mcnallyfc

I would be very interested in this as looking to do same

Thanks for input - i went for SCCM as i have experience in the configuration and maintenance of it. True it was in a much larger team but we would only be using certain features in it which i think will make it easier to manage. I have never heard of K-box? do you have link for more info as wont rule anything else out.

Morning all, Following on from a previous thread i started on here, i am looking to finalise my costings for moving to Vanilla. We currently have a RM CC3 network, using RM tutor 3, RM Management console, RM Build Manager and RM Backup (on 2 of the servers) to manage the network. We have 3 servers running W2K3 SP2 and clients run XP SP3. In total we have 4 Windows 2003 SP licenses and 1 Symantec Backup Exec license. We have currently got 369 Windows 7 Pro licenses with the rest XP. We are looking to also upgrade to Windows 7 and adding a 4th Server to run SCCM and the SQL database. In total we have 425 PCs/Laptops that in our plan will be connecting to our network. I have come up with the following software/licenses to try and re-create a similar network setup as the RM one so that staff dont get too upset..... Vanilla Setup Server 2008 R2 License x 4 Server 2008 R2 CAL's x 425 Server 2008 R2 Media x 1 SCCM 2007 R3 License x 1 SCCM 2007 R3 CAL's x 425 SCCM 2007 R3 Media x 1 SQL Server 2008 x 1 SQL Server 2008 CAL x 1 SQL Server 2008 Media x 1 Basic Rackmount Server x 1 Symantec Backup Exec License x 2 Windows 7 Pro Upgrade Licenses x 56 Including the Windows 7 license upgrades this looks to be totalling around £17,100 RM CC4 Upgrade Costs RM quote = £17,500 Windows 7 Pro Upgrade licenses = £10,500 Total = £28,000 Im after any information from those who have moved from a similar RM setup to Vanilla and for a list of the software you use? Have i missed anything out to get this up and running? Thanks

Hi Glennda, thanks for your help on this. With the webservers being linux and having no access to them - we are a little stuck as the admin guy says he isnt sure what virtual bridges are. Im trying to point him in the right direction but my experience is all in Windows OS' and have no idea how to approach it in linux. Is your system linux? where would you find such settings?

We have an odd setup but yes it is internal. We have 2 host webservers running on **.**.17.249 and **.**.17.200 that share the guest server - **.**.16.250 These run linux and we have no control over these! They were setup and are run by our LEA.

Stumbled across an odd problem on a small range of IPs. In a nutshell any PC or device given an IP in the range **.**.16.200 to **.**.16.248 cannot access our website (webserver on **.**.16.250) They can access/ping the 4 main servers ok (**.**.16.249, **.**.16.251, **.**.16.252) but not **.**.16.250. This is the same for static or dhcp reservations for those IPs. Any ideas?

Morning After some advice - started new role at secondary school in Sept and after a few months now im wanting to introduce some sort of network monitoring software. At the moment we dont really have anything that can give me some network performance stats (to see any switches under load not enough bandwidth etc) or if a switch goes down to alert us. So am wondering whats available that i could look at purchasing if need be (ideally free but willing to pay) that is simple to use that i could have running on the servers and monitoring network traffic? I currently use spiceworks for the helpdesk aspect, i know it can do some aspects of network monitoring but was looking for something specifically created for that purpose. Thanks

Anyone use Twitter at their school for updates? Thinking of utilising it for snow updates, updates for parents, pupils and staff that follow it? Wanted to look at disabling comments etc to make it a bit secure but cant seem to do that? Interested to hear if other schools utilising this and what problems if any you have had?

Maniac & Skunk - thanks for info, figures look good with the system in place. The main issue for me is the existing printers. 50% will be inkjet/desktjet that we wont support or buy an cartridges for so they can go. Once the MFD's are in place what did you do about admin offices etc where there are 3+ users in a room with a decent laser printer. Were card readers put on these? or were they just networked between the users and they have unrestricted usage? With the idea of slowly pushing them out so that the MFD's are used. Also how did you manage the credit system - our departments buy toners/cartridges out of their budgets. Did SLT reduce department budgets accordingly to use the credit system?

Ouch - how many staff/students?!?

This is kind of the initial idea i have - departments will be resposible for any printers they want. We wont provide IT support and we will also make them aware (pop-up when printing to it and label on printer) how much it costs per page for this printer in comparison to the central MFDs) We are hoping to utilise 4 of the MFD's we have already (2 massive machines will remain in repro) around the site and plan for how many others we need so that all staff have an MFD within 30m and dont have to travel up/down stairs to get to one. As 36degrees says though it will all mean nothing if SLT dont back this fully. I'd go as far as banning all deskjet printers, and only network printers allowed (min of 3 users) and departments covering costs for them. Although it looks bad i think we can make a real saving if done properly and save the school thousands which in turn will make my dept look good

That is the aim, but small steps as they say especially with teachers I will suggest this as an option - no more handouts, booklets, memo's etc. I believe its do'able but i think at moment it may be step too far. Would love fully utilise electronic communications, we currently use Moodle - anyone here use that to cut printing in their school?

Well one thing i noticed when i started my role in my secondary school was the awful state the printing systems were in. Currently we have unrestricted access to photocopiers, mfd's, deskjet and network printers. No management software, no pin code machines etc. Its a long story why this is the case but its been like this since July '09. We have 140 staff, 1500 students. At the moment we have 6 MFD's only used for photocopying and printing booklets with 3 in the repro room (open access to ALL) 1 in Geog area, 1 in science area and 1 in reception. These are paid for quarterly on lease and with a volume meterage agreement as well. For these we pay £4,200 per 1/4 lease and £4,000 for current usage. Last quarter the copy/print output was 920,000. I also arranged a general site wide Print Audit which involved a company coming round and for half the day going around the site taking details of all the other printers we have on-site and a print count. They then returned 3 weeks later and took another set of readings. They then worked out the costs for that model printer over the 3 weeks and maintenance over the year (10 months for term time) based on catridge costs etc as any print audit would do. Yesterday we had our results - i was told its the most they have seen for expenditure..... 109 Printers on site (109! not inc the MFD's) Mono usage 406,920 Colour usage 196,932 Total usage 603,852 Avg cost per page is £0.0439 (4.39p) Consumables costs per year £26,521.44 (£6630.36 per quarter) So then after i got back onto my chair i looked into getting a whole printing cost inc what we spend on paper and inc the total mfd's costs. When i looked into the paper aspect i took Apr/May/Jun from this year as my quarterly figure and the total costs of those 3 months on paper was £4504.55. Thats £18,018.20 per year on paper. So cut a long boring story short these are our quarterly costs for printing Consumables - £6630.36 Paper - £4504.55 MFD leasing £4200 MFD Metered Usage- £4000 Total quarterly bill is £19,334.91 Thats £77,339.64 per year on printing There are already plans for papercut and a few more MFD's to completely replace desktop printers and all IT classroom printers to have tutor PC running papercut to release jobs. I know the staff will be up in arms about losing their printer and having to walk 2mins down corridor at most but im hoping when i show senior management these figures they will back me on it.....

It was a joke - i really wish i hadnt bothered now. I'd answered my own query and was simply making a humourous (clearly bombed) point in reply to Pete's post that there is always an element of risk in most of what we do. I wasnt asking for a debate on what im doing just how to do it. That is all. You have gone off on a tangent here, i cant tell if your joking about the micro bend or actually being serious so i'll bow out.

Sorry missed my point there, or did you, i dont know. Who cares - its answered. Thanks

Yep or they dig a hole in street and tap into the fibre link and get everyones passwords and then logon as admin and ruin the network........

Thanks both but got my answer Was Server 2003 SP2, Just need to create new exclusion range for that scope covering all IPs and then only reservations will get IP then

Hi all Quick question - i know its possible to do this but need to work out how exactly to do it! We currently have our DHCP server setup to allow access for any device plugged into our network. What i want is for devices only with reservations to gain an IP. How do i go about this? Thanks

Have fixed this by editing the mapping from servername.local to servername It was originally changed apparently to solve a dns issue in that users kept getting the set environment loop when running sims. Works but nothing should have changed so not sure why it suddenly stopped working......

it was done in RMMC

Currently on RM CC3 and have setup the S drive to point to our sims server. Was fine this morning but now anyone logging in do not get the S drive. We have tried uninstalling RM StnDeliv but no luck as its really only the 1 drive being dropped. We can run to the server fine so not permissions problem. Any ideas?

Problem we have is that the school probably wont accept the 11k cost per year that the schools agreement will cost us. They like to lease things and very rarely will pay out large amounts let alone an annual cost. So ill have to price up the servers with cals along with SCCM ones as well. I'll give them the pricing for the cost with cal's and also how much saved by the desktop agreement.

Sorry my bad i meant Server 2008 R2! The 3 servers would all be 64bit capable. Licensing is a big issue here, we have no schools or campus agreement and are purchasing licenses left right and centre. Problem is justifying the annual cost to them..... However am i right in assuming that the desktop licenses under schools contain cal's for things such as servers, exchange, sccm? as in i wouldnt need to buy the cals along with the server licenses? If that is the case then that alone could justify the cost if we went ahead with the change. Plus we wanted to upgrade to Windows 7 at same time so starts to make more sense.

Hi all Towards the end of the year I have to present a case to our finance committee to move from CC3 to Vanilla network. So I am currently looking to people who have already moved from CC3 to Vanilla and can help me fully appreciate what's needed cost wise. We already have a good 1gbps network backbone and use our LEAs firewall. I have an initial basic purchase list to "recreate" what we have at moment with CC3. This includes: -Server 2008 Licenses inc cals for the servers (to replace the Server 2003 SP2 we have with RM) -1 x SCCM License inc cals (this will provide os/app deployment, remote control, wsus etc) -Backup Exec Licenses for each server that needs it (already have some) -MDT 2010 for image creation and linked to SCCM (free) We will also add additional features such as new backup solution, exchange server, proxy server etc etc but at moment just want an idea of what's needed to budget for in the move to match what we have now. As I like to give the basic quote as well as the all signing and dancing one. We pay our LEA for general support (so far very much underused) so that can be utilised, 2 local schools have already done this. If not then we could look at 3rd line support from external company for first year to cover our backs. Any help appreciated as would like to nail the costs down early.....

I have contacted RM to negotiate the price a bit - also asked them the options of purchasing our own server and paying them to do the rest. I'm still unsure on how to proceed though - im caught between wanting to future proof the server but also the needs to replace this asap. I'm also unsure whether to go down the VM route - we dont have schools agreement so could work out expensive for Hyper-V/SC. The option im seriously considering is purchasing a good spec server i.e. DL360 G7 etc with 4gb of RAM (having potential to upgrade the ram if we go VM in future) and getting RM in to migrate the old server across with all their software etc. Then if we do go Vanilla in future we have the server we want and that can run VMs etc with the ram upgrade.