To RM or not to RM, that is the question...

[PiqueABoo]

some members may be of the opinion that i shouldnt be messing with jobs like this if im not sure about what im doing

 

Moi? As stated above I was speaking generally, but no I wouldn't be impressed if someone decided to learn how to do a vanilla domain with the IT at my daughter's primary, or the primary where t'other half is a teacher. One of several real and sadly repetitive answers for my CCx sales "Why?" is simply because that scenario hasn't worked out so well.

 

thats how i learn. We all had to learn somewhere

 

Yes and I learnt this as I went along myself, however I had some serious related qualifications/experience, and there were no training courses or exams for NT 3.1. These days it's easy to find training and it's also easy to practice on virtual machines rather than risking production systems. Question: Real-world IT jobs typically require exerience/qualifications of relevant core skills for good reasons. Why should IT in schools be a special exception?

 

Speaking to you personally, if you don't have the experience then get say a Server 2008 course under your belt and then decide.

 

Package allocation trickle is just BITS and can be done with a vanilla system.

 

SpecOps Deploy uses BITS and MSMQ (which is also important to CC4). Background deployment isn't something you can reasonably do with a bit of script wrapped around bitsadmin though.

 

CC4's BIT's package alloaction doesnt work nearly as well as RM make out nor does the package assigment overview.

 

Don't know about anyone else, but for me the fundamental problem is that they require significantly more of my time than CC3 does. And I really resent that "change the package metadata e.g. space required on C:" = "new version of package" thing, the tracking where it came from and so on - an overdesigned solution to problems I haven't ever run into (perhaps they make sense for CC4-in-managed-BSF-mode, but I'm struggling to see why).

 

If RM is so good why do very few (if any) non educational establishments use it?

 

Because it's got education written all over it (default groups, policies, folder structures and so on)?

 

Almost any tech support company can help you out [with vanilla - Ed.]

 

Don't think many would be thrilled at the prospect of taking one over and maintaining it (as opposed to redoing it to their standards) though.

 

There is nothing really that RM offer that cant be achieved in a vanilla setup even if you do have to go out and buy the occasional third party app for it.

 

I think the main bit's you can't do natively or with other MS freebies are:

 

-Flexible start menu delivery (CC4 does that in the background too).

-Better than native s/w deployment.

-Printing control.

-Privileged users.

-Make/Restore images

 

CCx also has one GUI rather than being some diverse collection of apps, script etc. and of course you can't compete with the manuals and documentation.

 

 

Or a security issue has come up and I've run the proof of concept and it immediately gets smacked down

 

That's part of the credible detail I had in mind and they have done a reasonably serious job there. But like most 3rd-party s/w CC3 and CC4 have their own vulnerabilities.

 

A lot of the problem people have with RM are historical from when it was a very closed system

 

CC4 is a lot more closed/proprietory than CC3.

 

xp which as much as ppl try to forget this - support etc is coming to an end.

 

In April 2014! The question is whether h/w in a couple of years will still boot XP.

 

Hmm, i'm full time

 

Vanilla then (but still do some training). Part of the justification for CC in a primary is that you don't need full-time support to run it and basically trade wages for CC licences. When CC4 is stable which may or may not be SR1, I'd be surprised if you found more than an average of days work a week to keep it ticking along.

Edited June 10, 2009 by PiqueABoo

[Little-Miss]

I do understand what you're saying, but im also not some random person that's walked in off the street.

 

Ok, they're not Server qualifications but i am an MCDST and an A+ Technician or whatever it is. My next step is some is some sort of server qualifications.

 

Also im not planning on doing this on my own. I shall be paying for the server to be set up whilst i shadow the engineer. This isnt something i've decided to do on a whim, i've had an LA consultant in to talk through what i was planning and a lot of thought has and will be put in to this now and until it is complete.

[Lee_K_81]

Little-Miss, have sent you PM.

[PiqueABoo]

im also not some random person that's walked in off the street.

 

You wouldn't be here if you were. The bit I didn't properly appreciate is that this is fundamentally about choosing between:

 

a) Windows with RM's standard config & management tools

b) Windows with ANOthers standard config & possibly scripts & probably one or two 3rd party tools.

 

As in you would not be doing the inital domain config yourself.

 

In that case server training isn't so urgent, but I'd keep that on the to do list anyway. The only key point for both then is do you get sufficient documentation and training on the ongoing management? What's the support like if something goes wrong in "their" bits. etc.

 

Could be wrong, but around here I believe RM don't sell a primary a system unless the school's routine support person has been trained in or is signed up to a CC management course.

Edited June 11, 2009 by PiqueABoo

[russdev]

No rm will sell a primary system to primary tech scheme or no tech scheme. They do have primary tech scheme but will sell an rm system to someone not on it. Mainly aimed at those who support multiple schools.

[HarryMonkey]

You need to look at the long term view for the school (not for you). If you go vanilla, everything you do will need to be documented so that whoever takes over from you can walk in and manage the network from day one, this will probably be one of the most time consuming aspects of the job.

 

You will also need to consider that as the network grows, there will be more and more calls on your time and as such, at some point the school may need to get in a tech to solely manage the network. Can they afford this?

[User3204]

Whilst I have never used / abused / managed an RM network there are alternatives to it, one of the Network Managers at another school near me, has inherited a Ranger network, which he is in the process of moving away from.

 

Or rather he is able to change the Group Policies, etc, beneath the Ranger system, to improve it, and if he does manage to break something he always has the backup of being able to just revert to the Ranger system.

 

I don't know if you would be able to do the same with RM, although I suspect not.

 

If you want to have a quickly set up system that has most of the security running, etc, then Ranger/RM /whomever else would do that. ANd then ideally you could subvert things out of the managed network onto a Vanilla-style one, perhaps keeping some of the stuff from Ranger (et al) that you want, but dumping others.

[magicpatch]

Interesting thread, we're in the same sitatuion our CC3 network is due for replacement, we are looking at CC4 and a plain setup from our LEA.

 

I'm at two schools, one already has the LEA Plain network - for a year now - and as people have said it has some advantages over RM, and CC3 has advantages over the plain one.

 

Just to say it again, the decision needs to be taken which is best for the school. The CC3network I'm barely on site for 15hours a week, so if we go to a vanilla setup I could be spending the best part of that keeping the network in check and have less time for everything else I need to do such as MLE training, supporting lessons as needed etc.

 

It also means that if I am away for whatever reason, another member of staff can take hold of the network and do basic implementation of various tasks thanks to the management console. They wouldn't have a clue how to do it on a vanilla setup.

 

I find at the end of the day the decision will need to be taken by the Head & ICT Co-Ordinator, I can give pros/cons of both systems, but they need to decide what is best for the school and the daily teaching and use of ICT rather than what is best for me.

 

Even on the vanilla setup, a year in, we are still tweaking GPOs and settings to stop the kids finding loopholes in the system - admittedly the children are younger on the CC3 site - but we've had less security issues in the 4 years of CC3 than in a year on the vanilla setup. Although not saying thats a selling point for RM, part of it is down to the setup and configuration of the server initally!

 

Also it might come down to support, our LEA has a bad reputation for support, they only have something like 8 support technicians and it can take hours, sometimes days for someone to come to the site. Ours are very good at the "oh you have a go, and if it doesn't work we'll send someone out" attitude. They also supply Dell computers, the other issue is that Dell's technical support - although improving - can be an issue too. Seems to depend who you get and what level of service support you have with Dell.

 

I find the issue for switching also comes down to software, at the CC3 site they use a fair bit of RM software, if they want to continue using this and buy licences for the software it gets expensive and brings up the cost of the vanilla network.

 

I've calculated that RM would cost around £12,000 for our site including support and licences. The vanilla setup on hardware is just £8000, but by the time you've added the LEA support (£1000) plus potential software licencing for some RM software (£2000 or so) we are pretty much near the same price point!

Edited June 19, 2009 by magicpatch
Updated

[TechMonkey]

he is able to change the Group Policies, etc, beneath the Ranger system, to improve it, and if he does manage to break something he always has the backup of being able to just revert to the Ranger system.

 

Not sure if you mean that in coming away from Ranger he is able to take this course or that in general day to day he does this. If the former then no, RM is fairly well entrenched & I wouldn't try removing it as it could leave all kinds of legacy bits. If the latter then yes that is possible as we do it fairly regularily, best example was when RPC or something similar went tits up on our main server, this meant we could not log on to the server & the RM tools were flaky, so we fired up AD and could manage everything no problems. We also adjust some GPOs and work on parts of the AD.

[magicpatch]

After a long time to think about it, we've taken the decision to leave RM behind and go for the standard setup from our LEA. Although its far from perfect, its a lot less resource hungry than RM and I'm still tweaking the other LEA setup a year after it was setup, so although it will take longer to get right we can eventually tweak it to our requirements via GPOs rather than being forced what RM think is right for us.

[Jamman960]

Why not go outside the LEA? there are many companies out there who will install a fully secured Vanilla network from the beginning and will provide whatever level of support you require or can afford.

[garethEds]

After a long time to think about it, we've taken the decision to leave RM behind and go for the standard setup from our LEA. Although its far from perfect, its a lot less resource hungry than RM and I'm still tweaking the other LEA setup a year after it was setup, so although it will take longer to get right we can eventually tweak it to our requirements via GPOs rather than being forced what RM think is right for us.

 

Leaving RM was one of the best things we did. Yes we have had to learn things and research things that RM did for us (such as RIS and WSUS) - but it has been worth it and has brought a new lease of life to some of our older machines which used to suffer under the strain of CC3.

 

Good luck with your system.

 

As it happens the largest comp in our LEA has just decided to leave RM and go back into the bosom of the LEA.

 

Regards

 

Gareth

[m8ttysmith]

I work for Redcar & Cleveland Local Authority and we support 50 primary schools. There all RM CC3 well I say all, some are now CC4.

Im not gonna go into it too much but CC4 has been such a disaster were now starting to remove the other CC3 servers and replace with Vanilla networks.

Not only is CC4 not very good but it is very very expensive, and over kill for Primary Schools.

If I was a school upgrading to CC4 I would get a contract with RM drawn up to say if your not happy then you can have a full refund.

 

Service Release 1 for CC4 has made it alot more reliable but im afraid it still is very unstable

[magicpatch]

Why not go outside the LEA? there are many companies out there who will install a fully secured Vanilla network from the beginning and will provide whatever level of support you require or can afford.

 

They are pretty cheap to be honest, and the support is local, we get the same technician from the LEA etc. The decision was with the head, she obviously feels more 'secure' by the friendly faces, but at the end of the day is is just a Vanilla network, they do some GPO work on installation and they will also connect all our current machines onto the new network as part of the install (where-as RM would charge £40 a machine!) and we have 90 odd workstations & laptops.

 

I've been using the LEA setup on another site for a year, yes it has its moments but a year in I've not had too many complaints from staff, well apart from slow logins but thats because they've dumped GB's of data on their desktop so its sitting on their profiles!

[Butuz]

I've been using the LEA setup on another site for a year, yes it has its moments but a year in I've not had too many complaints from staff, well apart from slow logins but thats because they've dumped GB's of data on their desktop so its sitting on their profiles!

 

This is the problem though is it not? On CC£ that would not happen as neither staff nor pupils can save to the desktop because teh GPO's are very wel set up. This is the problem with vanilla - it takes a lot of work and many days of GPO tweaking and testing to get near what you get on CC£ out of the box.

 

Most LEA vanilla networks I have seen are no where near as well set up, secure, easy to manage and user friendly as RM CC£. This is why so many schools are with RM, including mine, and half of the secondaries in my LEA.

 

Butuz

[jamesb]

This is the problem though is it not? On CC£ that would not happen as neither staff nor pupils can save to the desktop because teh GPO's are very wel set up. This is the problem with vanilla - it takes a lot of work and many days of GPO tweaking and testing to get near what you get on CC£ out of the box.

 

Most LEA vanilla networks I have seen are no where near as well set up, secure, easy to manage and user friendly as RM CC£. This is why so many schools are with RM, including mine, and half of the secondaries in my LEA.

 

Butuz

 

That isn't a problem with vanilla networks per se, but the setup. There are vanilla networks which are highly secure, very nicely set up, incredibly easy to manage (since they've been designed properly and the AD structure has been planned and designed to suit purpose, along with the GPOs), and user-friendliness is a matter of opinion. Personally I find the restrictions that CC3 used to place on me as a network manager to be crippling.

 

It does take work to get a vanilla network set up properly, and a lot of technical knowledge, but once that work's been done and everything's in place it'll beat any one-size-fits-all solution.

[Grommit]

I like it, but that's mainly as it makes my job easy. If you have the expertise of a vanilla network and you're willing to spend the time keeping it running sharp, you'll benefit from greater performance and freedom. If, however time is of the essence CC4 may well be worth a shot - but only if you're waiting a bit. RM have been rolling out the SR1 release this month and as from a few days ago it's been sent out to existing users. I'd give it a couple of months to gauge how those installations go. I'm one of the rare folks on here that actually *likes* CC4. It makes life very easy, it's far more intuitive than CC3 and gives you more easily accessible options than a vanilla network, unless of course you can put the work into it. It does have it's problems currently, many of which SR1 is supposed to fix.

 

Problem is you are damaging your skill set and doing your career harm as you are only able to run a RM site..

 

Whare as Vanilla you can move to industry with ease

 

Why not go outside the LEA? there are many companies out there who will install a fully secured Vanilla network from the beginning and will provide whatever level of support you require or can afford.

 

which will be far far far cheaper with a full support package than RM CC4

Edited June 25, 2009 by Grommit

[Grommit]

.......................

[sparkeh]

Problem is you are damaging your skill set and doing your career harm as you are only able to run a RM site..

 

Whare as Vanilla you can move to industry with ease

 

Yes because the most important consideration about the choice of network setup is your ongoing career

[jamesb]

Yes because the most important consideration about the choice of network setup is your ongoing career

 

To a degree, yes, in that a vanilla network is something which can be customised to any school, college, university or business as needed with the same skillset. So when/if you move on, someone else can come in and find a vanilla network, and should be able to maintain in. There's a much broader base of people who can support a vanilla setup than there are for any of the proprietary management systems, whichever you choose.

 

Personally I'd say the big difference comes down to maintenance hours. If you've got full-time tech staff who can support a vanilla network, vanilla'd be better as a rule. If you've got part-time tech staff, or if you've got multi-role staff (IT Teacher/Network Manager combined for example) then the time saving might be worthwhile.

 

Maybe a better way to describe it would be responsibility. If you've got technical staff who can take full responsibility for the network, then vanilla's most likely your best option. If you want someone else taking responsibility, go with managed.

[bossman]

Personally I find the restrictions that CC3 used to place on me as a network manager to be crippling.

 

Why would this be? as someone who loves Microsoft vanilla system you would understand that CC3 utilises this as another layer on top of AD. Nothing hard about it except like Microsoft Vanilla it does take hard work and time to get used to the format but it does not stop you from using the underlying Vanilla system does it?

 

It does take work to get a vanilla network set up properly, and a lot of technical knowledge, but once that work's been done and everything's in place it'll beat any one-size-fits-all solution.

 

As I have said before this "Mine is bigger and better than yours" syndrome is just immature nonsense, it is what suits the needs of the school and what way it is best managed using best practice for both deployment and cost purposes. Having seen lots of posts over the years on this forum I still think the largest proportion of questions are about "Vanilla Systems" (Maybe as more people are using vanilla systems) and some people seem to have got it sorted and some have not it's just the same with "RM CC3" some people have got it sorted and some people are still learning.

 

Let's be professional about this. :)

[jamesb]

Why would this be? as someone who loves Microsoft vanilla system you would understand that CC3 utilises this as another layer on top of AD. Nothing hard about it except like Microsoft Vanilla it does take hard work and time to get used to the format but it does not stop you from using the underlying Vanilla system does it?

 

Yes, it does. GPOs applied on a CC3 system could cause all sorts of fun and games. Deploying software through GPOs often just wouldn't work, simple as that. Changing the AD structure into a sensible, logical one could break CC3. All sorts of little niggles and touches which basically mean the only way to safely manage the network was to use the tools provided - which don't provide the full functionality you'd get using purely AD.

 

And of course, renaming a computer is always fun. Have they sorted that in CC4?

 

As I have said before this "Mine is bigger and better than yours" syndrome is just immature nonsense, it is what suits the needs of the school and what way it is best managed using best practice for both deployment and cost purposes. Having seen lots of posts over the years on this forum I still think the largest proportion of questions are about "Vanilla Systems" (Maybe as more people are using vanilla systems) and some people seem to have got it sorted and some have not it's just the same with "RM CC3" some people have got it sorted and some people are still learning.

 

Its not a mine is bigger and better than yours attitude. Any network management software is designed to do one thing, make managing the network easier. If it weren't designed for that then it wouldn't be much use. The drawback is that as part of making it easier to manage you do lose some of the more advanced features and customisations which are available.

 

Its like the difference between driving an automatic and a manual. Each have their fans, and their place, but you'll never find a performance-obsessed racer who loves customising their car driving an automatic.

 

Of course, you'll be much less likely to find a little automatic town car wrapped around a tree as well, which I think just strengthens the analogy.

 

Let's be professional about this. :)

 

I'm not trying to be insulting or unprofessional at all about CC3, and I do believe that it does have its place, but suggesting that it (or any managed network) is as advanced and powerful as a properly configured network without a 3rd party management layer just isn't something I'm happy to do.

[ajsidike]

 

Don't do it or we shall ban you next. Note that only forum sponsors can use the forums in a commercial capacity. Please also note that banning will block access to the forums from your companies IP address.

Some senior company execs get quite excitable when they find out this has happened.

 

Dos_Box

[Little-Miss]

Ah yes, i've heard about you....

 

The forum gods will frown on your little plug....

[verygreenpc]

Vendor viewpoint;

 

Any organisation with RM CC3, CC4 should be aware that they cannot take advantage of Multiseat computing software to reduce desktop costs and energy bills. (SoftXpand, BeTwin, NComputing)

 

I don't think this will change. Ever. So although I think it's a good business model to lock in customers and keep them close to you, the EduGeeks should be able to add other vendors products if they so choose or at least get support from RM to fix the compatability issues; especially given the price over the long run, but I guess that's a blog topic really.

 

VARs our side are reporting that Staffs, Shrops, Worcs are the hot beds for RM uptake, and most end users are NOT going from CC3 to CC4. That kind of tells a story.