RM CC3 to CC4 Upgrade

[Lerxxst]

Placing my head fully above the parapet!

 

My HT is to meet with RM soon about an upgrade from CC3 to "whatever they've got now" (his words!).

 

My question is not about whether this is a good idea or not, that's the heads prerogative.

 

I'd like to know from those that have experienced an RM upgrade what I should be asking (if given the opportunity!)

 

What are the pitfalls, what works, what areas have been "misrepresented" etc.

 

Any info is greatly appreciated.

[sparkeh]

Firstly I would clarify that its not an 'upgrade' but a 'migration' - you want a brand new CC4 network setting up and moving over to that rather than upgrading your current CC3 network.

I am fairly sure that RM don't even do that anymore after the mess the initial upgrades were, but best to check and avoid.

[Sylv3r]

We migrated from CC3 to CC4 in September 2011. If your familiar with a CC3 network it takes a little of the hassle away from the steep learning curve.

 

We've had very little problems other than a few niggling issues with printers etc which every man and his dog have suffered with but after having fully patched up network with all the RM updates it seems to be working as intended now. A lot of people say that an RM network is expensive and I agree as you pay the additional fee with the added licence costs etc, but I don't think we would be able to do our job here with a team of 2 with over 1,400 clients without an RM network. Things just work for us and we have adequate time to develop additional resources and projects without any problem.

 

As per questions you will need to find out the following:

 

Will you be required to attend CC4 training - I have a feeling this is inisted upon by RM, although I managed to get out of it.

 

Will the user data be migrated across?

 

I'd ask the staff in your school which software they use that is currently installed on your CC3 network, most titles will import into CC4 but you will need to recreate some + it's a pointless excercise installing software if its not going to get used.

 

What OS will you be running on your workstations - XP or Windows 7.

 

Will your hardware support Windows 7 if this is what you go for - scanners, printers etc.

 

What sort of timescale are you thinking about the migration, I don't know how big your network is, but I wouldn't advise doing it over a week long holiday as it is nigh on impossible.

 

You could setup the networks alongside each other and only fully migrate to CC4 when your are happy - some slight tweaks will need to be done to your network etc, possibly VLANing to keep things seperate - RM should support this and will be able to assist running two networks - 2 DHCP, DNS servers etc.

 

If I can think of anything more to add - I'll come back.

[Tallwood_6]

CC4.3 is a pretty stable and reliable product now so i wouldnt worry to much about the scare stories and the CC3 to CC4 migration will be a pretty well rehersed proceedure now.

[Lerxxst]

Thanks for all your helpful replies. My biggest concern is that the HT gets "sold" CC4, rather than "buying" it with eyes wide open!

I have a vision of what the network should look like and am quite prepared to put up with RM if they can offer something close to that vision.

To be truthful I find the support patchy at best, but that may be because we are on CC3 - and a very "customised" version at that!

Does anyone have experience of RM being able to help with the 2 network setup as suggested by Sylv3r? That is my preferred option along with virtual servers and maybe some thin client support.

[sparkeh]

Will the user data be migrated across?

This is a good point. We were quoted a fortune to do this, robocopy and a permissions reset was much, much cheaper

[Max_Power]

This is a good point. We were quoted a fortune to do this, robocopy and a permissions reset was much, much cheaper

 

Resetting permissions on the shared areas was a complete pain in the backside. Took an absolute age, because of the different permissions people have on various folders or individual files etc. Its a piece of cake to do, just very time consuming.