new primary school server

[chrbb]

I have to justify a new server to the govenors - the current one is just an ordinary computer with two hard drives, it's four years old and out of warranty. It also has roaming and mandatory profiles that I want to change to group policies.

What spec would you look for in a server that will have 70 clients, run sophos, exchange, dhcp, dns, ad etc?

[SimpleSi]

Dare I suggest another desktop

 

Thats what I do at my primaries

 

regards

Simon

[SimpleSi]

Your not at one of my old schools are you

 

regards

 

Simon

[alonebfg]

Put it this way If you tell them that if it fails Due to it not being a True if you have a minor failer ie hard drive goes down you lose the network until the hard drive can be replaced. Where if you had a real server with raid. We opted for 5 for that reason if you lose a hard drive you still have a working system untill you can get a new hard drive (hardware raid 5 with battery backup on a sata array) I am a happy man If i does fail get a new drive but while i am waiting i can still run server. where at the moment if a hard drive fails you 1 need to reinstall and depending on drive failer if it is on system drive bringing the server back could take up to a week. ( buy new hardrive recover and insure it works ok)

[chrbb]

Lol no I'm not at one of your schools. I originally said to the head that I thought we should think about a new server for the next financial year 2008-2009 but was asked to get quotes now, which we have done but now the govenors need justification for the purchase.

trouble is I now can't think of any justification!

[Geoff]

Is the old server under warrenty? what happens if it tragically breaks to the point it's unfixable? How will that affect teaching & learning?

[_Bat_]

Is the old server under warrenty? what happens if it tragically breaks to the point it's unfixable? How will that affect teaching & learning?

 

It will 'teach' them to use RAID on a server that was designed to be a server (even possibly two servers) and they will 'learn' never to make the mistake again .

 

Hehe j/k.

[contink]

Having been in much the same position over the past few years I've found a few scenarios.

 

1. An old desktop is the server (cue: Socket7 amd 2800 with 120gb space)

...or...

2. A server with a high end box, CPU, fans and just one drive and minimal RAM

 

So, in instance 1. I've opted for:

- a good quality case with good air flow and plenty of fan sockets (120mm, etc..)

- off-board RAID5 card like rocketraid 2230**

- RAID5 array of 4 drives with 3 in use and one as a spare

- If I can fit them, 2x 80gb drives using RAID 1 (mirror) for the OS

- At least 1Gb of RAM

- Reasonable CPU with excellent heatsink and cooling

 

 

Note: ** Avoid on board RAID as a fried motherboard may mean lots of data you can't access because your board/RAID system is no longer available.

 

 

As for scenario 2. I've usually ended up adding in a couple of additional drives and building a RAID 5 array from that lot, or using the existing disk as the OS disk and adding the RAID5 setup described above

... oh, and adding in some RAM.

 

 

Never fails to amaze me that there are primaries who were convinced to buy what amounts to a high end machine with no failover redundancy and/or naff all disk space to actually handle their data..

[alonebfg]

well the justtifacation is the fact at the moment you have a single poit of failure ie the server and I think in this day and age even in a primary school a server need to be the robust mchine on the network with as many backup points of failer as possable.

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

The problem with school's, especially primaries is the budget. And unless you have a support SMT and team of governors theres not a lot you can do.

 

Before we got a new head we were spending money constantly (for justified things) but now, we need 20 new laptops as a matter of urgency and to be truthfull we're having trouble getting the cash released.

 

Does a primary school really need 4 HDD's in it's server? Maybe so, but is it as justified to spend that kind of money as much as it would be for a normal organisation? If you're asking me, I think a very cheap ProLiant DL server would do the job.

 

Oh, and don't run exchange on your primary server. NOT a good idea at all. Buy a seperate box for it.

[localzuk]

Does a primary school really need 4 HDD's in it's server? Maybe so, but is it as justified to spend that kind of money as much as it would be for a normal organisation? If you're asking me, I think a very cheap ProLiant DL server would do the job.

 

Yes, even though budgets in primaries are low. The server contains all the data pertaining to the kids. It is the single most important piece of equipment in a school. If you lose data due to not having enough redundancy/resiliency then the head will be in a lot of trouble with the DfES and the LEA.

 

A cheap proliant would do the job, until it broke. Then you'd have a very much harder time repairing the damage than if you simply found the extra few hundred quid in the first place.

 

For a resilient and well designed server, you should be talking about £1500 for a primary. For a cheap one you'd be talking £1000 for named or £600 that for DIY/desktop+bits.

 

Imagine if, due to sever failure, you couldn't complete the school census, or the school couldn't check the medical notes of a child etc...

 

So my advice is, point out what wouldn't work if the server breaks, how much it would cost the school in terms of finance, lost teaching time, admin time etc...

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

Localzuk - I see your point and it is a very valid point at that. But most information can be restored very quickly to another server if needed that urgently.

[chrbb]

Thanks for the comments - the server is only a curriculum one, the personal pupil details are held on the admin system. my personal preference is a 2 harddrive mirrored lowish price range branded server.

 

All the staff have laptops, and my next move is to get rid of roaming profiles and get the staff to use their drives on the server rather than relying on their laptops. Their documents roam, but some staff hibernate their machines and refuse to reboot them which negates the roaming profiles (I think). I want them to get into the habit of backing up their data to the server which then backed up twice weekly.

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

What will you be mirroring? Because if it's the system files that's fine.

 

But it's when you start mirroring data when things get slow. Maybe you could mirror 2 HDD's with the file system and have a 3rd basic disk with data for staff and students. That way if the system disk fails it will keep on running, but if the data disk fails you have your twice weekly backups to rely on.

[SimpleSi]

@localzuk

 

Its all to do with priorities and the way things are run.

 

Our county support generally install and support all admin systems in primaries in Lancs.

 

These machines are simple p2p systems with the "server" being a standard computer.

 

They are simply backed up nightly and the philosophy is that in the event of failure, county will provide a temp replacement and restore the data onto it. Usually sorted with couple of days.

 

This is very cost-effective for the schools and the downside is loss of data access for a few days - which they can generally live with.

 

I employ the same philosophy for curric servers - if it goes badly wrong - I'd come in - take another machine out of curric use and make that the server and restore the data onto it.

 

This situation occured for the first time in 4 years just before half term - took me 1/2 day to get back to normal (motherboard failed - so simply had to swap hard drive into identical machine - always make sure you have another identical machine )

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

Again, having an identical machine is nice if you ordered two servers at once, but what if you didn't. You're right with what you are saying though. You could take a curric PC out of use, leave it as XP even and restore data to it.

 

You can still share data out in a similar way and it will temporarily get things swinging again. I think it even restores the data with permissions on folders so you don't have to muck on.

[contink]

The problem with school's, especially primaries is the budget. And unless you have a support SMT and team of governors theres not a lot you can do.

That's a given but yes, definitely true..

 

Does a primary school really need 4 HDD's in it's server? Maybe so, but is it as justified to spend that kind of money as much as it would be for a normal organisation? If you're asking me, I think a very cheap ProLiant DL server would do the job.

Well, the thing to bear in mind here is that we're talking about SATA drives, not SCSI (although some of the existing servers I've worked on have SCSI)... and the prices now for a 320Gb or even a 500Gb drive are so low that putting in redundancy in a RAID 5 or if you want, a RAID 1 is minimal.

 

No school wants to lose their data, and teachers rarely take the news that their data has been lost (even if it's a couple of days worth).. but yeah there's a lot to be said for having something easily replaceable.. Likewise a lot to be said for being able to use a 2003 server to redeploy machine images, new software, etc.. without having to set foot in the school either.. Opportunity costs abound so there's some tough questions to answer.

 

Thinking about it, what we seem to be putting forward is that redundancy of the system is the important bit and data backup follows on. Most of my systems a completely reliant on both the data and the system being up and running hence the RAID suggestions but as always that single point of failure will always exist. How we plan and budget for, then deal with those nightmares is always going to be a trade off.

[contink]

Again, having an identical machine is nice if you ordered two servers at once, but what if you didn't. You're right with what you are saying though. You could take a curric PC out of use, leave it as XP even and restore data to it.

Makes sense...

 

For what it's worth, one approach I went for was to use an extra desktop spec machine and pop Win2k3 on it, made it a domain controller and the plan is to try out DFS (not a sofa ) to mirror the data drives. It's a slow cousin but the fact that it's located in a different building, provides some minor load relief to the main server and will stay up if the main server dies, gets stolen, burned, etc... is a useful backstop.

 

There's more than one way to skin a cat

[alonebfg]

Going back to cost We just bought a primargy with 4 hdd on a raid 5 hardware arry with 3 years support for £1200 it works like a dream ok its sata2 arry but it serves about 70 pc and handles dhcp roaming profiles and is the pdc. Could have saved about £200 on the raid 5 but it give me some reduntancy. and as i use all 4 drives more space have also go a hot sapre in case the worse happens

[SimpleSi]

Again, having an identical machine is nice if you ordered two servers at once, but what if you didn't.

 

What I did was to take an existing desktop from the suite and make that the server - makes for plenty of replacements

 

regards

 

Simon

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

Touche

[Mr_T]

To me its a no brainer for 1500-2000 Pounds you can easily get a Dell box with raid and 3 years warrenty. Which will last at least 5 years. I know primarys are poor but unless they are extremely small they should be able to budget for that.

 

Better value than the cache boxes they all bought IMO

[ruggie_uk]

To me its a no brainer for 1500-2000 Pounds you can easily get a Dell box with raid and 3 years warrenty. Which will last at least 5 years. I know primarys are poor (until it comes to giving a teacher a pay rise) but unless they are extremely small they should be able to budget for that.

 

Better value than the cache boxes they all bought IMO

 

One of my schools is extremely small and we have a similar server setup.

Servers are important and I would really try hard to get it through to SMT and upwards that future education possibilities are limited otherwise.

 

There's future VLE's to think about, tracking of pupils work, staff planning and performance documents.

Also try and get across that using a 'proper' server environment is useful for childrens progression to secondary.

Ask them not to give that extra management point to Teacher A this term and do something that benefits everyone.

[craiglay]

I just bought a Dell Poweredge 840 for my largest primary. Its a new Zeon, 2Gb RAM, 3x160GB SATA HD's in RAID5 and will serve probably about 250 users replacing an old Tiny P3 with 512 and about 40Gb HD over 2 drives.

 

One of the smallest primaries I do have just received a PE840 on the councils refresh program but I don't know the spec yet.

 

I know the situation in primary schools, but using desktop machines as servers is asking for trouble. I think i've have another primaries "server" in bits 4 times now sacrificing another desktop to rebuild it. They too are on the refresh, so have no money to buy a new server so can only wait until their turn on the scheme (autumn/winter) I will also say, its about 2 years old, and an Elonex.

 

Its definately worth paying the extra for a proper server, the Dell 420's which are good for very small schools are still very nice.

 

Craig