I am posting the handout from Sunday’s presentation.

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This is a webcasting class.
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I am trying everything one last time before the conference on Sunday
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I am testing this blog for a presentation I am giving at the Brainstorm conference in Wisconsin Dells on Sunday 2/28.  If you are signed up to attend go ahead and register for this blog.  Or you can wait until Sunday.
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No it is not that I have too much time, keeping up a blog takes more time than I have right now.  As you can tell from the dates of posts I have not been maintaining the blog so I am making it official.  Untill I can rearrange my life I am putting this blog on hiatus.

Mark

This summer was a disaster for me.  Three major projects and none were 100% ready for the first day of school, let alone my normal tasks.  Oh a couple were just about ready, like the server virtualization and the physical network upgrade, but my attempt to make the network Microsoft free hit multiple snags, mostly a lack of time.

While the server virtualization went pretty smoothly and was done on time (Except for a few tweeks when students got back), the network upgrade was three weeks late and took up much more of my time than I expected.  All in all I bit off way more than I could chew this summer and I am still paying the price.  It is now the second week of school and there are still labs that are not up and running and most staff computers need updates.

I did get Samba running for file serving and print serving (well I still have one group of printers not working with all apps).  My attempt at using LDAP for autentication was put on a back burnner.  As I get more time I will post more details on what I did get done, and what I didn’t.  Along with my impressions of the software, but for now back to getting our Bus Tech lab up and running, only two more PC’s!

Another big part of my summer upgrades is server virtualization.  I was able to purchase 2 VMWare certified servers from Aberdeen for less than Dell, HP and they come with a five year warranty.  I also bought another server that I will use without virtualization.  That third server will run network services, printing, DNS, DHCP and our disk based back ups. I felt that because it is such an important server I did not want to add a layer of complexity at his time.  Maybe in the future.

A quick digression on sserver naming.  I do not use cryptic but rational names like HS_01_files.  Out district’s team mascot is a pirate, so all of our servers are named after pirates.  When I was naming our virtual hosts, instead of pirates, I named them after pirate ships.  So we have the host server Dorada with virtual machines like Hook, Lafitte and Crunch.  For you trivia buffs figure out the significance of the name Dorada.

So back to planning.  The two host servers are each dual quad-core Intel processors, 2.2ghz.  There is 32 gb of RAM and a hardware RAID array with about a terrabyte of storage. The server has two gigabit Ethernet ports.  The first server, Guppy, will host three virtual machines.  One for our student management system running on Ubuntu.  The second will host our financial database running on Suse and the third is for those apps that can’t live without Windows, in this case Windows 2003 server.  The only version of Linux our financial database will support is Suse.  All other instance of Linux are Ubuntu.  I decided to give each Linux server 2 processors, 2 gig of RAM and 200 gb of hard drive space.  Windows I gave 4 processors, 2 gig of RAM and 200 gb of hard drive.  All three servers are 32 bit systems because of application support issues, that is way they have only 2gb of RAM.  This was the easy server to provision.  Most of the decisions were made for me.  The Windows virtual machine will host Skyward, Spectrum (library automation), Accelerated reader, Riverdeep software, and some keyboarding programs.

Enough for today.  Next time more on my planning for the upgrade.  I have also started trying to figure out this Wiki thing.  I hope to have how to documents up for group collaboration.

This is a lesson in ignoring the tech coordinator.

Our district decided to go with Skyward for our financial management.  I was not in on any early discussions, not was I invited to meet with anyone from Skyward.  I asked and was sent a requirements and recommendations manual.  However I was not told WHAT product we purchased.  All I knew was financials.  They listed the specs for the database and app server so I figured that was what we needed.  I emailed the specs to the server we had ordered, a VWware certified server from Aberdeen.  I also told them we would run Linux.  I was told they only supported Suse Linux 10, so I bought a subscription for it.

Now we get to the lack of communications.  I was told by my bookkeeper that Skyward would be out on so and so date to install the software.  The server was not yet delivered so we had to change dates.  Now Skyward is getting impatient because we are not ready for the install.  I get the server, install ESXi and configure it (my first time with VMware) which took most of a day.  Then I installed Suse which took the rest of the day.  I let them know I was ready for the install.  That is when they sprung the first gotcha on me, I was going to do the install with phone support.  So instead of showing them where the server was and the password I had make time to do the install.  I called Skyward to ask what I needed to have on Suse as I had the LAMP package and the Gnome GUI.  I was told that should be good and they could walk me through any thing else.

Tuesday comes and I get the call.  After discussing the server I had set up I was asked about the web server.  What web server I wondered?  Well of course the web server I needed.  I said I had Apache on the Suse box and was told that there web product needed IIS.  But I was not told about any web product.  Well the tech would check.  He got back to me we needed Windows 2003 server with IIS for the products we purchased.

Luckily I had just ordered one copy of Win2008 and it was available to download.  So after about a six hour download I spent today installing and configuring Win2008.  Now I am wondering they did say 2003, so I have a conference call with Skyward scheduled for tomorrow so we can get it right this time.

Isn’t life as a Tech Coordinator fun?

Mark

So why am I going through the pain of a huge network upgrade this summer?  Two letters, NT.  Yes I still am running Windows NT as my NOS.  NT has had a long a steady life.  Up until recently it has done every thing I wanted it to do.  But in the last year or so I have been having issues, incompatibility issues.  For some reason modern network aware software does not like NT.  Go figure.  I have done some work arounds and done without, but I always knew the day would come, I would have to say good bye to an old friend.

Earlier this year the inevitable became reality.  Our PDC, a 10 year old Compaq Proliant server died.  It didn’t just die, it took the hard drives with it.  However because once and a while I do follow best practices, I had a BDC ready to be promoted so I was good to go.  But I knew the time had come. NT’s days were numbered.

I had been planning for the replacement for NT over the last 4 or 5 years.  It was simple, go with a newer Windows, Mac Server X, Novell or Linux. Because I have had no experience with Mac’s and they cost a whole bunch of money, I quickly eliminated them.  Novell is now Linux so I lumped them together.  It was down to a new Windows or Linux.

From my perspective I needed to determine if Linux could do everything I need a network to do. I made three lists, what I knew it could do, what I knew it could NOT do and unknown. The couldn’t do list is pretty short. Linux can not run Internet Information Server (IIS) or our library automation software, Spectrum. I needed to run IIS for the web interface to Spectrum and our Student Management System(SMS). It appears that I still would need Windows.

The unknown list has a few items mostly network based elementary school programs. So I have decided to run one Windows server until I can eliminate the unknowns and can’t works. I will also use IIS for our web site on a separate server. I have a fairly new HP server running Windows Server 2003 – Internet edition, so that will continue to be my IIS server.

So why Linux? I believe in Free software, both free as in beer and speech. A school district never has a lot of money and I’m cheap. I don’t look for the best something, I look for what is good enough. Personally I would love to drive a nice Italian sports car, but I can’t afford it so I drive a Subaru, it may not be the best, but it is good enough. Free (as in no cost) software may not be the best, but it is good enough to do the job I need done.

Free as in not propriety is also important. As a school we must think long term, not months or years, but decades. Will proprietary software still be supported next decade? We can see with NT it might not. Linux most likely will be supported, because anyone can support it, not just the manufacturer.

Wait I hear you screaming, What about training?? If you don’t know how to use Linux you will need to learn and that costs money and time. Yes that’s true. But so does learning a new version of Windows. Have you ever checked out how much classes in Microsoft Server Certification cost? Because I know NT, I would have to learn an all new model. Instead of learning Windows and being locked in to Microsoft products, I learned (and am still learning) Linux.

My distro of choice for this project will be Ubuntu.

Enough ramblings for today, more next time on my planning process for the summer upgrade.