Dave_O

How much is this costing you per annum and what mechanism are you using? The last time I did this (just under a year ago using DPM), I had to stop after 2 months as it would have cost in excess of £8000 for the year.

Yes, would also like to know how you do this.

Already on it. Have spent the last 3 weeks downloading all of our encrypted Veeam backups to my One drive. 15Tb and counting. Doesn't even register on the Richter scale! ba

Use admission number as email address always unique can only be linked to student if you have access to MIS

Bummer I was hoping for it to at least show a quarter of the way along the thin blue line.

Not sure I have 1 Exabyte of data but will have a damn good try to fill it over the next 3 years ..... xcopy *.* g:\My Drive\ /s......

Yes I can confirm this happens when you delete. Not a major issue as the solution is simple... don't make mistakes!

It does, even with federated identity

Do we now have access to 1 Exabyte of storage space?

Understood and no offence taken.

1. Do teachers drop a lot of large files in one page then distribute that page to their students? - No they pre-create the content prior to the lesson 2. Do teachers ask students to upload files in the collaboration area during class? - Students upload and download files to their own area of the OneNote during the course of the lesson 3. ....because the content have already been downloaded to the students' clients via automatic sync. - ? This would only work in a 1 to 1 environment. Where multiple student use the same device then the OneNote will have to be downloaded each time a student logs in,when they are using the App, hence the issue 4. And we strongly advise teachers not to use the class notebooks to store large files shared with students - Mmmm I put it to you that the majority of teachers will take no notice of file sizes when uploading/downloading. I can just hear it now "It was only a one page Word document" forgetting to mention it contained a 50Mb un-optimised photo. Things like "Why don't you put the file elsewhere and just have a link to it in the OneNote" usually gets the response "Eh???" A damning indictment of teachers I know but, I am afraid, all too common. As to the comment "Well what I'm recommending is to take a look at how the teachers have been using the notebooks." I'm not sure whether to take this as a joke or an insult. I'll assume the former.

You're going to have to ask Microsoft that one. Possibly when the student updates the content in the app that creates bandwidth traffic which needs to be pushed up there? All I do is look at the bandwidth usage of the clients in a classroom using class OneNote and see that they are using around 2Mb/s each. Multiply that by 30 and most of the 100Mb/s internet feed is used up.

Crikey Moses!! 1Gb for a primary. By my reckoning that means with 1750 students, 200 staff and 1200 devices we should need about 8-10Gb bandwidth!!! Not sure schools are aware of this issue. Clearly it depends on the Class Notebook content and whether it is used in the full application. To be honest how many staff will understand or care what they are putting into the Notebook to limit bandwidth use and as for telling them to use the online versions rather than the application, not going to happen at least not until MS have addressed the limitations of the online version. So Google Classroom it is then.

Do they (and importantly the students) use the web version or do they use the application? Makes a big difference

Dear All Is anyone using Class Notebook in a number of classes? We are finding that if there are 3 or more classes using Class Notebook (OneNote) simultaneously and they use the application rather than the online version, then bandwidth usage rises from an average of 15Mb/s to 85-90Mb/s. Clearly this is, in part, a function of the content of the OneNote notebook but is a disturbing trend if it is something which more staff want to use. Any information or feedback would be appreciated. Thank you Dave O

We have 3 teachers in the IT department using Class OneNote. When all 3 and their classes are using the Class OneNote (the application rather than the online web version), bandwidth usage goes through the roof. Has anyone else experienced this?

Yes SIMS through blast

VMWare Horizon using Blast

Must have missed my invite. I do have to say I'm not surprised. For me this has crystallised my thinking and in turn my decision. When I analyse what people actually use on the network over the space of a year, it boils down to 96% Office productivity and 4% other. I'm sure we can sort something out for the 4%. When I look back over the last 32 years in education, learning new software, trying to integrate it into the curriculum. In most cases every 3-4 years I had to do it again when the next new and great thing came out. There are some really clever people out there making a lot of money convincing us that we need this tech. The reality is we don't. Most of it is an utter waste of time and effort. With that in mind, over the next 3 years we will train staff and students in the use of Google Apps and make a break at that point. Some variant of Linux and a browser will do. Actually if it was down to me it would be vi and nothing else! That will be just in time for my retirement and then it's someone else's problem. Am I bitter? No, I've got all of this knowledge and experience but to what end?

Use managed Chromebooks logging in with federation services to get to O365 and Google tenancy without further need for authentication. Also use VMware Horizon blast (rather that RDP) on device to offer remote apps and full Windows desktops

And this on the backdrop of a country which has just chosen isolation rather than collaboration! Schools historically have never/seldom collaborated, if they have it has only been at a cursory level. I tried for 10 years to work with schools across an authority to promote collaboration, the megalomaniacal nature of the heads and senior staff mitigated against this. In short they were looking after themselves, paying only lip service to the greater good. Consolidating tech, yes good idea in principle but there will always be someone who wants to try and make a fast (or in Capita's case not so fast) buck off the back of cash strapped schools. Also you've just got to look at the failure of the IT managed services in BSF to realise that shared solutions even at an LA level do not work. This is unlikely, no very unlikely, to happen unless of course you are part of a MAT where this type of thing can be forced upon you. In which case it's less collaboration and more a fascist state.

What do you expect? In the absence of any other solution what do you suggest that we "adapt" to? That's why I ask for some corroborative evidence or a more cost effective way of doing this. The Capita solution is just an RDP session to a server hosting SIMS. Where this server is, is anyone's guess AWS, Azure, their own servers? Do they host more than one school database on the server, probably. I'm sure the hosting costs of the instance will be around £5 giving Capita their standard x100 mark up.

As an update on my DPM test. It's 3 days since I posted the graph. Here's an update (see below) £17.53 consumed in 3 days (£5.84 per day). Looks like the DPM test will either be scaled down or abandoned. That and the plummeting value of the pound now that we have annexed ourselves from the rest of Europe.

Make no mistake you will still need significant on premise hardware for services that are nigh on impossible to put out there. In it's present guise SIMS (if that is what you are using for MIS) is, in my opinion, not a candidate. Also, depending on the Azure SQL model you use, you will still have to maintain the instance.

Not sure you have the right end of the stick or I have not explained clearly. The 5Tb represents the backup of the majority of servers, DCs, fileservers, app servers as well as SIMS (fyi the SIMS database is 12.2Gb) etc. As for SIMS in Azure . You have to have a SQL instance, A server (basic machine 1 CPU 2 cores, 4Gb memory) on which this runs, an external IP and a VPN gateway. Once all of those were in place the initial cost for the first couple of days was £35. Left it running for a few more days, total cost after 1 week (7 days) was £76. If we exclude setup costs lets say £30 (minus 1 day). This means the cost was £46 for 6 days ie about £7.50 per day. This did not include any significant I/O. This equates to approximately £2737 for the year (who is going to switch SIMS off at night and over holidays?). Extrapolating and estimating bandwidth usage (we still need clear info from Capita about CPU and bandwidth usage in an average school to be sure) it will probably be around £3300 pa. Given the SIMS application continues to pulls data down at random intervals, this will necessitate a change of usage pattern amongst users ie to reduce bandwidth they will have to log in and out of SIMS each time they want to use it rather than logging in at the beginning of the day and leaving it logged in. You can imagine how popular that will be. At £3300 pa or even half of this, I do not consider this a viable option. Hence the reason for terminating the test. There are numerous other technical issues that would need to be addressed before this would be considered a viable alternative. So for me this was an interesting exercise but will be shelved for a while. I would really like someone else to corroborate my findings and hopefully show it can be done more effectively. For us SIMS will therefore stay on site until such time as Azure is more sensitive to education budgets.