X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 It's that time, the moon is blue and pigs are flying... We're looking at upgrading everything. From the talks with our HT, it looks like we're considering 2 options. 1) Thin clients with a VLE. [With a dedicated server?] Cheaper[?] but needs a lot of space we don't really have. [server-wise] 2) Beastly computers [custom built?] and no upgrades for a long time. More expensive in the short term, but we should be able to get more than the recommended 2-5 years between upgrades. [With a switch from 32-bit XP to 64-bit something... [probably XP] to get round the 4GB RAM limit.] I'm in a meeting with a company tomorrow, to see what they're offering [along with the costs], so we may be able to save a bit of money. Anyone have any suggestions on what I should be asking? Usually, I'm just told about the meeting after the fact, along with the decision.
rich_tech Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Personally I wouldnt touch 64-bit XP as an OS, its not good and drivers can cause nightmares. If your looking to save money, have you also considered things like ICT recycled machines ?, ICT-Direct are on here and my school deals with them, we have no complaints from them only praise, 3 years warranty on very well specced machines and it comes in a fair bit cheaper than buying brand new machines and they all handle windows 7 very well.
X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) Personally I wouldnt touch 64-bit XP as an OS, its not good and drivers can cause nightmares. I use 64-bit at home... Which may explain why fn+F5 [my laptop's version of fn+F8] just kills all the drivers [Graphics, Wireless, Audio, Keyboard, Mouse... Power button.] Apart from that... it's fine. Le Edit: Just noticed the XP... I'm using :spy:totally legit Win7:spy: I need to test Vista... Edited February 27, 2012 by X-13
CyberNerd Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 [quote=X-13;795137 1) Thin clients with a VLE. [With a dedicated server?] Cheaper[?] but needs a lot of space we don't really have. [server-wise] Anyone have any suggestions on what I should be asking? Usually, I'm just told about the meeting after the fact, along with the decision. I'd go with this. Expensive to start with but cheaper in the long term. TC is also good to allow home access, student devices etc.
X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 Windows 7 x64 rather than XP x64 Suggestion or correction? Win7 with 2008r2 server is the ideal. We need a new server anyway. [i say need...] ^ Forget that... I want Win8 and server 2011. [i mean... If I HAVE to use Microsoft, I want it the be the current versions.]
sted Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Suggestion or correction? Win7 with 2008r2 server is the ideal. We need a new server anyway. [i say need...] ^ Forget that... I want Win8 and server 2011. [i mean... If I HAVE to use Microsoft, I want it the be the current versions.] if you go with ees licensing you should be able to upgrade to these when they are released iirc
X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 if you go with ees licensing you should be able to upgrade to these when they are released iirc If we go down the VLE route, isn't the OS on the client a moot point?
CyberNerd Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 If we go down the VLE route, isn't the OS on the client a moot point? It is. We can run Linux, Android and OSX/IOS clients no problem it reduces licensing costs NOT having EES sometimes. Again, Terminal services helps here.
Dos_Box Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 TBH, by the time you've rolled out XP, ironed out bugs and got happy with it, Microsoft would have pulled XP support. I'd got for W7 TBH, it's bedded in now and proven with support aplenty
X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 TBH, by the time you've rolled out XP, ironed out bugs and got happy with it, Microsoft would have pulled XP support. I'd got for W7 TBH, it's bedded in now and proven with support aplenty At the moment we have CC3. So we're stuck with XP and a 2003 server. Win7+2008r2 is only for/supported on CC4. Which would be ANOTHER thing we'd have to pay out for. And with the way things are going, we may not stick with an RM network.
sted Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 id be tempted to at least trial it without rm stuff its a way of making money go further and up to a point a vanilla network is better documented (though from what i know about rm its more of an overlay than a different beast
X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 It was either, or. Avoid Vista. The vista comment was a whole other thing. Which I still haven't done... I need to test the vista disk I have to make sure it'll work properly.
sparkeh Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Personally I wouldnt touch 64-bit XP as an OS, its not good and drivers can cause nightmares. Really? I have an entire x64 Win 7 site with no issues regarding the 64 bitiness and drivers or anything else. What problems are you having?
glennda Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) Really? I have an entire x64 Win 7 site with no issues regarding the 64 bitiness and drivers or anything else. What problems are you having? 64bit XP saying a no no - Win 7 X64 is fine. Give us a bit more info on what you currently have and the requirements (no desktops size of school etc). We run 900 Fat Desktops (Stone Custom Builds) and with a 5 Year warranty they don't need replacing for 5 years and any fault through parts failure is covered. Last Summer I purchased Intel Core I3 (2nd gen), 4GB Ram, 64GB SSD from Stone on 5 year Warranty. I have only 700 of there desktops and the build quality is excellent and so is the support. If a part goes they come out and replace in on side normally NWD. Edited February 27, 2012 by glennda
X-13 Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 We're looking at Ergo. Apparently our HT has used them before and likes them. [i'm not too sure... I don't really trust companies where everything is "quotes on request". I always think they just make it up.] We run various RM Ecoquiet desktops in every class, plus 8 spread between the library and 2 PPA rooms, 30 RM laptops [leased] for pupils [split into 15 KS1/15 KS2], 5 RM laptops for staff [leased] plus 18 RM All-in-one desktops for the IT suite. [Can you see a theme here?] The desktops are [iIRC] Intel core2, 2gb RAM, 60/80GB SATA HDD, integrated graphics. And pretty much made from laptop parts. [source: Our LEA techs.] Also, they're all out of warranty now. One class has an outdated Dell Optiplex 755 with RAM upgraded to 4GB... and they DON'T want their old computer back as this one is a lot faster. [Or so they say.] I don't know what the eventual plan for IT is. Apart from get new stuff for new classes, expand it suite to 1:1 from 1:2. Our HT doesn't really have an idea either. I know because I asked him this morning.
glennda Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 From what you have said they need to detail out where they need to be in 5 years time and aim towards that with the infrastructure they put in now. They also need to know that its no good buying the best desktop hardware possible in the back end switching infrastructure is not in place. personally money needs to be ready to replace switching/cabling before things like desktops get changed. There is no point spending thousands on awesome desktops if there is no back end infrastructure in place. Toby
CAM Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 No long term plan should factor XP in at all. If you need to upgrade the workstations to Win 7 and your server infrastructure doesn't cut it, than that will need to be upgraded too. Otherwise you are going to have to upgrade the workstations again within a much shorter timeframe than you intended. See this as the perfect time to jig a few server upgrades in to the upgrade package as well. XP/2003 support for SIMS dies very soon and with that, I expect a large chunk of the education sector to follow suit in the jump to Windows 7 (don't go Vista, that is on it's death bed already).
ToyHeartsFan Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 I have used CC3 in the past and was quite happy with it but XP hasn’t got long left. If you are sticking with CC3 for now then you will need additional CC3 client licences which are quite expensive. If you are ditching CC3 either for Vanilla or CC4 then I would forget about XP altogether and go with W7 from the start. We are still using XP and I have not long purchased some refurbished PCs which came with 4GB of ram but we are still using 32bit XP. I don’t think you will notice much difference between a machine that shows 3GB and one with 4GB. If you are sticking with XP for 12 / 18 months then it might be easier to stick with 32bit unless you have already tested all of your drivers / software. RE: your PCs made with laptop parts – the hard drives in laptops are usually 5400rpm jobs and performance takes a big hit, have you thought about buying a few SSD’s and seeing if it gives them a second life? RE: beastly computers - custom built. Cutting edge always has a price premium attached. In most cases i7s are overkill and an i3 / i5 would be fine although I would give serious thought to ditching the hard drives and buying into ssd if I was ordering new PCs now. I also agree with the earlier post about having a plan in place and looking at upgrading the infrastructure but as long as its reasonable i.e. gig uplinks between switches and the servers on gig nics then I would sort the servers / workstations out first (assuming you do stick with fat clients).
sonofsanta Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 XP support ends before the summer break 2013, so if you are going to ugprade to Win7, this summer is the time to do it. Regarding MonsterSpec machines... the reason I have a 5 year replacement strategy is not because the hardware is becoming outdated, because frankly, Core2Duo will run IE & Office perfectly fine on Win7 with 4Gb of RAM. The reason is that by five years, things just start breaking - hard drives wear out and PSUs get clogged with dust and burn and CPUs start getting rubbish at doing maths (I've seen it). So even if you buy MonsterSpec, you'll still want to replace them in 5 years because they'll be running slower from storage (unless you overprovision some SSDs by a good chunk) and heat issues and wobbly power, and you'll just have spent more money in the beginning for not much gain. I'm afraid IT isn't a problem fixed as one big splurge of money - it absolutely has to be, and is better being an ongoing investment. Replace 20% of your machines each year with that generation Core-i3 and a reasonable amount of RAM (at least 4Gb right now, if not 8Gb - cheap as chips and all that). Put these machines into your main IT teaching rooms, where they are most demanding, then cycle out the machines being replaced (that are only a year old) into other places. Sod CC3. Vanilla ain't hard and RM hardware is made from scrap. Get a new server or two, virtualise, migrate your domain to 2008R2 (which isn't hard, apart from stripping out the RMness - easiest way is to create a separate structure under a new OU and rebuild everything there) and install Win7 x64 everywhere regardless of RAM (mixing x86/x64 across your site will only confuse software deployment and shortcuts). Start a project to slowly replace your switching infrastructure if it needs it, rolling out from the core. Get PC hardware quotes from Stone & Novatech at least, and then presumably Ergo as your third. I've seen both and the quality of their builds is stonking, especially at the price. Get a 5 year warranty; ours with Novatech involves us having a handful of extra free machines on site so we can swap out broken machines, and get replacement parts sent for the repair. This is an excellent way of doing it because above all, it recognises the competency of your onsite team to diagnose and repair stuff, like what you are paid for. -- Alternatively, do it with thin clients, which I know little of (although I'd warrant there are VDI geniuses lurking round these halls). You can't do it with a VLE, that's an awful approach to be blunt - you will still need full fat clients to boot into a full fat OS, so none of the benefits of proper thin clients, but everything will need to be shoe-horned through a VLE which is not a competent replacement for actual software. They're great for some things, but making everyone do everything through it will result in a Teacher's Mutiny. Doing something on a VLE is slower and more awkward than using proper software because it is going through a browser interface. They're a great tool, I'd thoroughly recommend every school have one, but they cannot (and shouldn't) replace a network entirely. -- I fear all this will come in at some cost, but your management have to understand that doing it right will reap the benefits tenfold in future. Scrimping now will just mean spending more later to put it right and confidence in IT being undermined further, with the result that when it finally works, there's no-one left to care. My tuppence anyway. Prbably more like £7's worth going on my hourly rate and the time it took to write, but I couldn't resist.
plexer Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 If you moved everything to the cloud and used a vle take a look at chromebooks then. Or a normal netbook running JoliOS instead. Ben
ToyHeartsFan Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 XP support ends before the summer break 2013, so if you are going to ugprade to Win7, this summer is the time to do it. Microsoft don't end extended support until April 2014: Microsoft Support Lifecycle So Summer 2013 is the last big hol you get to migrate, leaving an upgrade until summer 2014 would leave your network unsupported for 3 months so would be best avoided... 1
sonofsanta Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Microsoft don't end extended support until April 2014: Microsoft Support Lifecycle So Summer 2013 is the last big hol you get to migrate, leaving an upgrade until summer 2014 would leave your network unsupported for 3 months so would be best avoided... I knew it was an April so as a school you needed to be a few months ahead of the curve... and I knew that it was [citation needed] but I'm feeling idle today, so tah for that
jamesfed Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 At the moment we have CC3. So we're stuck with XP and a 2003 server. Win7+2008r2 is only for/supported on CC4. Which would be ANOTHER thing we'd have to pay out for. And with the way things are going, we may not stick with an RM network. You are going to have to come up with a plan quick - even RM have started talking about the end of CC3. TBH the view of many schools on here is to go vanillia (having said that there are a number of people on here with happy CC$ sorry CC4 networks...). Either way plan for Windows 7!
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