MAT/MAC Merger

[mattjones]

Hi,

 

Has anyone been involved in the merging of 2 (or more) MATs/MACs?

 

If so:

What was/is your experience?

Were you the technical lead?

What did you set out to achieve as part of the merge from a technical angle? (single AD?, forest level trusts?,

How did you support structure change?

 

Thanks in advance to those willing to comment - feel free to DM me if your experience wasn't great, but don't wish for it to be public

 

Matt

[localzuk]

Our MAT merged with another about 2 years ago. More of a takeover really. They didn't have an IT team of their own, just external paid support which we cancelled as it cost more for that than simply hiring staff.

 

We're still merging things - but the end goal is a single trust-wide network with people being able to work at any school. We've just implemented a 1Gbit WAN to all schools also, so we're looking to scrap servers at all schools except our central site (with backup hosted in 2 places - 1 onsite as a day to day restoration method, and 1 elsewhere for longer term backup. At present this is in Azure, but we will be moving this to a NAS at one of our sites soon. We will also be moving to a single unified phone system, migrating everyone to a Trust Office 365 tenant, and will have a Trust-wide wireless network that people can use seamlessly between sites.

 

We're still figuring things out really - especially in terms of support structure. We have 2 clusters of schools - each cluster about 7 miles from each other. We have 2 technicians, and 1 IT Manager. 1 tech is based over in one cluster, the other and the IT manager is based in the biggest school in the other cluster. Up until recently, we ran a "day each week" when each school would have a technician onsite, however I am moving away from that as it is an inefficient way of running support.

[mattjones]

That's really interesting, thank you ever so much for sharing this info. A few questions, if I may.

 

I too, have pondered as of late about the efficiency of 'day or half a day a week' support sessions - are you simply providing ad-hoc support in its place?

 

In regards to your WAN infrastructure - do you have a single or multiple internet breakout points? Which service provider have you gone with for this solution?

 

Thanks.

[localzuk]

I too, have pondered as of late about the efficiency of 'day or half a day a week' support sessions - are you simply providing ad-hoc support in its place?

 

That's the plan. We are rolling out SCCM across all Windows devices, so remote support is possible for most issues - reducing the onsite time needed. When we have some onsite issues, one of the techs will just pop over and deal with them ad-hoc, yes. I've been working to try and make as much as possible easy to remote manage though - moving to Unifi for switches, Ruckus for wireless, all the PCs will soon be running Windows 10 1803, can RDP into all the server VMs, copiers we can manage via the web panels etc...

In regards to your WAN infrastructure - do you have a single or multiple internet breakout points? Which service provider have you gone with for this solution?

 

Single breakout but with FTTC backup - we live in a high cost location, so dual breakouts would be unaffordable to us at the moment. Maybe in the future if my plan to remove servers comes to fruition. We're with Exa for it all. We have 1Gbit PTP links between schools (in 2 clusters again, 2 go back to one school, then from that school to the central site, and the other 2 go direct to the central site). Then we have a 1Gbit leased line and Sophos UTM filtering.

[kidpressingbuttons]

Sorry to reopen this thread. How have you found your move to a single O365 tenancy? Any tools you would recommend?

[TJ-Diggers]

I am also looking at this so interesting how it went

[dblight]

Sorry to reopen this thread. How have you found your move to a single O365 tenancy? Any tools you would recommend?

 

This has been my life for the past 3 months.... 10 tenants into 1. Halfway through now. We use cloud migrator pro from cloudm. £4 per user for education.