MAT AD structure

[ITGURU]

This can also happen with a local IT service. This is down to poor management not down to the physical location of the infrastructure.

 

We've never lost ALL services and is very rare to lose a service running in-house at all. Usually the equipment has died of age rather than issues!

[HPlum78]

So age.... This is not an issue or outage anyhow that about sums it up for me!

[localzuk]

Why would it cost more to deliver a service? Still able to remotely administer and access all sites networks and all sites have remote access.

Adding complexity always adds cost. Instead of having one set of infrastructure - one set of DCs, you have multiple. You end up having to run more DCs, and spend more time managing them. You end up having to create multiple users for those who inevitably work across multiple sites, instead of a single user that just works wherever they go.

 

If you run wireless, you end up having to run multiple radius servers, to handle authentication etc...

 

Complexity = cost.

[localzuk]

It worked fine for about 6 months and then on some sites the domain kept failing. Nearly all of the Bristol schools with the schools.bristolbsf.net domain ended up having to start from scratch 12 months later, that said a lot of schools who move from one MAT to another would then switch to the new MAT's domain for operational reasons so that pretty much covers schools breaking away.

I didn't have to rebuild from scratch when I took on Bridge. I fixed the issues that had reared their head (they hadn't introduced a CA, and all the clients were still trying to use the old enterprise CA for example) due to a sloppy job, and it worked fine.

 

We've never lost ALL services and is very rare to lose a service running in-house at all. Usually the equipment has died of age rather than issues!

So, why would centralised services break just because they're centralised?

Edited March 7, 2019 by localzuk

[FN-GM]

We've never lost ALL services and is very rare to lose a service running in-house at all.

 

Probably because you managed it right not because it wasn't centralised.

[FN-GM]

Adding complexity always adds cost. Instead of having one set of infrastructure - one set of DCs, you have multiple. You end up having to run more DCs, and spend more time managing them. You end up having to create multiple users for those who inevitably work across multiple sites, instead of a single user that just works wherever they go.

 

If you run wireless, you end up having to run multiple radius servers, to handle authentication etc...

 

Complexity = cost.

 

Hit the nail on the head. When we add another school the the MAT network its a case of migrating the data and re-imaging the PC's. The only server we needed to build last time was a local SCCM DP.

[supps]

We are currently looking at linking all our MAT schools together. The single domain option does sounds simpler, but how complex have people found in migrating existing AD domains to the new single domain? Ours consist of one secondary school and a few primary schools.

[FN-GM]

We are currently looking at linking all our MAT schools together. The single domain option does sounds simpler, but how complex have people found in migrating existing AD domains to the new single domain? Ours consist of one secondary school and a few primary schools.

 

I have done it a number of times. There is no simple answer to your question. It depends on the is complexity the existing systems are.

[mavhc]

We are currently looking at linking all our MAT schools together. The single domain option does sounds simpler, but how complex have people found in migrating existing AD domains to the new single domain? Ours consist of one secondary school and a few primary schools.

 

Depends if you take the opportunity to standardise their systems to your system, usernames, drives, etc.

 

Then all you need to do is automate deployment of their unique software, and recreate everyone on the new system