GoldenWonder Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 I've just read a large secondary school in Durham (Durham Johnson) school has rolled back its BSF ICT to its old systems due to the issues they had. I assume this is temporary but has anyone got any more info on what the problems where they had? Seems like they were using Citrix XenApps and VDI thin client technologies.
webman Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 Correct. big decision with DJ, rolling back to legacy. Twitter / Phil Jackman: big decision with DJ, roll ...
GoldenWonder Posted April 20, 2010 Author Posted April 20, 2010 Twitter blocked here - I'll check that at home later!
AngryTechnician Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 It doesn't say anything more than what was quoted.
GoldenWonder Posted April 20, 2010 Author Posted April 20, 2010 Must have been a fairly substantial problem to go for a rollback - thats not a move you take lightly.
AngryITGuy Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 I've just read a large secondary school in Durham (Durham Johnson) school has rolled back its BSF ICT to its old systems due to the issues they had. I assume this is temporary but has anyone got any more info on what the problems where they had? Seems like they were using Citrix XenApps and VDI thin client technologies. Someone from the BSF ICT team are coming the the school on Wednesday to demo this very solution to the SMT and other members of staff. Maybe I should ask what problems Durham Johnston were having ... think the question would go down well if the first question I ask is how well the solution will work!
Gatt Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 TBH, its a move we're looking at preparing for - just need to figure out best way to create server images!
mounters Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 A bit more info on the schools web site Durham Johnston Comprehensive School
broc Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 Someone from the BSF ICT team are coming the the school on Wednesday to demo this very solution to the SMT and other members of staff. Maybe I should ask what problems Durham Johnston were having ... think the question would go down well if the first question I ask is how well the solution will work! and how well will it scale would be the question I would want answering. .......it might work OK with a small number of clients, but what about hundreds, maybe as many as 20,000 users all of whom regularly log on & off every hour....... I bet they haven't volume tested it......
Trust-No-One Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 and how well will it scale would be the question I would want answering. .......it might work OK with a small number of clients, but what about hundreds, maybe as many as 20,000 users all of whom regularly log on & off every hour....... I bet they haven't volume tested it...... ... and all of this over the WAN to a centralised "data centre". How reliable is the WAN link? Can it sustain the required bandwidth? What happens when any part of this fails - how much of the IT facilities are lost? How is it backed up and how are restores managed? So many questions, so few of them answered properly, if at all. It's no wonder they're going back to a working legacy system. The way the BSF system works, it was doomed from the start in my opinion. It's ironic that the DJ website promotes following them on Twitter, yet DurhamNet (or whatever name they have now assumed - The Infrastrucutre Team?) have it blocked.
AngryITGuy Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 and how well will it scale would be the question I would want answering. .......it might work OK with a small number of clients, but what about hundreds, maybe as many as 20,000 users all of whom regularly log on & off every hour....... I bet they haven't volume tested it...... An excellent question will try to ask that for you if I feel brave enough after all I will end up working for these people I don't want to rock to boat with them! I've already had my knuckles wrapped once for asking such questions. I have been given access to the test Citrix Servers and to be honest its a bit S-L-O-W but then again I don't know how many people are currently using it. The servers have plenty of curriculum software installed shame not much of it runs, I have given up trying to get anything from Adobe to play ball.
GoldenWonder Posted April 20, 2010 Author Posted April 20, 2010 I think a lot of us will end up supporting XenApp type of systems after BSF (assuming we aren't all working for Tesco by then as shelf stackers!) I think the idea of virtualising the desktops is great and and exciting step forward, but it still requires a lot of kit to support thousands of users across a county-wide wan.
mavhc Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 how does it do video/audio editing/recording, video conferencing etc? Thin clients are for businesses with 1000s of people running one app all day
broc Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 I think a lot of us will end up supporting XenApp type of systems after BSF (assuming we aren't all working for Tesco by then as shelf stackers!) I think the idea of virtualising the desktops is great and and exciting step forward, but it still requires a lot of kit to support thousands of users across a county-wide wan. I agree; I think the solution has a lot of merit in principle, I am just not convinced it is ready for 'prime time' in schools yet. In fairness I suppose someone has to be a trailblazer..... but you cannot & should not mess with students education while experimenting with new technology on this scale.
broc Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 how does it do video/audio editing/recording, video conferencing etc? I would imagine local caching servers with data staged/destaged from the remote data centre. Do-able, but adds complexity.
GoldenWonder Posted April 20, 2010 Author Posted April 20, 2010 I would imagine local caching servers with data staged/destaged from the remote data centre. Do-able, but adds complexity. Don't a lot of the newer VDI devices have the extra graphics processing/caching etc to perform video editing or similar tasks? I guess most schools would be looking at a combination of thick and thin clients initially.
timzim Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 ...assuming we aren't all working for Tesco by then as shelf stackers No chance - I'm going for Wines & Spirits Manager, nothing less...
AngryITGuy Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 I guess most schools would be looking at a combination of thick and thin clients initially. IMHO fat clients for the teaching staff, if the WAN ever goes down (although we have been assured that with 2 links to the WAN this won't happen) they should in theory still be able to teach ...
Trust-No-One Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 IMHO fat clients for the teaching staff, if the WAN ever goes down (although we have been assured that with 2 links to the WAN this won't happen) they should in theory still be able to teach ... Would that be the two links, using the same connection technology, running through the same pipe, to the same local exchange/access hub?
mounters Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 Hi, Was the managed provider Capita? Thanks No, LA ICT Managed Service.
broc Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 (edited) No, LA ICT Managed Service. Strictly speaking, I understand the solution was designed & implemented by Capita as part of the Inspired Spaces Consortium, with service delivery to be done by a new LA ICT Managed Service. Capita replaced Morse who were the original ICT provider for the Inspired Spaces Durham BSF bid along with Carillion. I am sure it is too early to say where the responsibility for failure lies..... Edited April 20, 2010 by broc
AngryITGuy Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 Would that be the two links, using the same connection technology, running through the same pipe, to the same local exchange/access hub? We have been led to believe that the two links will take different routes back to the data centre, and that infrastructure has been designed to ensure that there will always be a link available back to the data centre if one goes down from the school or if multiple links go down across the WAN.
Rydra Posted April 20, 2010 Posted April 20, 2010 Well that's all well and good.... But the thursday before Easter Friday, there was a problem provider-end with the connection to every single school (and I believe some Local Council) sites in the entire town; All the lines are managed by an external company. In 4-5 years of working, I've never seen a hardware failure of the broadband lines, every outage I've had has been 20-30 minutes, up to 1 1/2 days and been related to a cock up with the company the provides the lines, and 95% of these issues have been across the entire town, based in the exchange, or the data centre. You could string up 100 lines between 2 places, and they could be sent via different towns, hell you could send one of them via Poland and back. But if they are all managed by a single company, and the same exchanges, it's all pointless anyway. 1
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