localzuk

I didn't have to rebuild from scratch when I took on Bridge. I fixed the issues that had reared their head (they hadn't introduced a CA, and all the clients were still trying to use the old enterprise CA for example) due to a sloppy job, and it worked fine. So, why would centralised services break just because they're centralised?

Adding complexity always adds cost. Instead of having one set of infrastructure - one set of DCs, you have multiple. You end up having to run more DCs, and spend more time managing them. You end up having to create multiple users for those who inevitably work across multiple sites, instead of a single user that just works wherever they go. If you run wireless, you end up having to run multiple radius servers, to handle authentication etc... Complexity = cost.

Defining your ongoing business structure "just in case" a school ends up leaving is terrible practice. You're basically tying your hands behind your back for a what if. Especially as school's breaking away is extremely rare. The local authority in Bristol built a city-wide single domain system when they went through BSF. When the company that did the support contract pulled out, that domain was split up and IT handed back to each school. They resolved it by adding a bunch of DCs to the domain - 2 in each school, then broke the links to the central cluster. So, each school was then running a full copy of that domain. They then deleted all the irrelevant OUs at each school. Worked fine. (Well, it would've been fine if they had remembered the enterprise CA when doing it but that was an oversight rather than a fundamental issue).

hardware - All servers shared, unifi switch controller shared, ruckus wireless centrally managed and shared, phones centrally managed etc... software, - Single MS OVS-ES license pupils, - no staff, - about 10% of our staff work across multiple schools now files, - An increasing amount IT support, - central team lawyers, - outsourced, central online services, - varies, depending on needs web domains, - each school has its own website domain, but central services share a domain which all schools use email - single office 365 tenancy So, a *lot* of our Trust shares stuff.

We are on the second iteration of our WAN. The first one, we installed internet connections in every school, and a local UTM for firewall/filtering, then VPN back to central site. This turned out to be more work than it is worth, so we have replaced it with Ethernet P2P lines through Exa. 1Gbit from each school back to the central site, then 1Gbps leased line out to the internet, with a central UTM. Worked out a little cheaper, and allows us to centralise everything.

We went for a single domain. Our IT is centralised too though, so we don't really do 1 OU per school either. An increasing number of our staff are working across more than 1 school, so we've had to come up with a better way of providing accounts that people use at multiple schools. We have been removing servers from the other schools - we have 5 schools and 3 nurseries running from our central cluster now, with the final school moving to it during Easter.

Fence.

One thing to consider with this is - MATs change the game slightly when it comes to data. Many trusts are going down the route of a trust Data Manager instead of one at each school, so that person is able to be paid more and therefore should be able to do more. So, asking for SQL ability isn't that outlandish.

I have a 4 year-ish old Cisco 2504 wireless controller and 5 APs - 4 AIR-CAP1602I-E-K9 and 1 AIR-AP1142N-E-K9 available. The APs are working fine. The 4 CAP ones still sell for £200 ish it seems. I'm looking for a couple of hundred quid and the lot is yours. Spec sheets: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/aironet-1130-ag-series/datasheet_c78-502793.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/aironet-1600-series/data_sheet_c78-715702.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/2500-series-wireless-controllers/data_sheet_c78-645111.html

It just says moving MIS is tough, doesn't really tell you about the competition or the state of SIMS. I'd suggest that this isn't the best analysis of the market to be honest. There are competitors such as PupilAsset and Arbor out there that are fully functional competing secondary MIS's. Define "ground breaking"? MIS's are a fairly simple database system doing a fairly simple data storage and analysis job. We put data in and take data out. From my experience, new solutions are treated with a much harsher lens than the incumbent SIMS solution - schools look at new solutions that do everything SIMS can, but if it isn't perfect it gets dismissed - even though the SIMS solution can't do it either, simply because we've all come up with workarounds for the problem in SIMS. In this case, we need to start looking at Capita as a new supplier in the same light - are they a competent provider of school MIS's? I'd argue that these days? With how slowly and poorly they're progressing with their cloud based MIS? The answer is no. Throwing good money after bad by simply sticking with SIMS seems like the worst option of all IMO.

Is that per month?

Have they actually moved to full-scale availability of SIMS Primary yet?

Yes, come join us!

Cloudberry is just a piece of backup software. Azure is where we store the data - and we set our own retention period. Azure is wherever you want it - its Microsoft, and they have datacenters all over the world.

Off the top of my head I think the ones we had were the Vigor2862, though it might've been the Vigor2832. I'll be able to confirm tomorrow.

FTTC lines come with Draytek routers

Hi @Noxtralis - sure, just go to your profile on here and pop your username in the Minecraft field. http://www.edugeek.net/profile.php?do=editprofile The tool runs every 3 hours to update the whitelist, but if you PM me I can run it manually.

Server has been updated to 1.56.

Are the admin team providing a service to internal customers? How about the site team? Do they have SLAs/KPIs? Catering staff? Cleaners? You touch on motivation - but you appear to be treating the IT team as a problem, rather than a part of the team. You are using language which almost seems to be a threat to them, because people have complained. This makes me think there is a serious "them and us" problem there as well. To be honest, you seem to be approaching this in the wrong direction. You've settled on a solution - SLAs, but haven't sorted the cause. Customer service being viewed as unsatisfactory does not always mean the customer service is unsatisfactory. It can mean a number of things - such as the staff being overworked (which could be down to the division of labour being wrong between staff, or down to some staff not having the training to be able to do more of the workload etc...), it could be down to the way requests are handled - are requests sent to a helpdesk? Are the IT team keeping staff up to date with what they've done on a ticket? Is the helpdesk sending too many automated emails, so staff are ignoring the actual replies as they perceive them all to be automated? It can be one of simply not seeing IT staff enough - lots of things can be fixed from the IT desk nowadays, and don't all require a classroom visit, but this can give a perception of IT staff never being seen etc... So, I'd suggest that instead of SLAs, how about looking at the root cause of the dissatisfaction? You mention lacking transparency for people generating tickets, and you supporting them? What do you mean by this? Are you attempting to micromanage what the team does? Do you need to know every issue? Do people with issues need to know every detail of what is being done to fix their problems? Do they expect that when they go to a hospital or get their car repaired? At a certain point you have to accept that IT support is a complex job, and as such sometimes you don't need to know every detail. From what I'm getting, you don't appear to be IT staff, so why would you expect to know everything they're doing? SLAs/KPIs have their place - I have a vague internal document for my team which outlines a sort of SLA but it is a guide for us to use internally to allow us to prioritise things better. If I were to release that document to our staff across the trust, it'd be a matter of hours before someone tried to use it as a weapon against the team, because they don't get to see the bigger picture of what is going on in the team. Which is completely the wrong way to fix perceptions. Also, on a related note, you mention the budget of £40k. That figure means very little without knowing what it is for, and how much equipment the school has. I would suggest documenting every bit of kit the school has, figuring out a reasonable working life for each bit of kit, and then putting it all in a spreadsheet by year. You can then get an idea of what the budget should actually be - based on the needs of kit getting old. If you expect to add more provision, include this in the spreadsheet. I get about £160k a year for IT, to cover 6 schools and it includes telephone systems, internet provision etc... So, £40k could very well look like a decent amount, but when you actually put it all in a spreadsheet, you won't see if its actually adequate.

We haven't, but the main advice is that moving to the cloud is not simply uplift what you have and slap it into cloud VMs. You'll spend a fortune doing that and gain nothing. You have to look at what you actually want to achieve, and then develop your services using SaaS cloud services - eg Office 365 or Google Apps, with some other bits thrown in.

This is also not quite true. From the ICO site (https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/schools/pupils-info/): "Pupils attending any type of school have a right of access under the Data Protection Act 1998 to their own information. This is known as the right of subject access. When a child cannot act for themselves or the child gives permission, parents will be able to access this information on their behalf." If a child is of an age where they are competent (usually 12 or over as you say), then they would have to give their parent permission to perform a Subject Access Request. This is not the same thing as a parent getting access to a child's educational record, as that record is a subset of the information held about a child. Without that permission, a school can rightly refuse to fulfil a SAR for a child over 12.

That is not true. It depends on the age of the child, the type of school (academies are different to LEA schools) and there are some things parents do not have the right to request. The law basically talks about the right to access a child's "educational record", but that doesn't mean "everything the school has about the child". Whereas, a child has the right to do a SAR to get more than that.

Not sure about the BenQ ones, but the MX265 is about £1850, and the 2 BenQ's come in at around £1750 and £1950, so not really sure why you reckon the MX is more expensive?

The only expensive bit was the installation cost for the PTP links, but that's a one off of £5k ish per line. We have a 1Gbps leased line, yeah. Covers our 6 schools/2000 users just fine, and allows us to do backups to Azure.

We looked at it, but decided against. Instead, we have point to point lines with Exa. Basically leased lines that run from school to exchange to exchange to school. We have 1Gbps between all our sites, and the yearly price is around £2400 (the price is determined by the distance between the schools and exchange at each end. The distance between exchanges doesn't affect it. We then have a normal leased line for breaking out to the internet.