT for staff laptops, save user data, image machine, restore user data. If you still have HDDs save user data, remove hdd and store as backup with post-it note on, and put SSD in, explain how you're making their laptop 3x faster as a bonus.

10. Move old shared files to new server, but read/move only, they have to be moved to the correct place before using. Set a date when anything left will be removed.

[Sonic007]

Many thanks for your detailed reply @mavhc.

 

I’ve got a list of software the teachers all use and it’s mainly all run on the machines. Only sims our mis system talks back to server but that’s pretty easy to Roll out.

 

We get all our users to store to google drive so no file server in place.

 

Good point on checking IP’s etc when configuring the new range. I’m going to start checking all our photocopiers, phones etc. Since we’ve just had a new phone system put in I’ll probably keep a range that incorporates them in.

 

 

The issue I think I will encounter is installing my Sims MIS.

The softwares config file points it to a default server but one of these will have to have a different configuration file to point to the other sims database as there will be seperate sims for infants and juniors.

 

It should make things a lot better though in the king run.

Thanks again.

Edited August 30, 2018 by Sonic007

[mavhc]

You can have SIMS give a list of servers to connect to, or have DFS give different sites (in AD a site is an IP range, so you'd need to have different IP ranges for that to work) different shares, or use GPO to map different file shares with the connect.ini file on to different computers/users. Or manually put connect.ini files on the computers

 

Do you have 2 g suite accounts? That'll be another pain. Good time to setup GCDS and GSPS though, and Office365 while you're there