rrrrr

We luckily have a solid, well setup and up to date network with failovers in place but this does not stop things happening. Most of the issues I mentioned in original post cannot be easily prevented The only options for this I can think of are; 1, Me and the technician alternate weeks on call and compensated for this. 2, A service contract with a 3rd party company for out of hours support. Don't know how this would work as they wont know our network. 3, Ignore things and let them fail. I would personally have trouble seeing this trough without stressing myself out. any other suggestions? carrying on with just me being responsible 24/7 and then just paid the odd hours overtime when things do happen don't seem fair. I find if I'm out and about I end up VPNing in on my phone. The curse of technology, 10years ago networks were not so mission critical and complex, and there was no way I was getting work emails & alerts as well as VPN access working on my nokia 3210!

All of the issues I mentioned could only be fixed by me, There is no one on SMT who would know where to start with these. I have raised this with my business manager before and the outcome was if an issue arises I should contact the business manager to get overtime cleared before I start. I find myself just dealing with the issue irrelevant of overtime as; I cannot always get hold of business manager (busy or unsociable hours) It could be a 5min job to fix, don't know until I get into it. If the problem is left/ignored it will probably escalate. Just want to get issue resolved so I can enjoy the rest of my evening/weekend/holiday and not keep thinking about all hell breaking loose when I return to work. I do find that I'm increasingly not being able to switch off from work, if I am off for long periods (e.g. xmas holiday) I find myself just checking all systems are functioning. The reason for this is that I am the responsible for the network. If it goes wrong its me who feels the heat and me who has to fix it.

Hi, Sometimes critical issues can happen out of hours, What do you guys do regarding this for your school? Some of the issues I have dealt with out of hours include; *server becomes unresponsive *Exchange server having a wobbler *Power Cut *Server Hard disk failure *Overnight backups fail *Attack alert on UTM *Air Con fails and servers start overheating *Head cannot access VPN and needs it urgently Do you guys act when you are first alerted in evenings/weekends/bank holidays or do you just wait until Monday? Does your school pay you overtime or do you have any agreements in place? As with some of these issues, they are better dealt with quickly before they escalate and become 10x worse. Also, if they are dealt with out of hours you don't have every user individually contacting you to let you know something is not working and slowing you down. I find these issues come in waves, I may not have one for a while and then I have multiple in a week and find myself just fixing them from home or coming in for the peace. I recently went on holiday and my technician went off the same week. while I was on holiday we had a powercut, backup failing and an attack alert on my UTM. I ended up resolving these from abroad through VPN while on holiday, as I would not be able to relax knowing these issues are active. Thanks

Hi, I am trying to find out how big other schools ICT support departments are. I'm wondering how much bigger ours needs to get before it justifies an additional technician. At my school we have 1 ICT technician and 1 network manager Our schools size is below; Completely vanilla system with minimal outside support (just Sims and UTM) All research, development and implementation is done by us Around 1400+ students Around 120 Staff (need a lot of assistance) Around 450 PC's and 200 laptops (staff and student) 650 in total Approx. 70 projector/ Whiteboards 8 physical servers hosting around 14 virtual 70 VOIP phones Soon will be a IP CCTV system All staff have VPN access externally VLE Soon to be a MAT with possible ICT support for a primary school. Thanks