ADVIS Network Administrators - 4/9/2008

from Bill Jacoby:

ADVIS network administrator meeting notes (4/9/08)
First topic raised was the integration of Macs into a Windows network. General consensus was that it was a difficult process to integrate the Mac into the Active Directory environment. Chestnut Hill is moving strongly to Macs and has had an Apple consultant on site to help guide the process and have promised to share what they learn. Chestnut Hill was told that X Server was a requirement for successful integration but that the machine could be relatively unsophisticated. An issue raised was the ability to use Group Policy on the Mac, but there were no members doing this at this time. One school had an X Server but had not integrated it into the Directory. The general system used by Mac integrators in the schools was to create aliases for resources and have users enter credentials on the aliases.

Shipley raised a concern about Vista hardware requirements and the ability to have users comfortable with the OS should schools be forced to use Vista due to the inability of XP to run on new hardware (due to lack of XP drivers for new hardware – apparently some new Dell laptops purchased with Vista were not able to be downgraded to XP because drivers – particularly video drivers did not exist for the new hardware in XP). Chestnut Hill has decided to move to OS X instead of Vista. Some schools suggested that the transition to Vista would be accomplished on a “box by box” basis – as new computers are added to the network, they would retain Vista. Chestnut Hill said that they buy new boxes in Linux and then ghost them into the Microsoft OS as the licenses are already there for MS. CHA also said that since the Dell fiscal year ends January 31st, they offer half price deals at that time to clear the decks for the new year.
CHA asked about “one to one” laptop programs. Hill School said that the students own the laptops, and while they have a Dell certified tech on staff, they send out the damaged laptops. One student apparently destroyed 4 laptops in 8 weeks. Hill has Complete Care, and Dell replaces destroyed laptops. It was agreed by the gathered administrators that a laptop program almost required either a complete care program, or the hiring of a tech dedicated just to laptop upkeep, which they estimated would require a $45,000 salary. CHA said that they make teachers administrators on their laptops, with the stipulation that if anything goes wrong, all they will do is reimage (all data must be stored on the network), however, CHA also has no policy as to what is stored on the network, so that things like music files are fair game for network storage.

Shipley raised the issue of programs being brought into the network that bypassed security. They had found some programs intended to overcome network security installed on some of their computers. While some schools don’t allow students to install programs, the use of CDs and thumb drives seems to be a point of entry that is not controlled. Multiple programs to monitor and manage the network were discussed – I’ll research some of these and see if anything sounds promising.

Backup techniques were discussed – some schools have abandoned tape entirely and use a backup to disk system and then archive those backups onto external hard drives that they store off site. CHA looked into offside backup as a service and deemed it too expensive. In terms of what is backed up, CHA does not worry about backing up email – they claimed that even when the headmaster asked if they could recover old email, the answer was no. Most schools also do not impose quotas on user storage, but we didn’t get into the backup issues that unlimited storage must cause. Interestingly enough, most schools do put hard limits on email storage including stopping mail for those who exceed their storage space. I asked about the need to archive email for legal reasons, but the consensus seemed to be that it was not required. CHA asked their legal staff about this, but did not hear back as of the meeting.

Finally, the issue of consultants was raised – CHA uses CommSolutions, Shipley uses Omacrom (sp?) - another name thrown about was Expert Technologies (?). Most schools said that when they had a project that was complex (installing or upgrading SQL or Exchange for example) they would hire a consultant to help them walk through the project.