Why have two networks ?

[2097]

Im a little confused here .

 

Currently the school has 2 domains , each on there own subnet

 

Im starting to wonder why a school really requires two ? our sims runs on both networks .. So other than that would you recon there is a real need for this ?

 

I believe it tends to over complicate things ! in a situation where its not really needed ?

 

Any one else running the same setup that cares to input some information.

[glennda]

It used to be for when the powers at be said it was unsafe to host sims on the same network as the students

[featured_spectre]

Some places have it for redundancy (IE 1 network falls down the other works still). If they both replicate the info to each other then it should be good to go.

 

Some do it for security, staff on one, pupils on the other

[creese]

Our primary schools have 2, Curriculum and Admin. SIMS is available on both.

[bossman]

We had 2 networks when I arrived here, one for Curriculum and one for Admin and never the two shall meet I was told by the LA, since then times have changed dramatically in the way Microsoft has made their product more flexible along the lines of access and security.

 

With this in mind 8 years ago I merged the 2 networks into one and haven't looked back since, in fact it is the best thing we ever did at the time for the school.

 

I know there are still people out there who remain adamant that these should stay on separate networks but their argument for me is no longer there and it is time to move on me thinks for those who still have 2 networks within the same environment.

 

This is just my feeling on the matter and not a dig at anyone out there who still runs a 2 network system.

[FN-GM]

I can't see why there should be 2 separate networks. I know a large financial company that has all 30,000 computers on one network. I can't see why a small school can't do it.

[glennda]

The school i'm going to tomorrow for an interview runs two - they will be merging if i get the job!

[Geoff]

Its usually historical. It used to be the case that LEAs mandated that a schools Admin and Curriculum network were separate. They abandoned this idea as unworkable a long time ago (when you started needing SIMS in the classroom) but some schools still have this legacy present in their network configuration. If you do come across this sort of setup its a handy warning sign that the network configuration and hardware needs a serious look at because it's likely to be 8+ years old!

[elsiegee40]

We have one network for everything... indeed we used to have one server for everything.

 

EIS the Kent CC IT arm insist that schools have a separate server for SIMS still, much to the chagrin of most of the IT techs in the county.

[BKGarry]

Within Primary Schools this is still common, As SIMS is usually on a "Workgroup" PC as a server with 2 or 3 users and is seperate from their Curriculum Domains (Well this is common in Kent).

 

When I started working in education (well started full time work) on my 19th Birthday 8 Years ago, the school i was at did have a seperate domain for admin, but it was on the same subnet, used the same internet connection and even the same Exchange server on the curriculum domain. We cominded everything into one within the year. And never looked back. You will never be able to use the lovely products like Lesson Monitor and InTouch (and no I don't work for Capita) which are highley useful.

 

Personally I would make a case to deconstruct the Admin network and integrate it, making life for all a lot easier.

[Pyroman]

Its usually historical. It used to be the case that LEAs mandated that a schools Admin and Curriculum network were separate. They abandoned this idea as unworkable a long time ago (when you started needing SIMS in the classroom) but some schools still have this legacy present in their network configuration. If you do come across this sort of setup its a handy warning sign that the network configuration and hardware needs a serious look at because it's likely to be 8+ years old!

 

:-O i resent that! We've just had a whole new network put in! To be fair we don't need SIMS in the classroom and the Curriculum server gets so much hammer that it's easier to keep them seperate, that way if curric goes down the admin bods are still happy :-)

[K.C.Leblanc]

It's a throwback from the days when the Admin network was run by the Bursur or Office manager and the Curriculum network was ran by a slightly odd Physics teacher. Neither knew what they were doing, neither trusted the other.

[Guest TheLibrarian]

There is a technical reason (or was) to have two Microsoft networks - password policy.

 

I can't remember when it changed but at some point it was only possible to have one password policy per domain.

[BKGarry]

I think the chanage happened between NT4 and 2000

[CAM]

We used to have two networks with two separate Internet feeds and SIMS running on both. It was merged a few years back meaning admin ended up on the heavily locked down curriculum feed.

 

Can't remember how we did it but there was a bit of wizardry to keep the networks separate and allow SIMS to run on a select number of computers by communicating with the admin server.

[Hokalus]

We still have two networks but we are working towards merging to one. Until then they are interlinked via trusts and the curriculum servers are dual homed on the admin network so that their resources are available to staff. Only reason we have two is because until recently the LEA mandated this.

[Geoff]

Can't remember how we did it but there was a bit of wizardry to keep the networks separate and allow SIMS to run on a select number of computers by communicating with the admin server.

 

This is done using a trust between the two domains.

[2097]

Our sims runs fine on two totally different networks .

 

basically they both still access the server with the hosted SQL by adding the entry into DNS

 

And every night the SIMS data folder is copied to the other network ( which the client configs point to)

 

 

And now i think ive added yet another job to my summer job list !

 

i still have 8 servers to transfer to Server 2008 , a absolute ton of Computers to reimage to windows 7 ( including making the image)

Plus now got the added task of joining these things together .

 

And thats not including migrating exchange to 2010 then to another server !

 

O what fun im going to have doing all that on my ownsum.

Edited October 20, 2011 by 2097

[Hightower]

We have two networks here, one admin and one curric - it's been that way since the dawn of time. However, things just work here and therefore we do not see the need to merge them. Sims is available on all machines using a trust.

 

Maybe when the server needs replacing we might look into merging the two, but really can't see any major benefits from going out of my way to do it now. Like I say, if it ain't broke, don't tinker with it.

[AyatollahPies]

I can't see why there should be 2 separate networks. I know a large financial company that has all 30,000 computers on one network. I can't see why a small school can't do it.

 

Budget

Expertise

[FN-GM]

Budget

Expertise

 

Surely it would be cheaper to merge them instead of having 2 set of servers etc. also it would take more man hours to manage 2 networks.

 

Also I can't see how having them as one network requires more expertise...

[MatthewL]

With Server 2008 now you can have several password policies if I am right?

[featured_spectre]

I successfully had 3 password policies in place on 2008R2 so yes it is perfectly feasible.

[CyberNerd]

It's a throwback from the days when the Admin network was run by the Bursur or Office manager and the Curriculum network was ran by a slightly odd Physics teacher. Neither knew what they were doing, neither trusted the other.

 

lol

[GrumbleDook]

Yes, there are various reasons why schools used to run them as two separate networks ... most of these have been touched on already ... the dreadful security in NT4, the management of 'admin' stuff being done centrally by the LA, security practices such as different password policies (have a search for previous discussions on here around ISO27001 also might shed some light) ... and so on.

 

The idea of security of the MIS being the reason went out the window when people starting splitting the MIS server across the 2 domains ... or when they started using tools to connect into the MIS (e.g. SLG, various learning platforms, SIF-enabled systems, etc)

 

However, merging the two networks is not a simple job. I have seen a few schools have serious problems when trying to do this, knackered permissions, a lot of duplication of files or loss of files, and worse. If you are thinking of this then I would advise a phased approach to wean people away from the admin network ... even to the point of virtualising the admin server before decommissioning.