Jonah

Could you drop this to me as well please?

Large mainstream secondary, ~600 devices, 1GB leased line, as a start

Just to hijack this slightly - if looking at a similar option (SW for filtering, Fortinet for firewall/SD-WAN, etc.), what model(s) would typically be suggested?

Does your Smoothwall do your routing, or does a core switch? Our default route out for the core switches is the SW IP. Our setup for two sites is: Site A (10.0.0.0/16) - Smoothwall IP 10.0.5.254, Smoothwall VLAN/Core Switch interface IP: 10.0.5.1 Subnet settings: Network: 10.0.0.0 Subnet: 255.255.0.0 Gateway: 10.0.5.1 IP Sec settings: Local IP: Local Network: 10.0.0.0/16 Remote IP: Remote Network: 10.10.0.0/16 Site B (10.10.0.0/16) - Smoothwall IP 10.10.5.254, Smoothwall VLAN/Core Switch interface IP: 10.10.5.1 Subnet settings: Network: 10.10.0.0 Subnet: 255.255.0.0 Gateway: 10.10.5.1 IP Sec settings: Local IP: Local Network: 10.10.0.0/16 Remote IP: Remote Network: 10.0.0.0/16

You also need a firewall rule to allow the IPSec interface to pass traffic to your internal LAN interface(s)

If you ping the Smoothwall DNS name from a client repeatedly, does it resolve each sites IP in turn and then repeat over? If so it’s likely DNS subnet prioritisation.

You can register for API access, we use it for a number of internal tools.

Yea, it’s a larger initial investment than most other options, balanced against the fact there’s no annual subscription, etc. and no limits on the amount you can backup other than physical space. I think it cost us around £20k for two RS appliances, a “primary” NAS with about 208TB, and then an offsite “backup” NAS at another school that pulls immutable snapshots with about 110TB.

We’ve recently moved to Synology, backing up both on-prem VMs and 365 data. It’s been flawless so far🤞

Well hello there, Does anyone by chance have any recent experience regards rough pricing on dark/unlit fibre (~6.5km)? Have approached Schools Broadband, BT, and Virgin but no replies as yet. We’re based in Manchester if that’s relevant. Cheers.

We’re seeing similar issues trying to access Smoothwalls Cloud portal from schools on SB, schools with others ISPs are fine. Does mean staff cannot review Smoothwall Monitor events, so something of a safeguarding issue! @SchoolsBroadband

Is pushing internal CA certs via NDES/SCEP not an option? We use that for pushing VPN certificates to users on Intuned devices for auth against NPS.

Interestingly, when we migrated one of our schools was using SIMS Hosted. We contacted them explaining we were planning a migration, and they happily transferred to us via SFTP a full backup of the database as requested, to be passed to our new provider…

We top slice for all central services (IT, HR, Finance, Estates).

There’s also the possibility to query via the Arbor API directly - we do this for our provisioning tools.

We have a site server at our “central” school, which is where task sequences are created, applications are packaged, etc. and MECM as a whole is managed. Then each school has a local distribution point, with the necessary images/packages distributed to them from the central site server. The distribution points are PXE enabled - so there’s the initial first time distribution of the packages etc. from the site server to the DPs, then all the clients at the local site use their DP for imaging, application installs, etc.

We’re connection only across 6 of our sites, and are just about to go live on another two. We’ve had zero issues (touch wood) on any of them since install - the oldest was put in three years ago.

Primary site and DP at your “main” location, and PXE-enabled distribution points at your remaining schools?

Afternoon, We’re currently in the process of configuring the above across the Trust - my initial thought process on the simplest way to do this was to install the connectivity server on a single central server, with a single gateway key, and use group policy to set the “department” to the school based on the clients OU - and this I think would work without issue for sending messages via the notification console. However, it’s not clear if an emergency response message would only send to agents matching its department, or would it send to all agents on the connectivity server? If it sends to all agents on the server, is this dependent on matching gateway keys (in which case we could set a site-specific gateway key and manage that via GP as well). Or am I set ultimately on having to have a single install per site?

We just make sure we’re around, normal times. Been the same for the past few years - thankfully we’ve never actually been needed, think it’s more a safety net/reassurance thing nowadays!

Most of our schools are with @SchoolsBroadband - typically between £5k and £6k for 1gig up/down, and we’ve had no issues whatsoever with what’s in place. Though I would have to caveat that with us placing an order with them for two of our schools almost exactly a month ago, and other than being told there’s a backlog after chasing, it’s been radio silence from them.

Generally we stick to the start date, but can make exceptions as particularly for trainee teachers the Trust want at least their emails set up so they can access online portals for various courses etc. We have a UDF in Arbor called Early Provision that if set to Yes will have our provisioning script generate the accounts early for them to use the email addresses as needed. As above, by having the UDF in Arbor it takes the decision out of our hands and puts it in HRs, we just provide the system to make it happen.

Think we were quoted about £41 per EQU per year for M365 A3 when we moved to A5 and were comparing the two. Edit: And about £79 for M365 A5 if that’s any use.

Yep the two of our schools still with Virgin have just triggered alerts about going offline again. At least it’s half term…

Can second the suggestion of the 2930Fs, we use them similar to Pete