South West Grid for Learning

South West Grid for Learning
IT Support Services, Hardware and Software Upgrades, Office Relocation

Customer Background
The South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) is a not for profit, charitable trust company, funded by 15 Local Authorities across the South West of England. SWGfL provide maintained schools and many other educational establishments throughout the region with safe, secure and reliable broadband Internet connectivity; broadband-enabled learning resources, services, help, support and advice in using the Internet safely.

The SWGfL Trust has evolved into a leading educational organisation in the South-West, facilitating regional collaboration and development. In conjunction with local teachers, a number of exciting and innovative, regionally based digital learning resources have been developed which follow the teaching of the National Curriculum and contribute to the wider National Education Network (NEN).

The Challenge
SWGfL were looking to appoint a 3rd party to provide technical support and advice for the SWGfL Project Team. This covered supporting of servers, desktop computers and laptops for both the office based and remote users. They required a fast response time to computing issues as well as planned maintenance and health reports of their systems. It was planned they would be relocating offices due to their contract expiring at the current location. The move required the relocation of all computers and peripherals, changes to existing network infrastructure and potentially re-configuration of their WAN. During this, they also wished to upgrade their client computers to Microsoft Office 2007 from Microsoft Office 2003 to take advantage of newer features and better integration with their existing mail server. It would also mean that all users were running a standardized version of the software rather than multiple versions with different compatibility and functionality.

A closer inspection of their existing systems highlighted that there was no solution for the backing up and recovery of any company data in the event of a system failure. The potential risk from this could result in data being irreversibly lost should there be a failure within the server or if a user accidentally deleted a file. For management purposes, there was a requirement to have a complete database of all I.T assets owned by the company. This required all hardware to be tagged with a corresponding asset number to allow for it to be search for in the asset database. It also showed the status of hardware, versions of software installed as well as warranty expiration dates and device specification.

The current single server that was in use by the Project Team was severely below the required specification. The server was lacking in any form of redundancy and had no failover capacity. The results of this could have been prolonged periods of downtime and loss of important company data. The users also wished to receive emails on their handheld Blackberry smartphones. Upon completion of this stage SWGfL then required an upgrade of their existing accounts software to a higher product. The IT requirements for this were a dedicated Microsoft SQL Server integrated into the existing domain network infrastructure. A proposal was put forward to utilise existing hardware or install dedicated equipment.

In mid-2010, SWGfL required to relocate for a second time into a new dedicated office. The requirements included project management to oversee the relocation of servers, computers, hot desks and peripherals as well as arranging for changes to the WAN configuration. Additionally a requirement for a new IP system for up to 25 users was required.

The Solution
South West Grid for Learning signed up to AME’s Platinum support contract giving them a 4 hour guaranteed response, monthly server status reports which monitor and document 16 different areas most likely to affect overall server performance. Some of these include:

• Processor usage.
• Hard Drive usage & free capacity.
• Memory usage & free capacity.
• System Event logs for identifying and resolving errors reported by the operating system.

Through the use of readily available remote desktop viewing software, AME Solutions are able to provide remote support to both office and remote users and assist them in resolving any IT issues they may encounter.
Next was their minor office relocation which was between two buildings in the same area. AME moved all of the computers, hot desks & re-configured the network to give access to all of the devices once again. During this process AME upgraded all of the client computers to Office 2007. By taking advantage of planned downtime to perform this task the results were minimum interference for the end users.

A new backup server was installed in early 2010. The purpose of this server was to allow for the backing up of Shared Company Data, Users Data, Accounts Data, Exchange user’s mailboxes & ‘brick level’ email recovery. The server was also configured as a Domain Controller to take some of the load from the Main server and to allow for failover capacity if one of the servers was to fail. The server was installed with Windows Server 2008 R2, as it was to be used as a second Domain Controller with a planned installation of a new Main Server. The result was both servers running the most recent operating system, allowing full integration and control of Windows 7.

AME have implemented Asset Tracking software to allow for the logging & documentation of SWGfL’s I.T assets. All hardware including servers, computers, laptops, printers, scanners and monitors were documented, tagged and logged into the asset tracking software. The software has the capability to generate reports to keep track of when warranties expire on hardware and list hardware specification to help identify equipment under specified for the purpose.

AME replaced the existing project team server in May 2010. To give it the redundancy that the previous server lacked, it was installed with multiple hard drive arrays as well as redundancy for the PSU and fans. The server was installed with Windows Server 2008 R2 & Exchange Server 2010 to allow for newer features for both office and remote users as well as future proofing for the eventual upgrade to a newer client operating system. All existing data was migrated from the previous server before it was removed from the network altogether. This install was carried out over a weekend to minimise downtime to end users. On the following Monday morning an engineer was provided onsite to resolve any minor issues that any users had.

The SWGfL finance team had a requirement to upgrade their accounts software. This required AME to prepare and install a new Microsoft SQL Server for the database. Upon provisioning the new server AME liaised with the 3rd party installing the accounts software to assist them. Due to the company’s expansion they had outgrown their current office and required to move to their own dedicated office. AME managed the installation and testing of the network infrastructure as well as managing the relocation of all computers, laptops and servers to the new office. This required liaising with 3rd parties to arrange for reconfiguration some of their systems at specific times during the office move as well as prioritising bringing staff back online.

The Benefits
As a result of the 18 month project, South West Grid for Learning has three new servers, each having their own failover capacity and redundancy. This not only meets their existing needs but also gives room for expansion should they require. The new backup solution allows for data to be recovered in up to 5 minutes, and also allows for a full disaster recovery should the worst happen. The users have a standardised version of Microsoft Office across the organisation which supports the latest functionality with the new email server. The SQL Server is currently used for accounts software but has capacity to be used for other database applications. SWGfL now have infrastructure in place which allows for rapid and/or simple expansion when required.