Ramesys Network installation

[adicken]

Hi all,

 

We are thinking of having a completely new "vanilla" network installed and have looked at a company called Ramesys to do it. Anyone have any dealings with this company? Are they any good?

 

Many thanks.

 

Andy

[plexer]

Not for hardware or installs but if they are the same company and I presume they are then I use them to buy all my educational licences from.

 

Not had any problems with them from that point of view.

 

Ben

[wesleyw]

Never had any dealings with them for hardware installations but for software purchases they are first class.

 

Wes

[MrDylan]

Same here, software purchases great, not used for nor even knew they did maintenance/installations.

[danIT]

software first class even a nice follow up phone calll last time we ordered from them (its the little things), also didint realise thye did hardware installations.

[pete]

Disclaimer: opinion may be tainted as a result of experiencing ramesys via embc.

 

Good points:

 

The engineers we've had on site were very good, knew their stuff and stayed until the problem was fixed and tested. They've usually been fixing something rather than creating something new.

 

Once you get to the right person, things get solved fast and technical managers there are accessible.

 

Bad points:

 

Once upon a time, as part of a managed services contract (before my time) they deployed a service pack to a BDC they had no business touching and broke it quite badly.

 

TBH the problems we have had with them are more a result of no clear delination between Ramesys / Embc / Netlinc than Ramesys themselves being at fault. (i.e "are we supposed to patch that server?..... dunno."

[ZeroHour]

Hmm, we have had BAD experiences with Ramesys. They were very VERY far off when it came to explaining our Schools agreement. Also EVERY year they would get our quote for what we had wrong (20 sms servers were added one year and enabled!)

It has been nothing but a complete disaster with them, now in the process of switching to Pugh who have always been good (thats one of the reasons we found out what a mess Ramesys had made with our schools agreement).

 

Just whats happened here.

[john]

I use Ramesys for software, brilliant, as for Pugh, I cba to waste valuable forum space talking about the waste of space they are.

[Ric_]

Any reason that you are not doing it yourself? I'm sure a local EduGeek member would be happy to help on a consultancy basis. You'd still save a few thousand and you will definately end up with a network suited to your needs, rather than a generic one that a 3rd party decides will fit your needs.

[GrumbleDook]

Ramesys aren't too bad on most of these things ... I have chatted with some of their guys who do installs and they are a good bunch (and I think a few lurk here too actually ... I know some of them do visit occasionally)

 

We are looking to use them for a Learning Gateway install and I'll be visiting a few of their case study schools in the next few weeks.

[bossman]

Why a vanilla? do you have anything against RM. I have found that over a period of 4 years that all in all the network that i am in charge of runs sweetly and efficiently with very little downtime. You don't have to do everything the RM way when buying workstations or peripherals as you can purchase these seperate from RM. Just Buy your servers from them and they will commision them to your spec then just let your imagination do the rest. I can have a 3.0Ghz 512Mb with solid glass screen XP pro Office2003 license plus RM connect license for the grand total of £594 with 3 years onsite warranty. Some people slate RM but they don't need to as I have found their system to be very flexible indeed plus with all the Admin tools you get it's well worth the connect license if it makes your job that little bit easier. Not everyone will agree but you cant please everyone all of the time.

[bossman]

I would like t add that the catholic school accross the road from us has in the past 4 years had three network installs from various consultancy firms Ranger, fujitsu and now tulip and each time they have had a nightmare.

Vanilla is just a flavour, some like it some don't but with any network you have to contend with little faults. How u solve them is the key.

We all have a difficult enough job as it is without making it harder for ourselves.

God bless the IT techies of this forum for giving us all something to hang on to...............hope with a little bit of humour

Thank you all

[GrumbleDook]

If RM CC3 does the business for you then brilliant ... it all depends on your situation and the amount of support you have.

 

Some schools prefer vanilla systems as they want and need flexibility to allow them to evelove and innovate ... there is the risk with this that things could go wrong ...

 

Everything balances out.

 

I tend to favour vanilla installs done by the school themselves as this means that the in-house support has the expertise to sort any problems out.

[webman]

I agree with what you're saying Tony.

 

But if like our place (me and bossman) only have a Network Manager to cover all the IT, a vanilla network would be a horrendous nightmare to manage on your own. Not that a CC3 network necessarrily means one person can manage it full time either

 

Obviously every school is different and whatever works for them is good

[pete]

re vanilla / non-vanilla.

 

I come from a vanilla (non-edu) background, so prefer them and built our new network that way.

 

The less cruft I paste on top of the standard network components, the easier it is to troubleshoot when things go wrong - less points of failure, plus I can get help from conventional IT forums (as well as Edugeek).

[plexer]

Having been in an RM connect 2.4 network where we used to use the built in tools for a lot of things and custom written scripts for other bits I see no advantages of using a proprietary set of tools when the free/open source/cheap ones are just as good.

 

I can have a 3.0Ghz 512Mb with solid glass screen XP pro Office2003 license plus RM connect license for the grand total of £594

 

Thats expensive. <--- or not now I've added it up.

 

How much is a CC3 licence? £50, I buy an NEC Base unit for £275 + £147 for the neovo monitor + £31 for the office 2k3 licence = £453 + £90 CC3 Licence = £593.

 

£90 for the CC3 licence???? geez.

 

Ben

[webman]

Yep.

 

Where bossman and I don't always see eye-to-eye on is the RM license. I'm an open source guy and he's a Microsoft MCSE/SA/P brainwash-ee () so he's used to paying for and agreeing with licensing; whereas I peronally object to having to pay MS Windows license, server CAL, RM license and Office etc for each workstation you want to add to the network. It easily adds another £100 to each workstation. For an average suite of computers you're looking at nearly £3,000 in total for licensing.

[E1uSiV3]

I'm an open source guy and he's a Microsoft MCSE/SA/P brainwash-ee () so he's used to paying for and agreeing with licensing;

 

Lol thats a bit stereotypical isnt it I'm a "Mr. Microsoft" with 3 MCPs and soon to be MCSA, and im arguing for the other corner, my boss wont let me put in a BSD box because "it costs more for a unix engineer and when I leave he wont be able to support it"

[webman]

Well, maybe just a bit But he came back from his course praising Microsoft to high heaven advocating the range of features and what we get for our license fee.

[Geoff]

Just put boxes in anyway. It's not like they break.

[pete]

"it costs more for a unix engineer and when I leave he wont be able to support it"

 

Isn't he prepared to require *nix knowledge / willingness to learn in the next person? Any job advert for here would require such knowledge, and all schools should be setting this as a requirement. It's cheap, it works and it means you have more time to fix the other stuff.

[E1uSiV3]

"it costs more for a unix engineer and when I leave he wont be able to support it"

 

Isn't he prepared to require *nix knowledge / willingness to learn in the next person? Any job advert for here would require such knowledge, and all schools should be setting this as a requirement. It's cheap, it works and it means you have more time to fix the other stuff.

 

Im not in schools anymoreand he doesnt want to know when it comes to nix, which is a shame