Online hosting of school servers - feedback please?

[Rebecca Ronald]

Hi all,

I'm keen to hear feedback from schools who have moved their school servers onto 'the cloud' so that they are fully hosted online. My school is thinking about whether we want to go this way - whether it'll save us some money and whether it would slow down our network or have other unforeseen disadvantages. Please get back to me if you have experience of this in a school environment?

Apologies for cross-posting - I'll post this in a couple of places in the hope that I get some replies.

Ta

Rebecca

[Sue Way]

HI Rebecca,

We have just moved some Cloud based stuff back on site due to Costs..

We still have to have in infrastructure to support Printing, DHCP etc and some of our database servers so when we had to upgrade hardware for these we put in enough resources to cover bringing things onsite. We use the Google suite so most of Student stuff sits in the cloud which saves disk space and some of the over heads.

We have a very big design and Art/Photography department so all the students data for this is held onsite.

By bringing some of the stuff back onsite we have saved about 10K this year. The other consequence is my IT department is far more engaged with interesting and technical things to do rather than just logging a help desk ticket, more engaged staff means less turn over.

Sue Way

IT Services Director

Wellington Girls' College

[Patrick Dunford]

It's an interesting topic to discuss in general. Hosting email offsite is a no brainer. I see the obvious limitations coming with multimedia and the like where a 100Mbps internet link is going to clog up pretty quickly with traffic when people need to edit their stuff and the volume of storage needed will end up costing a lot to host in the cloud.

If you are being captivated by the argument that power supply and servers are a lot more reliable and dependable when you've moved them off the site into the hands of specialists working in data centers that have the redundancy and backup facilities that would cost too much for an individual school to put in - well, the school can always employ someone to resource that inhouse so that you aren't paying callout fees to support contractors. Ultimately if you believe your operation is so important that it's seriously going to be disrupted by a half hour power outage - readjust your horizons I think.

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[Pete Mundy]

Heya Rebecca

Whenever I work with a school that is looking to explore moving to a 'serverless' environment, I find the best place to start is to define a list of actual services that run on the server. Many smaller schools see their server as a bit of a black-box and don't realise that the individual services that it provides can be split up and provided in different ways. They don't have to all be on that one box, and they don't necessarily all have to be migrated to the same alternative location.

For example, if mail service has already been migrated 'to the cloud' (eg Google mail), the school only has a single unauthenticated 'shared folder' (which isn't that uncommon in Primary Schools!), and the SMS and library systems aren't running on the server anyway (eg Edge/eTap, and Access-It running on the library computer itself), then there may not be much need left for replacing and maintaining the server for another iteration. Especially if the school uses workstations that don't use domain credentials to log in (again, common in those with Macs and Chromebooks)

It may be that there is better value to be obtained from moving the DHCP service onto the (SNUP-supplied) core switch, and changing the DHCP-assigned DNS servers to use upstream DNS (ie N4L) instead of a local cache, then replacing the server itself with a simple cheap NAS box (if file-sharing is needed at all)

The correct answer differs from school to school, and from one school type to another (ie the needs of intermediates and colleges differ significantly to kindergartens and primaries).

So I find the best first step to make in determining the correct approach, is to define the list of services the server provides. Then one can get an idea of what the server actually does and take it from there.

Just my 2c :)

Pete

[Julian Davison]

I think Pete's got the plan sorted.

The requirements (and thus any 'cloud solution') depend heavily on what, exactly, you need done.

Typically the costs are prohibitive to take an existing on-site-server-based system and replicate it 'in the cloud'; equally, as various services (Google Apps, Office 365, Azure) evolve what was likely a good solution when the server(s) were installed may have been superseded (partly by the changing technology and partly by the way in which people make use of available resources).

The two key questions:

1. What does your system currently do

2. What do you *want* it to do for you

J,

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 2:24 PM, Pete Mundy <pe...@fiberphone.co.nz> wrote:

Heya Rebecca

Whenever I work with a school that is looking to explore moving to a 'serverless' environment, I find the best place to start is to define a list of actual services that run on the server. Many smaller schools see their server as a bit of a black-box and don't realise that the individual services that it provides can be split up and provided in different ways. They don't have to all be on that one box, and they don't necessarily all have to be migrated to the same alternative location.

For example, if mail service has already been migrated 'to the cloud' (eg Google mail), the school only has a single unauthenticated 'shared folder' (which isn't that uncommon in Primary Schools!), and the SMS and library systems aren't running on the server anyway (eg Edge/eTap, and Access-It running on the library computer itself), then there may not be much need left for replacing and maintaining the server for another iteration. Especially if the school uses workstations that don't use domain credentials to log in (again, common in those with Macs and Chromebooks)

It may be that there is better value to be obtained from moving the DHCP service onto the (SNUP-supplied) core switch, and changing the DHCP-assigned DNS servers to use upstream DNS (ie N4L) instead of a local cache, then replacing the server itself with a simple cheap NAS box (if file-sharing is needed at all)

The correct answer differs from school to school, and from one school type to another (ie the needs of intermediates and colleges differ significantly to kindergartens and primaries).

So I find the best first step to make in determining the correct approach, is to define the list of services the server provides. Then one can get an idea of what the server actually does and take it from there.

Just my 2c :)

Pete

On 26/10/2016, at 7:49 pm, Rebecca Ronald <r.ronald@maristcollege.school.nz> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm keen to hear feedback from schools who have moved their school servers onto 'the cloud' so that they are fully hosted online. My school is thinking about whether we want to go this way - whether it'll save us some money and whether it would slow down our network or have other unforeseen disadvantages. Please get back to me if you have experience of this in a school environment?

Apologies for cross-posting - I'll post this in a couple of places in the hope that I get some replies.

Ta

Rebecca

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[Rebecca Ronald]

Hmm.. more thinking to do.

Thank you for the replies and info.

We currently have two physical hosts and about 10 virtual servers. All are about to run out of warranty, hence the timing of this query. Our network support providers are suggesting online hosting of most things, and using the remaining free server space for media department files. All the schools that I've heard about with the services hosted in the cloud are primary - so I'm thinking that maybe the online model isn't as suitable for a secondary setting.

[Simon - OBHS]

I had a discussions with the two top hosting companies in NZ and both of them said not to do it because it comes down to cost and right now its not cost effective to do it, from my stand point at least.

I started these discussions as the boss wanted me to look into backing up offsite. We use Veeam as our backup software and it can backup to an endpoint provided by certain cloud vendors. The cost for the amount of storage required just for one year was enough to cover a new local server with the same amount of storage which could last me 4-5 years. Yes there are a lot of other factors, like my time to maintain it, power and the rest of that, but it still didn't add up.

[Patrick Dunford]

In my perspective the primary school curriculum is easy to justify being
wholly supported by cloud platforms such as Google Docs. I have worked
with a Y1-10 composite school that is finding it is not so easy to do
away with media production (music and video content) in the Y7-10
section of the school although there has been an overall push to get rid
of desktop computers and suites in favour of Chromebooks.

[Rob Wood]

Hard data as to cost is always good ;-)

We have two servers and a third data storage device. To replace like with like at the end of this year - quote was $75K including move/setup. Cost of a cloud solution $9K pa plus $15K one off setup cost. So cloud is compelling as to cost. We are a little anxious regarding the N4L connection/service but have been repeatedly assured we will get what we need to make this work well.

Approx 700 students and staff. Will post again in December as to how the move went. Visits or conversations off list are fine if you want more detail.

Rob Wood  

IT Manager 

Bayfield High

[Julian Davison]

How long do you tend to extract from your servers?

3 years?

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[Mike Etheridge]

I’d be shopping around. That seems steep.

Mike

On 28/10/2016, at 9:51 AM, Rob Wood <rw...@bayfield-high.school.nz> wrote:

$75K including move/setup

[Patrick Dunford]

Love to see the breakdown of that. We never paid more than $10,000 for a server and that was a pretty high spec one. Maybe your supplier charges 200% markup on hardware.

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[Julian Davison]

Depending on your preferred brand, and storage requirements, 10k (keep in mind the 75k is for a solution and migrating existing data) could be a touch light.

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[Mike Etheridge]

What? Are they going to charge their full rate while they sit there and watch a progress bar?

[Julian Davison]

I couldn't possibly comment on companies charging to watch progress bars :)

I'm also not suggesting that the cost is reasonable (I don't have enough information to do anything other than guess); but it's not hard to spend 10k on an HP server without any install time, nevermind integrating (or replicating) a full domain setup.

If we were talking 75k for only hardware (which is subsequently installed/migrated-to by an in-house tech) then we're in a different ballpark again.

J,

[Patrick Dunford]

What's the attraction of buying an HP server, we had servers built by Cyclone and other resellers using Intel components, *very* reliable and high spec.

Your cloud supplier is not quoting $75k for the simple reason they are not spending that much on hardware. They might only be speccing for a $10k hypervisor host that you are sharing with someone else. 

If the existing solution is virtualised the migration is as simple as copying a few VHD files, and as such does not warrant more than four figures.

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[Julian Davison]

I'm not promoting HP in particular, it's simply the brand I last saw quoted. Different people have different priorities. We could debate the merits of various brands, but it's not uncommon to find branded hardware in school infrastructure.

Otherwise, you're speculating. As I said earlier, without more details pricing is all guess work.

J,

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[WHS Ict Technician]

Would you care to ask for other quotes on that?

I'm sure many of us could be very competitive!

[Patrick Dunford]

15K one off setup cost would buy a pretty good server, 9k ongoing costs to rent their building, pay power bills etc.

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[flow in]

i was thinking more of the on-site side of things.
Cloud is great for everything except moving data. hence us bringing KAMAR back onsite.

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[gre...@staff.cbhs.school.nz]

For the last 3 years, we leased our servers at $8k p.a. (1500 students&staff).
Might be another option to consider if you're going by yearly $.

- Ben.

On Friday, October 28, 2016 at 9:51:58 AM UTC+13, Rob Wood wrote:

[ictdi...@kowhai.school.nz]

Hi Rebecca - we have just gone through this process, our main virtual host server was 4.5 years old and coming up for replacement, plus we needed to get the infrastructure in place to be able to roll out BYOD next year (500 chromebook devices). Our students and teachers have Google accounts so that has eliminated our exchange server and greatly reduced the load on the server for storing documents. We used to use musac on a local server for our student management system, library and finance systems. We have moved these all to the cloud using eTAP, Access-IT and Xero respectively. It should be noted that the library system crashed twice in the first week of our using it! (Supposedly the only time that has happened in 7 years) so going cloud doesn't guarantee uninterrupted service!

For our main server we approached two suppliers: one who quoted on a physical box and the other who gave two options, physical and cloud. We ended up going with the first supplier with a physical box ($15K) while the other quoted $30k for a physical box and $15k for cloud but with hosting costs of $7k/year. Two interesting pieces of advice from our BoT members were 1) Once you get rid of your own servers and go cloud it can be tricky to pull them back down if things don't work out or if you want to go back to a physical box/change supplier 2) Your supplier has you over a barrell with hosting fees and these can/will creep up over time. The general 'feel' we got was that the full cloud hosting solutions were still a reasonably you product and weren't quite there yet, also there was a financial disincentive to go with them! However when our new server comes up for replacement in 3-5 years time I'm sure cloud will be a lot more competitive.

Good luck!

[Patrick Dunford]

I hear tell the Ministry is sponsoring a cloud trial out your way, be interesting what the school's costs were.

On 28/10/16 11:59, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

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