Serverless Schools

[MrKJLS]

Hey!

 

I've been asked to start investgating moving some of our primarys to a serverless enviorment. We have some questions on how to implement it and how to manage things like Autopliot and other services NET2. We are currently a hybrid trust with central hosted services and each school with its own server.

 

Would be happy to have a Teams call if anyone is happy to have chat.

 

Kieran

 

 

[Sylv3r]

There's a number of considerations to take into account:

 

Printing

Net2 / Door Access

InTune and policy locking down

Do you have a list on what software would need rolling out?

How will you setup DNS / DHCP (if required)

Do you have any access to a DC / elsewhere to host shared services or could you host in Azure etc

Have you migrated all user data to the cloud already into Onedrive / Teams / Sharepoint etc.

 

Making any of the above changes, may result in a training need for both staff and students so that will need to be taken into account - to be honest, migrating to the cloud is the easy bit - it's the follow up / training and ongoing tickets that a random font or bit of software hasn't been pushed out will create the most work !

[Danp]

I only have two "servers" which are basic micro pcs. One runs Net2 and one runs PaperCut. Everything else is Google or managed by the firewall.

[TwistedHelixis]

In the process of doing something similar, but using Google.

 

AD alternative = Google Credential Provider. 

DHCP = Probably Synology NAS or router

DNS = Not sure yet. Could be Synology NAS

Net2 = Might put this in a VM on the Synology Nas

Printing = Only a small school and have been testing direct IP printing with 30 users, which has been fine for the past 6 month. Alternatives are Printx, but it is pricey for what it does.

 

EDIT - Windows / Intune Polices = Google

EDIT - Software deployments = Action1

Edited September 16, 2025 by TwistedHelixis

[ITGuyNW]

For those who have gone serverless, what have done you done with information such as SCR or what you deem "sensitive" information.

[Rob_D]

8 minutes ago, ITGuyNW said:

For those who have gone serverless, what have done you done with information such as SCR or what you deem "sensitive" information.

Our HR stuff  is on (or being moved to) a restricted  SharePoint site with all sharing disabled, and extra DLP policies applied. Theoretically with all the DLP polices and sensitivity labels, the data has more protection applied to it now than when it was on a local file server.

[MrKJLS]

Thanks all, we have been in the process of centralizing our network for while now. As we a Trust network which all the schools are on.

 

We are thinking the following

AD/GPO - Either Full Azure AD/Entra/InTune setup or just using our cloud DC's

DNS/DHCP - Cloud AD servers/Fotigates

OS Deployment - Autopliot

 

We have been moving to cloud services were we can so we have the Cloud version of Civca cashless. So we might look into getting some small factor pcs for systems like NET2. 

 

1 hour ago, ITGuyNW said:

For those who have gone serverless, what have done you done with information such as SCR or what you deem "sensitive" information.

 

We use the Sign App SCR as we have Sign In App across our trust already. 

 

[TheHyperTechie]

17 hours ago, TwistedHelixis said:

In the process of doing something similar, but using Google.

 

AD alternative = Google Credential Provider. 

DHCP = Probably Synology NAS or router

DNS = Not sure yet. Could be Synology NAS

Net2 = Might put this in a VM on the Synology Nas

Printing = Only a small school and have been testing direct IP printing with 30 users, which has been fine for the past 6 month. Alternatives are Printx, but it is pricey for what it does.

 

EDIT - Windows / Intune Polices = Google

EDIT - Software deployments = Action1

Very very similar to our setup before we joined a new MAT and they moved us to Windows.

 

AD = GCPW

DHCP/DNS = Hosted on Juniper router/firewall by SWGfL

Printing = Ricoh Cloud Print

Action1 for extra patching, software deployment, remote desktop, and scripting.

Door access is managed via our site team, and doesn't require a locally hosted server.