moving to new supplier - what servers would we need?

[noelmm]

Hi all,

 

Currently all of our IT is provided and managed by our local authority. I have been asked to look into what it would take to move to another supplier, with the end goal of bringing this in house in 3-5 years, however I have been asked to not let our LA know our thought process (we may decide to stay with the LA) at this time.

 

I am in contact with a supplier who is asking some questions that I cannot currently answer without asking the LA. I have been asked to provide a breakdown of the servers we have so that they can quote based on this. I have explained to them that the quote doesn't need to be based on what we have and that we may want to go down the route of virtual machines etc. but they still requite this information.

 

Below is a list of servers I know we have along with their specs. I don't know what other servers we have or would need. Can some of you give me an idea of what we would need, at the moment just in terms of servers (uses and specs)?

 

Print server:

Processor: Intel Xeon CPU E5-2680 V4 @ 2.40GHz 2.40 GHz

Memory: 8GB Storage:

C drive - 90GB. Data Drive - 150GB

OS: Server 2022 standard

 

Domain Controller:

Make: Dell Power Edge 1950

Processor: Unknown

Memory: 4GB

Storage: 2 x 500GB SAS drives (assume in Raid)

 

Deployment:

Make: Dell Power Edge R910

Processor: Unknown

Memory: Unknown

Storage: 2 x 73GB SAS drives (assume in Raid) and 4 x 600GB SAS (assume in Raid)

 

Thanks all

Edited February 14, 2023 by noelmm

[Rob_D]

What services and systems do you get through the LA? I mean the only thing you're missing from a simple, on-site network setup is storage (which you might not even need if you're using Office365/Google cloud storage for everything).

 

I would say the first thing to do is to make a giant spreadsheet with all the things you currently get from the LA and then either how you would do them in-house or where you can get it from independently. That will give you a good idea of what extra servers you need.

[noelmm]

Currently we have O365 and we're in the process of moving all files across so storage isn't too much of a concern. Our LA doesn't provide a specific breakdown of what they provide, it's simply a package based on users on roll. Some of the add-ons such as backups, Impero, filtering (smoothwall) and Salamander I'm aware of, and have factored that in during the conversation with a potential supplier but I'm not certain what else we would need to at least match what we currently have.

 

Can anyone give e an example of what they have? Are your servers virtualised (if so are you hosting them onsite)? What spec are your servers?

 

This may raise more questions but hopefully it will give me a starting point for things I haven't considered.

[Rob_D]

For a 1500 student secondary, we have:

DPM (backup) server: sorry I don't have the spec to hand, but single CPU probably 8-16gb ram and about 20tb storage.

domain controller Xeon 3.6Gb processor 8gb ram and 2*125gb SSD (in raid 1)

2 virtual hosts: 2*Xeon 2.20Gb processor 256Gb ram and about 23Tb storage (using MS storage tiering)

The VMs host, SIMS server, 2nd DC, File server, print server, Biometrics/Cashless server, NPS/Radius, access control, helpdesk and RD servers.

[noelmm]

Thanks @Rob_D.

 

What you have is very similar to what I was expecting to need.

[Rob_D]

We're pretty server heavy here. If you're using cloud then you could probably get away with less/less powerful on-site hardware. I was just watching a webinar on cloud that had an example school running all it's on-site provision on a single intel Nuc.

[PotNoodleTech]

With the amount of CPU threads and RAM avaialble on servers nowadays most schools could probably get away with just one server, ideally two for some redundancy.

 

I swear by dell poweredge been using them for 20 years and never had one fail (other than a few hard drives which are par for the course). A pair of R740XD with some nice tiered SSD and SAS storage would sort 95% of schools in the world out I recon!

 

Also - if your hiding this from the LEA be careful is your name is actually Noel from Stafford it wouldnt take an LEA genious too long to work out who you are?

[noelmm]

Hi @PotNoodleTech, thanks for the info. My name is correct but I don't work in Stafford so I should be good.

[jmak]

Have you asked the business manager/bursar for details.

 

We bought a package from our LA and every year the BM went through it with a fine toothed comb. They should at least send you a contract specifying what they'll provide, even if no one checks it.

 

Who provides the hardware currently? That's a *very* old server.

[noelmm]

Our business manager doesn't get a full breakdown as there is no option to opt out of part of the core service so the LA don't produce one. The hardware is provided by the LA and is only looked at if failures occur, at that point it is repaired or replaced with whatever they have on hand at the time.

[Face-Man]

I might be miss-reading your request but I'm guess if they are quoting for support they need to know what you have and then they will work out what that would cost to support.

 

Any new solution should be for them to design. Probably given the age of your equipment they will quote to replace it all with "their"solution as it will be cheaper to support this.

 

It might be worth looking at this https://www.nen.gov.uk/advice/standard-network-design/ for ideas of what the school should be asking for in any new equipment. (not a perfect specification but a good starting point)

[jmak]

If the servers are provided by the LA then presumably if you stop buying support from them they'll come and collect the servers?

In which case the new supplier would have to start from scratch.

 

Given the regulations around Schools Financial Standard and Assurance Statement I'm surprised no one has picked up that you're paying for something with no service specification.

 

But in your position I probably wouldn't press that button.

 

There's conceivably a time you could ask an innocent sounding question about the LA's service spec. It's about the right time of year for the contract to come through. You could just say that you're doing some due diligence on the IT side to make sure that you have everything covered and you want to check what's included in case you need to buy anything extra...

[noelmm]

The potential supplier wants to quote based on what we have, even though we don't own it. After several emails yesterday I think they now understand that they need to quote for a brand new setup (this has been requested on more than 1 occasion already) and will begin to look into that. We've just signed in with our LA for another year but I plan to sit down with them in a few months and get a full breakdown (if one exists), showing what we have, at the very least we need that to compare to any future suppliers.

 

Thanks everyone for your comments and help I'll feed back to my BM, now at least I know I'm on the right track.

[chaplic]

I think you're asking the wrong question. Transitioning from one supplier to another is painful and usually done for a reason (cost, service, innovation). IF you are not changing anything it's hard to see how this would improve.

 

I think you're letting the potential supplier be a bit lazy by simply saying 'well here's what we have today'. some of this needs to be part of the conversation just to get sizing but they should be offering a vision of what they would do.

 

So, jumping the gun a little, in short my answer would be 'no servers' with a vision to fully exploit cloud services which is a journey you are going down already.

[msi_school]

As I understand you have asked a supplier to quote you for a ground up replacement of provision if you haven't my next point is wrong.

 

I would be concerned that after giving clear instructions to this potential new supplier, they are are asking for out of scope info rather than providing a quote or at least a series of options.

[localzuk]

I think you may be going about this in a cart before the horse kind of way.

 

If your entire network is effectively outsourced to the LA at the moment, you should probably think about it in terms of services instead of physical kit.

 

List what services you want to have in place if you were to switch over. List what level of redundancy you want. How much file storage you're using at the moment (not the size of the disks you have right now though, the actual total of your files).

 

Then specify that lot as a "this is what we want to run, what is the solution you propose" to suppliers.

 

These days, I'd expect that to result in some form of virtualised cluster. 2 or 3 physical servers (depending on the architecture of the cluster). Maybe a SAN or similar.

 

My personal choice would be 3 x Dell PowerEdge servers with suitable spec, in a hyper converged cluster running Hyper-V. That way, storage and compute don't need to be separate and it is resilient. We recently bought 3 refurbished servers from ICT-Direct for this exact purpose, to replace our aging older 2 servers and 2 NAS system.

[psydii]

and with a 3-5 year timeframe, I'm not sure that what you buy today will be that relevant when SLT actually cut the cord. In terms of infrastructure and how to frame scoping the servers/storage I completely agree with localzuk above.

 

Who currently has control of your Microsoft 365 tenant? Are the users there provisioned by AzureAD Connect, or 'direct' from your MIS? How are your on prem users provisioned? Who hosts your MIS? Who controls the flow of data from the MIS to other 3rd party services?

 

Working in the dark as a random on the internet, I would say that the most obvious way to move away from a legacy provider is to gradually migrate services to cloud providers where the school is the customer. This will require skill building of the local team to ensure they are able to provide the necessary support and IT leadership services in house (by closely with new providers in the migration and implementation support phases, in addition to technical and soft skills training). In reality it depends on what you discover about who has the ownership and control of the services upon which you currently depend. Bringing the servers in house first may be a good path (if say, outsourced is unreliable or unable to provide the scale and performance you require), but also may be a short trip into a dead end and a world of pain (servers and storage just work, until they don't. I haven't done any server or storage support and development work in over ten years until a few week ago when something went wrong, and oh boy was I glad I had 1st party 24/7/365 6hr break-fix support). While on prem servers are in general a dead end if you are making changes to the structure of your IT Service, I still don't see AD DHCP or DNS or Radius, some file server capability for some app deployments and legacy non-core but critical apps going anywhere soon, so perhaps it is as good a start to your journey that any other. Virtualise, 3 hosts, 1 storage box (or some sort of virtualised storage between the hosts) and a backup system that is able to boot and access the backup storage physically independently of the virtualised system.

Edited February 15, 2023 by psydii

[noelmm]

Currently our LA control everything apart from our MIS and Printing solution (they do control the print server the solution is installed on. the 3-5 year time frame is simply to allow us to build our skills etc, before I came to the school I had access to and managed servers etc but in the last 10 years this hasn't been the case and things have moved on since then. While we would ideally like to slowly migrate services, we can't as everything is part of a contract and if we were to leave everything stops.

 

I've told our BM that the process will take a while so for now we have signed in to the LA for 1 more year while we speak at other potential suppliers (we're just speaking to one at the moment but till introduce more in the next couple of months) and start a conversation with them.

 

My approach moving forward will be to simply provide a list of services that I know we get as part of the LA (obvious things like internet, firewalls, filtering, network management, helpdesk support etc.) and let the potential suppliers quote on that.

 

Thanks for the advice etc with this.

[PotNoodleTech]

I think there's few things you need to clarify before you can even think about moving away from the LEA.

 

1. Are the servers, switches, WAPS, and any other devices physically the propertly of the school or the LEA? E.g. mine are property of the school as it was purchased through school funds, but installed onto the LEA systems and remains semi-managed by the LEA this would have big time implications if we moved away i.e designing implimenting a new Domain structure and then having to migrade all devices.

 

2. Is the "system" i.e the domain / switch and wifi management etc inextricably linked to the LEA's system or not? E.g. our active directory is the LEAs as well as network/wifi controllers etc this would have big cost implications if we moved away

 

3. Is the LEA support actually not meeting standards or overpriced? You may find what you think you are paying is expensive but then when you go out to other companies you may find they are even more expensive!

 

4. Is there any LEA support or services you can opt out of in order to slim down costs whilst still remaining generally supported by the LEA (e.g. we opt out of hardware support contract which saves 15k+ a year and we repair all end user devices in house) but still we are on their system/network and remain friendly with them.

[noelmm]

The network equipment belongs to the school as we have just refreshed it over the last 2 years, any onsite servers etc are owned by the LA and provided under the current agreement. Our entire domain structure is owned by the LA, active directory etc all owned and managed by the LA. The LA support is actually quite good, however our BM feels we would get better service elsewhere (I'm not convinced of this at the moment)and cheaper, that remains to be seen at the moment. Unfortunately our LA is a whole package, you buy into it or you don't, the only things that can be opted out of are thing like Impero, items considered not required to run a domain/school.

[PotNoodleTech]

Ok well by the sounds of it - it will be a big project for you to move away from the LA and when you get companies in to do big projects the cost is also big.

[localzuk]

One thing to take into account is that the LA may be happy to be bought out with the equipment you already have in place. So you just end up with exactly the same as you have now, just in your control. This would be the most likely outcome I'd guess as well, as a bunch of old server kit is not likely to be any use to the LA.