Zoom7000 Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 We are looking to implement a Remote Access solution for Staff and possibly Students so they can remote access from home. In the initial stages, the desired objectives would be: Staff able to login and have access to SIMS.net. Staff able to access their documents and maybe launch applications remotely to access them. Maybe even, a full blown solution where anyone can remotely access and login and work as if they were at school. Now, we are lost as to where exactly we can start or what is available to us. Some ideas have been thrown about like Citrix etc. Would anyone be able to detail out a possible solution for us, how we would go about implementing it and what kind of costs we would be looking at? Also, any recommended companies that do this for education would be much appreciated.
plexer Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 For acces to documents and things like intranets sites have a look at: https://www.sshtools.com/showSslExplorer.do#licensing Otherwise for full blown citrix or teminal services implementations I'm sure someone else will be along shortly. Ben
Geoff Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 Our LEA is also trialling Sun One Portal. http://www.sun.com/software/products/portal_sra/index.xml
Delamerio Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 Have been visiting this forum on a number of occasions but never left a post. Thought I could help you out with your request for a remote support solution so registered. I was recommended a solution called NTR Support from a colleague who uses it to access SIMS and launch applications remotely. I have registered for a trial version at http://www.ntrsupport.com and it is proving to be a godsend. I have already saved myself a 45 minute journey to a customer site! Just thought I could be of some help. Good luck.
plexer Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 NTR looks to be designed towards support staff remote fixing problems rather than user accessing documents etc... remotely. Have a look at one click vnc for remote support. Ben
limbo Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 We offer access to personal folders though our website - effectively we have a web page that builds a list of the files a student has in their area and lets them download them as you would any other file on a website. There is then also the option to upload back again. It looks a lot like a windows explorer window and is not as crude as it sounds. Works exceptionally well and has done for over three years with out us having to have spent a penny on the system or the users having to install anything on their machines (other than a browser of course). The beauty of it being web based is that it can be used anywhere by anyone without having to prepare - whilst on one suppliers stand at BETT I downloaded some info on one of their machines without any problems at all. We do not use SIMS.NET but our eportal is available out of school to allow access to staff (and in theory parents and students).
Aercom Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 Hi refering to Bens response, I can only say that I have been using NTRinquiero which I belive is now NTRsupport for over three years. The tool enbables me to access highly confidential files wherever I am. I am always flying between countries as I work as an IT Consultant within the public sector. I checked out applications such as VNC and was shocked by the quantity of open source hack resources that are commonly available, one only has to type VNC Hack into google to see what a security thread it is. the NTR Global system is wrapped within a 256BIT AES level encryption tunnell which is the same that is used by the Federal Buerau of Investigation within the US for handling and encrypting Top Secret Government files. I would also warn potential VNC users that using freeware essentially invalidates insurances given by hosting and security providers. If you looking at viewing highly confidential files over the Web then security must be paramount. I originally looked at NTRconnect a free tool by NTRglobal and then quickly realised that with Inquiero I was able to access my business PC anywhere in the world even by using online hotel lobby PC's. Check them out on http://www.ntrsupport.co.uk
MkII Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 We're looking to buy a Netgear VPN box for approx £135 to enable use of SMIS .net remotely. For free secure technical support access I'd recommend logmein. Vanilla VNC isn't secure no. It's not suited to cross internet access - try UltraVNC.
Ric_ Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 Your requirements seem to fit perfectly with a terminal services or citrix solution. Both of these will be costly. The most simple solution would be to implement a VPN for staff laptops so that they can connect to the network remotely. This method will mean that you cannot use applications remotely... it will simply be secure IP-level access to your network.
ajbritton Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 AFAIK, Capita do not test SIMS.NET on Terminal Services although I believe some have made it work.
spc-rocket Posted January 24, 2007 Posted January 24, 2007 Hi, Have a look at the 2x application server. This actually publishes applications securely. The free versions includes support for 5 clients. Its runs on Windows Terminal services so you do need the TS CALs. Still not bad for sims.net and FMS for SLT. Check it out. http://www.2x.com/applicationserver/ Ash.
Zoom7000 Posted January 25, 2007 Author Posted January 25, 2007 Your requirements seem to fit perfectly with a terminal services or citrix solution. Both of these will be costly. The most simple solution would be to implement a VPN for staff laptops so that they can connect to the network remotely. This method will mean that you cannot use applications remotely... it will simply be secure IP-level access to your network. I'm interested in a Citrix system as I have seen it working well in a few other places and would be good for professional development. Just so I can get an idea how much would a Citrix setup cost to implement, in total including hardware. And exactly what additional hardware do I need? In addition to what I already have. We currently have 6 servers. 2 currently handle RIS, AD, User Documents, DHCP and pretty much everything else! Both are running Windows Server 2003. 1 other server is also running Windows Server 2003, it is intended for multimedia but not doing anything at the moment. The Admin server is running NT4, it is being replaced with a Windows Server 2003 system it also handles (will handle) AD for users on the admin domain, who access SIMS.net. The 5th server runs Windows 2000 and handles the the Sophos Anti-Virus management system and the very simple local Intranet and Photo Gallery. It is pretty old and almost out of disk space from all the Photos! The final server is a SQL Server that handles the database for SIMS.net. (It is managed by the LEA and so can't be touched)
Ric_ Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Fof Citrix you need a beefy server (dual processor with at least 4GB RAM) for every 30 or so users. Then you need to buy software licenses for the users (including a TS CAL for each internal device and an External Connector License for each server being accessed from the outside world). The Citrix licenses are per concurrent user. TS CALs are approx. £10 TS ECLs are approx. £1000 Citrix Enterprise License is approx. £120-£130 As you can see, it's not a cheap solution and that's before factoring in external connectivity and firewall gubbins.
wesleyw Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 SIMS .Net is fine on Terminal Services its just FMS that can't be used in more than one instance on the server! Wes
Zoom7000 Posted January 25, 2007 Author Posted January 25, 2007 For Citrix you need a beefy server (dual processor with at least 4GB RAM) for every 30 or so users. 30 or so users? That's seems a bit less doesn't it? I mean, I'm looking at a potential 1500 users, does that mean 1500/30 = 50 Servers? 8O
Zoom7000 Posted January 25, 2007 Author Posted January 25, 2007 I understand that, however, it still seems quite less, because say for example the night before an exam, or assignment deadline, I can just see students logging in, in their masses, 30 does seem quite a small number!
budgester Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 For Citrix you need a beefy server (dual processor with at least 4GB RAM) for every 30 or so users. 30 or so users? That's seems a bit less doesn't it? I mean, I'm looking at a potential 1500 users, does that mean 1500/30 = 50 Servers? 8O That'd be active users I would suppose. So do you have 1500 PC's to replace ?
Ric_ Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 @Zoom7000: Firstly, the 30 users is a conservative estimate. The actual figure depends upon the beefiness of the servers and the applications being run. Add another couple of GB of RAM and you would probably be able to get 50 users on with relatively light usage. Secondly, you have slightly moved the goalposts by saying that you would want 1500 concurrent connections. 1500 concurrent connections on any network would require a MAJOR rethink of your network's infrastructure with multi-gigabit links to all your servers, load balancing across fileshares, HUGE server farms and more. Imagine how big the pipe into your network from the Internet would need to be too! (1500 * 256kbps = 384Mbit!!!!!!!!!!) You need to also consider whether you could be expected to support 1500 concurrent users - would this ever be the case within the school on hardware and infrastructure that you control and understand... never mind across public phone lines and all sorts of exotic hardware?
Zoom7000 Posted January 25, 2007 Author Posted January 25, 2007 Bloody Hell! I'm just confused! :? Maybe we should start very simple and work our way up, thing is, the Remote Access stuff is totally baffling me for some reason, maybe it's the lack of sleep cause of my daughter teething!
Ric_ Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 @Zoom7000: The simplest thing you can do is stick in a VPN... no need to worry about new licenses and hardware.
srochford Posted January 26, 2007 Posted January 26, 2007 If you go with Citrix or terminal services then you will need fairly hefty servers but remember that most of the time a user sits at a computer, they're not actually using the CPU (look at the CPU time figure for system idle in task manager - at the end of a really busy day you're likely to find the CPU was idle for almost all of it - very depressing!) so I think the "multi-gigabit links" and huge server farm might be a slight overestimate! One of the virtues of Citrix is that it uses *very* little bandwidth (supposed to be workable over a modem link although I haven't actually seen that done) If you can get away with just providing access to files (rather than applications) then you probably just need something like WebDAV access to user home folders. This then means that you're using bandwidth and CPU in much the same way as normal networks and fileservers. To put some numbers in, on average, 500 students an hour log on to our network; this load is essentially spread over 3 fairly low spec servers (twin Xeon, 2Gb RAM, SATA hard drives) with either 100Mb or 1Gb connections between them and it all works fine. It obviously depends on what people are going to do - if you think they're likely to be editing large photoshop images or video files then you'll have much more load than word processing, spreadsheets etc.
JimTheGeek Posted January 31, 2007 Posted January 31, 2007 Hi In my school i have just implemented a VPN using the Window Server 2003 built in feature. It didn't take that long to setup (the longest bit was waiting for the right port to get opened by SEGFL) We are starting to take in staff laptops and setting up a VPN connection on them (using the standard XP builtin vpn setup) and a batch file that connects certain shares e.g. home folders, public, staff drives. When they get home they just connect, run the batch file and they are assigned an IP and are part of the network/domain. We install SIMS.net (the main reason for setting this up) on the laptop in school and it works fine over it. Apparently you can run a logon script over VPN using a remote KIX script but i am not sure on that one? Has anyone done it? Hope this helps. It's not that hard to do. James
ajbritton Posted January 31, 2007 Posted January 31, 2007 You could always stick one of these in. Instand SSL VPN for less than £300.
ITWombat Posted February 1, 2007 Posted February 1, 2007 Are you sure about that Mr Britton. It appears to be IPSec and PPTP (yuck!) and it's only for 10 connections. If anyone uses full blooded VPN for MIS clients and such how many concurrent users do you normally have?
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