MAT transformation

[Razzy]

Hi everyone, we are a group of 9 secondaries and 3 primaries who have decided to move away from the current IT arrangements and try to improve things.

The schools currently operate individually with completely separate domains.

Have any of your MAT's gone through a similar process? I would welcome any insight into the problems you sought to overcome and how such things as domains and forests were structured at the end of the process.

Also, apart from your assistance, are their any good transformation companies out there which wont rip us off?

[mavhc]

Structure of technology reflects structure of org. If you're having all the IT people managed centrally, then your computers should do the same. Seems best as economy of scale.

 

Is it worth wiping all computers and increasing their security at the same time, making sure things like Mock Folders are disabled, and SRP/Applocker are perfect? Probably

 

Is this the largest project you'll ever do? Yes, so get it right with lots of planning. Every manual process should be turned into an automated process. Inventory, user creation/deletion, labelling, software deployment.

 

Are you also moving to 1 web/email domain? Is everyone getting a new email address, and thus login on the new domain?

 

Or do you want Trusts in a Forest type of setup?

[djm968]

Will send a PM

[PotNoodleTech]

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to start from scratch and get exactly what you need.

 

New Domain. Mostly cloud systems. IT team in house. Everything migrated over to new system one school at a time, hey presto 12 schools all up to date and working nicely.

 

Clearly the above is a gross simplification but I think it's what you should be aiming for. It's too easy to think it's gonna be tough for the schools lets try and do it half-arsed to minimise disruption but at the end of the day if you want to move forward over the next 10 years you need to start from a solid good modern foundation and not look back.

[TheHyperTechie]

Worked in a previous MAT and we went through this. It was all about centralisation to be honest, making things easily manageable. I will list a few examples of what we did...

 

- Central VOIP phone system

- Central Sign In System

- Central Domain with a VPN at each site

- Central Apple School Manager for iOS management

- Central MDM for device management

- Central/Same website provider and hosting service for each school

- Central Asset Management System

- UniFi at each site with a cloudkey so everything was accessible through the same portal

- Trust wide broadband contract

 

It's a process though, and will take a while... but definitely worth it in the end!

[Iain.Faulkner]

We're about 6-8 months into the planning phase of this, with some aspects having already been moved to be central.

 

Phones are moving to a single solution starting at Easter (fully cloud, one system for all schools)

Just starting to populate a single asset management system

Sign In system is central with one provider

 

Single broadband provider, filtering and wireless are all in scope for the next 12-18 months as well.

 

Main driver for us though is the cost savings that we seem to be able to make. all projects are being done working closely with the schools as well, they've all been keen to make the changes we've proposed.

 

Big project we're planning at the moment is the move to a single Office 365 tenancy for all our schools as managing five separate tenancies is a pain. Looking to change all domains at this point as well. I'll DM you with the names of the companies I've approached to do the work. We've no plans as yet to move to a single AD between all schools though.

Edited March 8, 2024 by Iain.Faulkner

[TheHyperTechie]

We're about 6-8 months into the planning phase of this, with some aspects having already been moved to be central.

 

Phones are moving to a single solution starting at Easter (fully cloud, one system for all schools)

Just starting to populate a single asset management system

Sign In system is central with one provider

 

Single broadband provider, filtering and wireless are all in scope for the next 12-18 months as well.

 

Main driver for us though is the cost savings that we seem to be able to make. all projects are being done working closely with the schools as well, they've all been keen to make the changes we've proposed.

 

Big project we're planning at the moment is the move to a single Office 365 tenancy for all our schools as managing five separate tenancies is a pain. Looking to change all domains at this point as well. I'll DM you with the names of the companies I've approached to do the work. We've no plans as yet to move to a single AD between all schools though.

 

Forgot to mention that on my previous reply... central email system (O365). In the end, we had about 30 schools in one tenant with a MAT format e.g [email protected]

 

Only caused a few headaches, especially for schools that had been fully google/g-suite for years...

[orz140]

HI

 

I work for a Trust of 31 schools. We have just been tasked with planning this out. Would be great to hear what sort of headaches people had.

 

We are lucky and only have 1 Google school all others are O365, some are part of Single tenants from their old trusts that merged with us.

[mavhc]

That's an interesting point, should you design a system that allows schools to leave/join easily?

[StephenPink]

Also in progress here - be great to keep this thread going as a do's and dont's / best practice / things you'd wish you'd thought of before...

 

Definitely managing all separately is a headache, and not sustainable long term for us.

[djm968]

Centralising the tech is the easy bit, people and politics are a little bit more tricky, especially when you haven't got the full "buy in" from the people you need!

[Rob_D]

With 10s of schools in a single 365 tenancy is there not the worry of hitting up against storage limits?

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/microsoft-365-storage-options#:~:text=Every%20institution's%20tenant%20has%20a,to%20the%20pool%20of%20storage.

[gszech]

I'm also working on a similar project but with smaller trust.

 

So far we centralised:

- Web filter and safeguarding solutions.

- Sign in platform

- Web Hosting provider

- Network Infrastructure

- Phone systems

- Paxton System (Paxton 10)

- CCTV

 

Now the trust would like us to unify the domain name for all the schools. We already secured domain name but the transfer will take some time.

We also need to centralise printing solutions. Just not sure what to use as I've heard quite a few horror stories about PaperCut Hive here.

[Boredguy]

With 10s of schools in a single 365 tenancy is there not the worry of hitting up against storage limits?

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/microsoft-365-storage-options#:~:text=Every%20institution's%20tenant%20has%20a,to%20the%20pool%20of%20storage.

 

It depends what licence agreement your on.

If you've moved to A3 or A5, you get an additional 50Gb per licence on top of the base 100Tb pool. So for us with 135 A3 licences we should have an additional 6Tb of storage on top of that pool.. and we have about 650 A3 for Faculty licences for the MAT which is another 370Tb

 

If your still on A1 licences then you are stuck at that 100TB pool.

[mavhc]

if 1 user is 50GBs then the 100TB free is 2000 users on average, so that's the level of total users you'd start caring about

[Dos_Box]

I'll sticky this thread

[Boredguy]

if 1 user is 50GBs then the 100TB free is 2000 users on average, so that's the level of total users you'd start caring about

No you didn't read it.

 

For each A3 Faculty licence (not student since they are free add-ons) you get an additional 50Gb to your pool on top of the 100Tb pool.

Taken from the MS site previously linked

 

The total pooled storage limit is the maximum amount of storage that can be used across your combined users. For A3 or A5 licences, use this calculation: 100TB + (Number of paid A3 users x 50Gb) + (number of A5 paid users x 100Gb) + (Additional purchased storage) = Capacity/limit.

 

User storage is limited to 100Gb regardless of your tenancy pool total, since your pool needs to cover Staff users, Student users, Teams Storage, SharePoint Storage etc.

[mavhc]

I know, I'm just saying until you get to 2000 users, probably not a problem

[Rob_D]

I know, I'm just saying until you get to 2000 users, probably not a problem

But that's like 2 big secondaries.

[localzuk]

But that's like 2 big secondaries.

Or 1 very large, like my new school.

 

But realistically, if you use A3/A5, you've got nothing to worry about.

[gszech]

Could anyone guide me how I can add subdomains to the Google Admin panel. This is to do with unification of school domain names.

 

At the moment each school is using random domain names:

 

- Trust: @random-domain.co.uk

- School 1: @random-domain.org

- School 2: @random-domain.net

- School 3: @random-domain.sch.uk

 

 

I've bought short [domain.co.uk] and activated it in Google Admin Panel. I would like to add sub domain names to domain.co.uk for other schools so the config looks like this:

 

- Trust 1 - @DomAin.co.uk

- School 1 - @[school_1_name].domain.co.uk

- School 2 - @[school_2_name].domain.co.uk

- School 3 - @[school_3_name].domain.co.uk

 

Is there an option to add a domain in the Google Admin panel or do I need to create DNS records in our GoDaddy Domain Management, if yes I'm not sure what type of record.

[Razzy]

Hi all,

 

Just a thought on centralisation. We have had all kinds of thoughts on how this will look at the end stage. Could anyone who has gone through this shed any light on the model you adopted and why? Initially we were thinking of a single tenancy, with a single AD structure, and move everyone over. Now wandering if the initial goal should be to get the single tenancy up and running first. Spoke to one solution provider who said to just push everything to the cloud. Any insight would be appreciated.

[mavhc]

How are you going to run IT management? The setup you pick will mirror that. If you have central control, then one AD, if you're just advising per school people, perhaps it will be different.

 

If you're joining many large systems, maybe an AD trust system

[Spookyville]

This is on the horizon for us now, interested to hear how you all got on and any bumps in the road? Any info/resources or tips appreciated  

[kennysarmy]

We have 3 schools in our Trust and are getting pressure from above to bring them all "in-line" though there is some conflict between what the CFO wants and what each individual school wants, until I am provided with a clear vision we can't do too much.

School 1 is the mother school, hybrid setup and over 1000 devices using cloud drive mapper to access files held in OneDrive & SharePoint (7-13)

School 2 is totally cloud-based (brand new school, only open 4 years) with no on prem. servers, using built in OneDrive client app to access data, c. 500 devices (7-11)

School 3 hybrid setup, some use of CDM for certain apps, OneDrive & SharePoint. c 400 devices (7-11)

 

MTO in place between the schools.