Moving primary school to cloud

[Janyo]

Hi,

 

I'm pretty sure that some school have been through the process of moving from servers to the cloud so I thought I ask for some advice.

We are a small, one form entry primary that runs RMCC4 server backing up content from kids and the office. We have introduced G-suite for education to use with our KS2 pupils and will be using the LGFL education content with both KS1 and KS2 to save in the cloud. From that perspective I can see RM based ICT room go and use PCs as online machines.

Unfortunately, we are having huge issues with the office PCs and profiling. It got to the point where our office ladies have to reboot each time they want to use MS word which is ridiculous! Our IT technician has been trying for weeks now to solve the issue with RM but without any success.

My question is what would be the best solution to move away from RM server and go to cloud. We've decided that we want to keep G-suite for teaching and pupils and keep Office 365 for the office and staff sharing documents/plans etc. Unfortunately, at the moment our SIMS is running of the server as well.

Our technician has not been very keen talking about cloud solutions as he's worried about his job although we have no intention losing him as we still need a technician. I think it's worth pointing out that we have 100mb internet with LGFL.

Can anyone share their views/successes/failures regarding moving to the cloud pretty please?

Many thanks for all the help in advance!

 

Desparate ICT coordinator

[Ditto]

I think you need to resolve the PC and profiles issue, regardless of any further moves to the cloud. It might be worth re-posting in a different forum with a few more details.

On GSuite for teachers and Office 365 for office staff, whilst it is workable, there is bound to be a lot of liaison between those two groups and you need to think that through - will it end up both groups needing to use both systems. Removing the dedicated ICT room is something my sons school are doing right now - it frees up a minimally used room for targeted tuition/intervention. They are going down the Windows laptop route, but you should consider Chromebooks too, especially as you are committing to GSuite. As for moving away from having a local server, I think local SIMS is going to be your biggest headache. This might be a step too far, but would your head back a move to a cloud based MIS? Finally, as for your technicians fears, it's understandable, but s/he can't stand in the way of progress. I suggest line up some training, perhaps look to the GSuite for Education Level 1 and 2 and the GSuite Administrators certifications. Besides, as you clearly are aware, they'll be work going forward - you still need to maintain the hardware, Wifi, printers, etc. etc.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Ditto

[Michael]

If you're still running SIMS, then you'll need to keep Windows clients, unless you change to a cloud MIS as one option? I appreciate these decisions can't be made overnight, but they're all integral to how your school operates.

 

Requiring Windows clients will probably mean you'll want to keep Active Directory for managing Users and Computers. It's running in the background on RM networks, but your technician probably uses the RM interface for managing processes.

 

This also means you can then link Active Directory to Google (as one option), keep usernames and passwords the same.

[LukeRowberry]

If you want to PM me I'd be happy to provide my email for your technician to have someone to bounce ideas off or have a general moan to. We're a secondary school with a vanilla network though. Also, it would be a great idea for your tech to register on EduGeek.

 

Ta

 

Luke

[chaplic]

Im at a 100 pupil primary, we moved from a bespoke server thing server years ago to industry standard windows domain + group policy, to now virtually 'serverless' on premise.

 

We use intune (extending our office365 licenses) to manage the PCs

 

Advantage for users is that all data and services (apart from sims!) is accessible from anywhere, I can push down software to them during school hols. Obviously a bit of a boon right now.

 

We buy laptops, log straight into them with the office365 account and half an hour later the machine is fully configured as a school machine.

 

From an IT management point of view, it is a different skill set. Perhaps a bit like going from a car to a motorbike. Your guy will really have to step and learn new skills.

[Guest ZFarnworth]

If it’s me I would keep active directory and use windows pcs and have two Domain controllers possibly even a hyper v equipped server running sims server and away you go with all your mapped drives and then just deploy windows 7 or 10 and make sure instead of roaming profiles use folder redirection instead of folder redirection it’s much simpler to deploy and is less problematic! That’s my setup for home and work.

 

 

Trust me on this it’s a tough job IT support! 😂

[djm968]

Dump RM go vanilla on your Windows server, that will make the profile issues easier to resolve and other RM related issues disappear. Dump SIMS and go to a cloud based MIS. You can run Office 365 and G Suite side by side you just need to get both solutions configured to "talk" to each other. I would look into engaging an ICT support partner who can plan and implement the migration then train your techie up. There is no quick fix, it isn't going to happen overnight and you will need to throw some money at it but with a well planned migration strategy and the right partner onboard, you will have a reliable hybrid solution.

 

Happy to discuss further. PM me.

Edited July 10, 2020 by djm968

[dmj]

There was a very similar post that I replied to yesterday on this very forum and I will give a similar answer.

In it's most basic form, 'going cloud' means three things:

Software As A Service SAAS

Platform As A Service PAAS

Infrastructure As A Service IAAS.

 

Your goal is to get as many services on SAAS as possible, If you can't do that chose PAAS and if PAAS doesn't work out then - and only then - consider IAAS. In general terms IAAS means moving servers, networking, firewalls to the cloud. There are plenty of places you might need to do IAAS, but don't make it your first port of call.

 

This general strategy will really help cut down on support problems so your tech can build some base images for his workstations (- if it is taking him more than 30 minutes to fix a problem he should be rebuilding it from a known good base image! *)

 

As others mentioned, SIMS is your Achilles heel - that's the thing to move to SAAS first, which means replacing it (with something like Arbor), make sure whatever you chose can provision (and deprovision) your AzureAD/Gsuite accounts, integrate with your catering systems etc ! Once you have done that the other pieces of the puzzle will start to fall into place.

 

 

* I'm not joking here, at my last place we had a 15minute rule and it would take 5min to reimage.

[gh5000]

Have a look for Google reference schools on the edudirectory. I work with one but it's a secondary. There is one primary reference school close to me that has moved fully to G Suite and I could put you in touch.

 

Also if you go though the LGfL and ask to speak to some of their digital champion schools you should be put in touch with some of the other Google using schools.

 

Pm me if you want to have a chat or give you the details of the right people.