NetworkDirector

Easy solution, use Cloud flare DNS or even host your own. Free aswell

We used Zebra ZC300 ID Card Printer for a brief period and it was great, however since September we switched to an external provider so we no longer print our own. Saves us from the hassle of broken printers.

I have a Optiplex 7050 mff (i5-6500 with 32gb ram) running Proxmox,with VMs for Windows Server 2022 with AD, Apache server running a custom Home page, Portainer and docker as well. Windows Server has cloud flare funneled remote access via O365 sso. Wish I could add more but I end up just adding pointless services, I think an actual VPN is next to connect my laptop when I'm out, but not really anything else. The plan was to put all computers in my home on AD but ended up doing most of the computers (5) then 2 that are just local user accounts. And then the laptops (4) are on Intune since AD meant they had to be tethered to the network in some way. This set up going strong since 2025 with some minor iterations.

From my own experience, Google's own authentication system is not great and we migrated to Entra ID auth. Basically Entra becomes the Login system so that when you enter your username / email on Google Classroom or other google apps, it will send you to the Microsoft 365 login page, and you authenticate their and then it logs you in. I always found this way better, we now use Entra for SSO for all our platforms. GCDS cannot be removed though, it must stay as it handles the provisioning of users from Entra to Google Workspace. Also don't put the Google Workspace admin account into Entra ID so that if there are any errors or issues with sync / login-flow, you still have access to to the Admin console - saves you from being locked out. Are you planning on keeping on-Prem AD or moving fully over to Intune for all platforms? For the iPads, you should ideally have Apple school manager and Intune for 'zero-touch' deployment.