Bye bye CC4

[bodminman]

Good morning,

 

Our support contract renewal is due in May but the schools new owners have just emailed me to say that they will not be renewing it and that they want the RM setup removed as soon as humanly possible. Gulp!

 

Anyone got a quick get of jail plan of attack for this?

 

I’m the only IT person on-site and am very busy day to day as it is and this is just a ridiculous situation to be put in.

 

Thanks

[leeshellard]

I’ve moved two school away from RM and have a few tricks we used. Happy to give you more info if you like. Pop me a message.

[6Foot2]

In similar circumstances, when our old network was due to be replaced (the Head said that it should NOT be me who worked on it) I got assistance from our LEA. After talks with myself, the Head and senior staff, they sourced three quotes and presented them outlining the benefits/drawbacks of each (I was excluded from this part of the process, for some reason)

 

After the various suppliers of the new network and its components had been selected, the LEA project managed the transition away from the old network and the installation of the new one.

[Jcx500]

I know a school who has moved other schools away from cc4.

[djm968]

Anyone got a quick get of jail plan of attack for this?

I don't think there are any "quick get out of jail plans" unfortunately but there are many positives, once you escape the clutches of RM. Your plan of attack will depend on what resources (human and financial) you have available. If you have the expertise, the migration isn't that difficult but if you are the only person on-site, you are going to struggle juggling day-to-day tasks while implementing a migration plan.

 

Your approach will also depend on what your plans are for your existing server(s) and if there is enough spare capacity. If your server(s) are due to be replaced, and you have finance available, you can build a new vanilla infrastructure alongside the existing then migrate everything over, which is a relatively painless process as you could adopt a phased approach to the migration.

Edited February 11, 2022 by djm968

[Norphy]

I've now helped move a sixth form college and a large-ish MAT away from from CC3/CC4. djm968 is right in that it's not an especially hard process but it does need careful planning. Both of the projects that I was involved in had about 18 months to two years of planning behind them. To have your school spring this on you three months before the contract expires is a scummy move and I'd try and push back on it a bit if I were you.

 

First things first, there is no way you'll be able to remove CC4 from your network before May and still have a workable network at the end of it. Even pushing it back to the summer would be inadvisable but better than trying to do it during the Whitsun half term.

 

Ordinarily, I'd say this is a perfect time to decide whether you want to continue with a more "traditional" on-prem managed network, or if you want to go the Intune/Autopilot or similar MDM route. However, since time is so short, I'd put that on the back burner for now and stick with the more traditional method of going about things for the time being.

 

First part of the project is to decide if you and your team have the experience and expertise and hell, the time to carry out this internally. The next part is to determine which parts of CC4 you are using and to find suitable replacement products for them. Off the top of my head, you'll have to find something to:

• Manage your computers: Deploy software, operating systems, updates. I would suggest SCCM as that's probably part of your OVS-ES license, if you've got one but there are other products out there that can do it like KACE, ZCM, Altiris etc.
  
• Find something to replace RM Tutor: Monitor students, remote control PCs etc. I'd suggest NetSupport School as that is what RM Tutor is based on and would be almost a drop-in replacement but there are plenty of other products out there that can do it, e.g. AB Tutor, LANSchool, Impero, Senso.
  
• Something to deploy/manage your printers. Papercut or something similar if you haven't already got it, deployment can be done with a GPO or GPP
  
• User management, creating users, resetting passwords etc. Salamander can automatically create and remove them. If you don't want that, you'll have to find something else to bulk create users, to reset passwords. You could use scripts to create users and Active Directory Users and Computers MMC to manage them, or you could use a third party product like ManageEngine AD Manager Plus to do that for you.
  
• File server management. I'd just use what's built into Windows.
  
• Windows Updates: SCCM, WSUS, Windows Update for Business. It's all good.
  
• Antivirus: These days, I'd stick with Microsoft Defender, it's good and if you the bits for it in Azure, it's bloody good. However, look at the alternatives too: Sophos, McAfee, Symantec, Trend, Kaspersky etc.
  

 

I'm sure there's more, that's all I can think of right now.

 

Once you've chosen your products, you'll then need to decide how you're going to do the work: Nuke it from orbit and start with a new AD domain or use your existing one and remove the RM bits from it. There's no right or wrong answer to this, it depends on your network, its health and so on. There's advantages to either method and for the record, I've done both.

 

You're going to have to look at your RM software library and determine whether the packages that you've got work away from an RM CC4 network or whether they need repackaging or replacing. I'm assuming you're using Windows 10 at the moment?

 

You're going to have to rebuild every computer on your network that has RM software on it. There's no way around this. Rebuilding every computer on the network is a summer project by itself, on top of having to remove CC4.

 

This may also sound counter productive, but it's probably worth contacting RM and seeing how much consultation about removing CC4 would cost from them. It's a service they offer, I'm pretty sure that CC4 development has all but stopped now as they know schools don't want it any more. Even if you don't want support from them afterwards, I'm sure that they'd do the work if you wanted. There are other school-focused companies like Stone who offer the service as well.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Norphy

[bodminman]

@Norphy - Thanks for all this info.

 

I will look into the services RM offer as I really don't have the time on top of the day to day stuff that's going on.

[DrBeaker]

@Norphy - Thanks for all this info.

 

I will look into the services RM offer as I really don't have the time on top of the day to day stuff that's going on.

 

You've answered your own question there really.

 

Tell SLT that it's too late to do right now, or risk having a partially-working network otherwise.

[snagrat]

If your name suggests your location then there are many ICT firms in the area em who could help you.

[LukeBarry]

Afternoon, I have dropped you a personal message who i will be more than happy to get one of my consultants from Stone to have a conversation regarding this if of any interest. Many Thanks,

[ha0124]

If anybody on here has any update CDs for CC3 (or even CC4) then the RM User Group would be happy to take them in for preservation purposes. We look after old RM kit from the 70s mainly, but we are just trying to get newer stuff so that people in 20-30 years time dont have the same problem tracking stuff down as we have had for 70s and 80s software!.

 

RM have been helpful in sending us a lot of CC3 updates, but the bits we are still hunting for are:-

 

- CC3 SR5 (we have SR6 but you have to put SR5 on first!)

- CC3 IE7 Update

- CC3 XP2 Update (We have XP3 but you need to put XP2 on first!)

- CC3 Vista Update

 

BW

 

James RM User Group