Schools Broadband – Network Manager Meeting Minutes
19th April 2016
Attendees
Siân Shordon
Gemma Phillips
Adrian Godley
Mark Burland
Nick Langman
Sarah Madge
Chris Brown
Chris De Vries
Lynne Feaver
Sarah Cannon
Julia Tozer
Darryl Lidford
Steve Page
Leon Krol
TanvirAhammod
Brenda Vallance
10 Gig Upgrade
The upgrade was as planned initiated over the school’s Easter break. The transfer to London Hosting went ahead without incident to free up Virtus. When the “hot swappable” 10 Gig card was installed into the core device it restarted the device which caused the drop in service to be experienced by some other customers causing a pause in work.
During the upgrade it became apparent that there were issues with the LHC firewall and the service desk had to restore a number of NATTED addresses.
Following the upgrade, a week after failing back onto Virtus it became apparent that there were DNS errors and a HTTPs issue that is believe to be related. The fault was found to be that the Virtus DNS slaves had failed to reconnect to the Master DNS which is housed in LHC.
AP (Action Point)Darryl mentioned that his school were still finding some sites slow to load with an error about proxy tunnelling sometimes showing although once loaded the websites seemed to worked fine – Adrian to get this looked into.
Therefore due to the NAT issues and delays in the process and testing only the Virtus data centre was upgraded over Easter. Work was also completed to install but not publicise two transparent proxy servers to be implemented once the upgrades have been fully completed.
Plans have been made for the London Hosting site to be transferred over starting this week – Thursday 21st April 2016.
Virtus now has capacity to hold all of the schools and has been left uncapped to ensure that as little disruption as possible is experienced by the schools this week. To begin with all of the schools will be transferred to Virtus and the monitored for at least two days to allow for any errors encountered to be fixed. Once DUCL are satisfied that everything all schools are able to work on Virtus they will then use it as a master to upgrade London Hosting on Monday 25th April.
Once this work is complete, all of the schools will be able to “fail over” to either of the sites if needed. DUCL anticipate that there may be some NAT issues on the 21/22 April 2016 as the firewall solutions at Virtus and London Hosting are now different. Schools are encouraged to log any anomalies they may experience from 21st April 2016 with the DUCL Helpdesk.
Service Improvement Road Map
Siânshared the Presentation she gave to last terms EPHA meetings including current Road Map of Service Improvement that schools broadband Team and DUCL are currently working on based on feedback and requirements from customers.
This is being worked on at present and Siân will share an updated version once it has been presented to the Schools Forum in May.
AP - Schools were asked to advise if there were any other additions that they feel should part of this map.
(The presentation can be found here: Schools Broadband - Latest News)
Attix5
Adrian and Siân advised that the decision has been made to stay with the Attix5 solution but with a different supplier and with an extension to the service so that schools can purchase additional storage and back up “everything” that they wish to. There will also be a provision added to be able to back up virtual machines. The pricing will be competitive as research has been completed by Siân and DUCL are now working commercially with Redstor who own Attix5.
Pricing will be available by the end of June 2016 and the conversion from the current support to the new support will be completed over the summer holidays. There may be updates required to the software and /or the client to enable to additional features. Further information will be provided once a process has been confirmed with Redstor & DUCL.
Windows Update Server
DUCL are awaiting for the full 10 Gig upgrade to be completed to see if that work improved the update downloads enough to negate the need for a sever. If this is deemed to not be sufficient when it is reviewed in August 2016 then DUCL will look to add a server for this.
Windows 10 upgrades may reduce the need for assistance with this due to way in which it distributes updates to devices.
Firewall Options
As discussed at the last Network Manager Meeting schools are looking to be compliant with the Prevent Agenda and are looking for tool to help them achieve this.
In response to this DUCL have partnered with a major firewall provider who have written some code for them which meet the prevent agenda requirements.
This code will be much easier to set up and run that the current Netsweeper and is can be used for Active Directory (AD) integration and will force compliance with personal devices under Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). It requires a small agent to be installed on devices.
This is due to be released for Beta testing later this year and has been written to work on all size set ups.
DUCL Help Desk Log On
Schoolswere reminded that they can request a log on so they can view their schools current and historic requests and incidents to help keep track of what is logged by their site.
The portal can be also be used to raise calls and update with additional or requested information.
The process for P1 incidents was explained – that individual school incidents are closed and associated with the P1 Incident and the P1 reference provided in the closure update.
AP – Siân to confirm with DUCL if schools can access P1 incident information from their log on.
Bring Your Own Device - BYOD
Siân has been investigating possible options for this provision which is still in the design stage at present. Further updates to be provided once options have been explored – this is on the Road Map.
RM Antivirus Refunds/Renewals.
Brenda advised that she has been told by RM that they had had no contact from schools Broadband or DUCL despite numerous emails being sent to Simon Camp at RM by Siân. DUCL have also been in contact.
Siân advised that she has requested an up to date list from RM of the schools with our provision that they support and therefore provide their antivirus software to. The latest list provided by RM was found to be very inaccurate.
Service Level Agreements - SLA.
A new improved document has been drafted and is intended to be sent out to schools this month once it has been signed off. This will replace the existing documentation that was sent out to academy schools in Autumn 2014.
Value For Money Report.
The Schools forum have commissioned an external third party to complete a value for money report in additional to the one provided contractually by DUCL. The work is due to be completed in July and the findings will be first presented to the schools forum.
Support for Primary Schools
The schools Broadband Team have received a number of calls from primary schools, particularly smaller ones, who are being advised by third parties that they need work completed and/or additional equipment as well as upgrades to their connections that we cannot see an immediate requirement for. They have contacted the schools broadband team for technical advice as they do not have the expertise within their staff to critically assess their needs against the costs and advice they are being given.
Therefore Siân asked if any of the schools would be happy to provide the much needed technical advice for a charge to any primary schools in their area that might require it. Several schools happily agreed to do so for schools in their area and expressed concern for the primary schools being possibly mislead.
Next Meeting
The next meeting was agreed for Tuesday 5th July 2016 at 2.00pm at County Hall Chelmsford.
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