school network

[HomeSA]

I am volunteer parent at my kids' school. After a lot of hard work I managed to arrange a corporate donation of 100+ used desktops (also printers, servers, etc) to the school. We picked up some of the equipment this week. The school is very weak and behind times in the use of IT. There is a network installed but hardly any existing computer is networked. We already have 1-2 servers running Windows 2003.

The desktops are mostly P4 Dell and Compaq brand with hard drives wiped clean.

I am not a PC tech but I suspect individual OS and application loading and maintenance is not the way to go. What's an efficient way?

When the PCs are on the network, besides Windows 2003, what kind of software would we need to manage and control the PCs remotely?

What other things should we consider as part of the school network setup? I know we have some kind of virus protection at the server level. Our website is hosted at a web hosting service. We just setup email accounts for the employees. That's all I know.

Someone told us to look into Microsoft SMS. What is it exactly? Do we need it?

It must be obvious by now that I am as noob as it can be when it comes to networks. So I am probably not even asking the right questions.

Any and all hints and directions would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

[Erik]

Well you do want to manage everything (or at least as much as possible) from the server. Installs can be handled by Remote Installation Services (RIS). It is a part of Windows Server, and you basically copy Windows XP to the server, and configure the server as an install source. Then just boot the PC with a PXE NIC and it will pretty much do an automated install of Windows and any other applications you need. Setup can be a bit tricky though, you need to have volume keys for all the software, and a script to call each application install after the bse OS. It is worth the effort though, the thought of manually setting up an OS and applications on over 100 PCs seems like an invitation for trouble.

You can read about SMS here: http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/default.mspx

It is a server based management software. Now how much you really manage from a server will depend on what kind of servers you have (and how many of them) and your budget and experience. Diving in trying to mnage everything with a bunch of software packages but no experience won't work. Each packages will have a learning curve with it, and having a bunch of software that nobody can use is a waste. I would say the very least would be a AV solution (Symantec Corporate is good), and Windows Server Update Service to pply patches and hotfixes to all computers in the network. Then you just add your computers into the domain and use group policies to enforce whatever controls are wanted. You will probably also want some kind of proxy to filter out what websites can be visited and which are blocked, as well as a good firewall.

This is really a big project. You have a lot of things to consider with it. Having a school computer lab you need to find a good balance between giving enough access rights to allow students to do work, and keep them from doing anything that would be harmful to the school or the computers.

[HomeSA]

Thanks Erik. I appreciate your feedback. The school is an elementary/junior school and there are two computer labs where 40 of the desktops will go replacing aging Macs.

The rest of the desktops will go into each classroom, library, science lab, etc, and have to be networked.

Right now I am trying to find the right place at Dell and Compaq to call and see if I can get restore CDs donated or purchased inexpensively (mixure of W2K and XP) which will probably eliminate the possibility of network install. Our other option is to buy XP Pro for all desktops. I am chasing restore CDs to eliminate device driver problems.

MS Office 2003 will be the standard desktop application.

We have 2 servers and I am getting 3 more. I have no idea how all these servers will be used, contacted, and so on. We'll have to sort all that out.

I'll pass your suggestions to our newely hired IT guy at the school. He is a new college graduate without experience with networks.

Thank you again for your guidance.

[Variable]

The recovery cd's are from the manufacturer are a good thing to have but they are not what you want to use to set up each machine. If they are office machines they may be identical, if this is the case there is a much better solution. You set one PC up and get it joined to the domain, patch it up to date add your software like AV. Configure it with your preferences by removing any programs added by the restore CD that will not be used. Many times junk software is installed with a factory restore. Once it is perfect, you use Ghost to snap an image and burn it to a CD along with a sys prep file. You then boot the machine with a ghost floppy and image the drive from the cd. You can burn multiple copies of the image and do many computers at once. Advantage of this is that if the students hose an install you can easily go back to default installation with no reconfiguration issues. All the software and preferences are set up. If you have several different types of PC's you may have to have multiple ghost CD's that contain specific drivers for individual brands, but only if the default windows drivers don't work.

Here is a good step by step.

http://blog.hishamrana.com/2006/02/22/how-to-image-windows-xp-with-ghost-and-sysprep/

Ghost and sys prep is the way to go for large enviroments. there are other disk imaging applications that work too.

[Erik]

That is why I recommended RIS. You do an install off of the server, add in any needed drivers, and it will work for any type of PC. No need for different CDs and builds to keep track of. It is more work initially to do, but you end up with a more uniform setup. Another plus is you kick off a rebuild by just booting up the PC and choosing to boot to PXE first.

[HomeSA]

Thank you for all the tips. We found a parent who owns a software business and offered to help. I am just returning from a meeting with him and his employees. They talked in the exact language as you folks and will be coming to school to take care of any and all installs. They even donated some office furniture. I am very happy about that and feel very relieved. My challenege now is to get all the players, that is; the IT tech, PC lab instructors, other IT volunteer parents to play nice together. I already see some egos at play as far as who knows the best and most. Gee wiz, now I am dealing with too many cooks in the kitchen. But I can handle that :cool:

I guess I went off tangent on my post. Sorry

[jlreich]

I already see some egos at play as far as who knows the best and most.
I know what you mean. About a year ago I really wanted to volunteer at my kids school when they were setting up computers and networking everything at a new building that was just finished.

But apparently the other guy who had been helping for awhile doesn't like to work with others. :rolleyes: Even though I am very easy to get along with and have no problem doing things the other guys way, I was not able to help. The principle told me there were already several problems with a couple of guys arguing about how things should be done. Dang, leave the ego at home guys. :rolleyes: :(

[Variable]

IT people tend to try to use what they know, not necessarily what is best. Many IT people never learn new tricks and do things by rote. The best solution is to put one person, who is the most experienced, in charge, document the procedure and test it.

In your enviroment I would stress simplicity. Whatever solution is decided upon, it should be the simplest to implement so that, there is little requirement for expert help during normal operations. You want the teacher or volunteer to be able to fix any issues simply and with little technical experience. You may train a group this year and they all understand the procedure fine, but the next years group may be totally new people. This is why simple, repeatable, written instructions are key. Always keep the old adage K.I.S.S. in mind.

[Erik]

Egos can be a pretty big problem. I know that sometimes it can be gotten over though and then you can work together well.

When I started working at this one place the part time network consultant there was pretty against my involvement. At first I was just setting up some monitoring and logging. When I would ask him for passwords or any information he would act as if I wanted tot ake his job. In reality I was there to help him, so he wouldn't need to be onsite for everyt little minor issue. Anyway at one point through the monitoring and logging software I noticed some misconfigured devices, no major problems, just things that should be corrected. I passed this along to the client, basically as a justifcation of the $10,000+ they spent to get the software up and running. He took it as a knock to him that he did his job wrong. After a while we are now friends and have no problems, and work together for all issues.

ANyway in your case yes, the simpler the better. If you have a new tech right out of school I would be really careful, I speak from experience. I haven't been doing this for too long, but I have seen a lot of messes created by people who just go and set things up so they "work". Set everything up simple as possible, and create a set of very good clear documentation. This way you know what everything is and where it is. Keep this updated, that way in a year when there is a problem you can hand off this book to whoever is working at the time.

[SteveLee]

We recently installed a little over 100 computers in our elementary school. 36 Dell Gx620's in the computer lab, 36 IBM netvistas and about 36 Compaqs across campus.

We basically just followed routine IT methods of standardizing our desktop installs and user configurations then imaging that setup to our other computers.
Here is a quickie overview of our procedure:

1) Standardize : The Dells and IBMS all had XP pro and Compaqs had XP home. On one machine from each brand, we gutted all the trial software and non-educational junk that came with the computers and just left the OS, the office apps and installed our educational apps and corporate antivirus.

We then configured the desktops, menus, quick launch, drive mappings, printer installs etc. and tested all the apps. We setup favorites, links, toolbars and other user configurations until we were happy with them.


2) Imaging: Once we had one machine from each brand in our standard 'ideal' setup, we simply created a clone image and stored that image on a shared folder on a file server on our LAN. We then imaged all the machines across the network from that fileserver, about 10 at a time. we'd do about 20-30 machines a day and then set up another 10 to clone themselves overnight on our way out the door.

After machines were done imaging, we'd just go in and run winternals program NewSID to change the machines system ID , join the workgroup and give it a new unique name. (Workgroup = LAB, name = lab-01).

We used no-cost / open source imaging software called G4U "ghost for unix" that worked flawlessly.

3) Remote access: The IBMs' and DELLS with XP pro were configured with microsoft's remote desktop so we could remote control the machines and make changes and configs from anywhere on campus by admins with the proper password login credentials.

4) Between class restorals: We now use the Microsoft shared toolkit that allows us to 'restore on reboot" any machine in the computer lab. Our machines get used by 850 kids per week, and no matter what they delete or install or wreck, we simply reboot the machines and the shared toolkit rolls (restores) the machines back to their original pristine state. The shared toolkit is a freebie, and we use a remote mass shutdown tool from intelliadmin to do reboots between class sessions as needed.