Figure I would do a brief recap of our wireless solution selection. We had 3 primary vendors, Cisco, Aruba, and Entrasys as finalist. Cisco was the encumbant and the eventual winner. Each had pieces we liked, and each had portions we didn't like.
Aruba -- far and away the best software and management pieces out of all the vendors. the ability to manage clients outshone cisco and entrasys greatly. Their AmigoPod appliance for access control was a game changer. The access points themselves were solid with an almost industry standard 3*3 MiMO. It seemed obvious to us that Aruba focused a lot of their work on the development of the client and administrator experience.
Cisco -- Ah, my love-hate relationship. Cisco's ability to develop some of the most powerful and industry leading technology such as the 3600 series access points put them clearly above their competitors on the hardware side. Clean air, 4 spatial streams all good things. Then their issues. Developing a good back-end management and-or user experience is secondary (and i'm being nice here). Cisco, from my experience, does not know how to develop management tools nor completely understand customer user requirements. Trying to figure out how to get MSE, ISE, and NCS to all play nicely and work well is ..a challenge. Luckily, we did hire an integrator to help deploy the solution and we are finding our way. I'll delve more into this as we go along.
Entrasys -- was very inexpensive. The ability to integrate policy for APs and entrasys switches was impressive. The management tools were ok. It wasn't like they were completely integrated, but they did all exist under a common "launcher". However, we did not have entrasys switches and this caused the solution to lose some luster. The ability to track over time wasn't quite as good as the two other competitors. We tend to get complaints after the frustration is built-up. For example, a campus will not tell us for -months- that they had wireless issues in hallway b on thursday until they tell a board member. So, we are left scrambling. Unfortunately, entrasys could not replay the wireless maps as well as cisco or aruba. Perusing a log file isn't enough nowadays.
Anyhow, basic coverage on what we saw and considered. There were others (not Meru) but did not make it to the finalist for a variety of reason.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Typical Summer Projects and Tasks
Ah, a typical summer. There isn't one! Maybe. Usually there is some large project(s) taking place such as rolling out a new imaging and app tool (KACE), or migrating email from groupwise to exchange, or deploying new teacher stations to our teacher, deploying new phones, deploying new wireless, deploying MDM solutions, etc. The projecs will eat a large percentage of everyones time.. There are vacations which happen. The rest of the time is doing maintenance type work. Reimage all the labs back to a good image. Leaving computers with kids during the school year invites a lot of ..um..interesting modifications to both the machine and OS. I heartily thank those teachers and campuses who manage to keep their kids on task and not destroying the equipment. I know it isn't easy, so thanks. Also, we consider summer only from the last day of school to when administrators come back. That is about 6-8 weeks at most.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Restarting
Let's see if I can keep this going. Another document to write at the end of a day of composing and reading mail seems like a bundle of joy. Maybe treat use this as catharsis. or documentation for the therapist. either way.
Its spring, but it is summer for Technology is schools. Yeah, school is taking place, the kids, teachers, campus admins, and parents are going through the testing grinders (sorry boys & girls), but Technology is moving into summer mode. Project mode. This going to be a fun one! Here are the projects:
First, lets migrate from a mixed PBX/IP phone to a fully IP based phone solution. And implement Cisco Emergency Responder. And Cisco Presence. Swapping out ~3000 phones is going to be a logistical exercise. Summer starts June 11. People return about Aug 1 (campus admins). 8 weeks. I don't like the math there a whole lot. Scary.
We are also deploying about 1000 access points to 40ish sites. Yay. Wireless everywhere! We have to cable, hang aps, configure guest and user policies. align those with BYOD policies, local and state policies. (policy one more time cause). Again, the math there is scary. 1000 aps, 40 locations, 8 weeks.
Turn up another 25TB of storage for...something. Goldfish theory explained! user data is like a goldfish. It'll grow to the size of the bowl. so, if you buy a bigger bowl, you end up with a bigger goldfish. So, do you police your goldfish or buy a bigger bowl. yeah, you see my answer. Actually, the majority of the people in environments, once notified of excessive use will reduce their usage or delete the copy of the copy of the copy...Even then, the goldfish grows. Baffling.
Those are the ones I have direct control over. now the ones technology is a participant, but not necessarily a driver or implementer.
Construction! yes, these folks are our frienemies. We get along well, but we but heads on occasion with architects, engineers and the actual construction people. No one wins every battle, but we've all come to fairly good standing with each other on our needs. Architects want pretty and useful (and to meet the customers needs, which is technically my employer too, but that's another story). Engineers have to provide some services within those pretty and useful spaces while keeping it pretty. Sometimes pretty makes it difficult to hide 8" water mains, hvac ducts and returns, lights, alarms, cameras in a confined spaces which leads us to the construction people. They get to build the dream and have everyone meet deadlines, play nice-ish, and tell the architect and engineers, that you cant fit a 8" water main through a 6" chase. As we joke in meetings, yeah, size matters. then technology comes along and makes it more difficult, btw, i'm running an assload (technical term) of cable in this hallway, putting projectors here right where you want a heating vent (btw, this problem rears it head the first cold day of school. projectors do not like hot air blown into them), access points every room, speakers all over, etc. its actually kinda fun with a good set of people to be part of putting up a new building.
Renovations. the killer. Assume if there is construction doing renovation, you are ...well, not well off. they are just killer. No one knows exactly what they'll find and break. Cabling? Power? what was that orange cable, fiber? chunk a ceiling tile with a speaker or camera? oooo, then the big winner asbestos! awesome. It all comes down. we can't go in for weeks while its being abated. Hopefully we can get in a remove our electronics and expensive pieces before the abatement. Anyhow, there are a handful of renovations this summer. 5-8 out of 40 sites. Again, don't like the math.
Ill do typical summer work tomorrow. that is the work that has to be done regardless of the above.
Its spring, but it is summer for Technology is schools. Yeah, school is taking place, the kids, teachers, campus admins, and parents are going through the testing grinders (sorry boys & girls), but Technology is moving into summer mode. Project mode. This going to be a fun one! Here are the projects:
First, lets migrate from a mixed PBX/IP phone to a fully IP based phone solution. And implement Cisco Emergency Responder. And Cisco Presence. Swapping out ~3000 phones is going to be a logistical exercise. Summer starts June 11. People return about Aug 1 (campus admins). 8 weeks. I don't like the math there a whole lot. Scary.
We are also deploying about 1000 access points to 40ish sites. Yay. Wireless everywhere! We have to cable, hang aps, configure guest and user policies. align those with BYOD policies, local and state policies. (policy one more time cause). Again, the math there is scary. 1000 aps, 40 locations, 8 weeks.
Turn up another 25TB of storage for...something. Goldfish theory explained! user data is like a goldfish. It'll grow to the size of the bowl. so, if you buy a bigger bowl, you end up with a bigger goldfish. So, do you police your goldfish or buy a bigger bowl. yeah, you see my answer. Actually, the majority of the people in environments, once notified of excessive use will reduce their usage or delete the copy of the copy of the copy...Even then, the goldfish grows. Baffling.
Those are the ones I have direct control over. now the ones technology is a participant, but not necessarily a driver or implementer.
Construction! yes, these folks are our frienemies. We get along well, but we but heads on occasion with architects, engineers and the actual construction people. No one wins every battle, but we've all come to fairly good standing with each other on our needs. Architects want pretty and useful (and to meet the customers needs, which is technically my employer too, but that's another story). Engineers have to provide some services within those pretty and useful spaces while keeping it pretty. Sometimes pretty makes it difficult to hide 8" water mains, hvac ducts and returns, lights, alarms, cameras in a confined spaces which leads us to the construction people. They get to build the dream and have everyone meet deadlines, play nice-ish, and tell the architect and engineers, that you cant fit a 8" water main through a 6" chase. As we joke in meetings, yeah, size matters. then technology comes along and makes it more difficult, btw, i'm running an assload (technical term) of cable in this hallway, putting projectors here right where you want a heating vent (btw, this problem rears it head the first cold day of school. projectors do not like hot air blown into them), access points every room, speakers all over, etc. its actually kinda fun with a good set of people to be part of putting up a new building.
Renovations. the killer. Assume if there is construction doing renovation, you are ...well, not well off. they are just killer. No one knows exactly what they'll find and break. Cabling? Power? what was that orange cable, fiber? chunk a ceiling tile with a speaker or camera? oooo, then the big winner asbestos! awesome. It all comes down. we can't go in for weeks while its being abated. Hopefully we can get in a remove our electronics and expensive pieces before the abatement. Anyhow, there are a handful of renovations this summer. 5-8 out of 40 sites. Again, don't like the math.
Ill do typical summer work tomorrow. that is the work that has to be done regardless of the above.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
K12 Technology Summers
Ever wonder what a tech department for K-12 does all summer. FREAKING WORK! We stay busy with various projects, updates and tasks. Here is our summers
- Summer 2011 (please remember, there are only 10-12 people total do these things. This is in addition to typical work orders which usually drop to 75% of our end of the year daily average.)
- Change out our imaging and desktop management software
- means re-imaging labs and libraries (2000+ devices)
- pushing apps
- Change out our help desk software
- redesign layout
- change categories (hardware, software, blah blah)
- add/modify required fields (name, phone, etc)
- anything else that needed to be visited
- test the thing
- re-write rules for assignment of work orders
- re-train staff
- Pick up all local printers (yeah, we are going to be popular next year)
- change out our hardware web load balancing appliance and ssl box
- Upgrade vmware esxi to 4.1 on 8 nodes. Rolling upgrade
- fix veeam backups due to change of ip...grrr
- change out backup software
- e911 configuration and setup
- 2010
- open a renovated school -- fyi renovations suck. reusing parts and pieces from before is ok, but sometimes it adds labor, the wonderful hidden cost. Materials go down, labor goes up.
- site visits to locate technology pathways
- work with GC to find solutions to interesting challenges. It is amazing what is on the as-builts versus what is actually in the wall/ceiling.
- open 3 partial renovations and changed schools. Almost worse than a fully renovated. Frankenbastard schools for both cabling and physical infrastructure. Have to do some calculations...if we do it 100% right it'll cost x. if we do the way they meets code, but isn't so pretty, it cost x/2 or x/4. How long will this have to work? 1 year, 2, 3...5, 10? closer it gets to the bigger number is the closer to 100% right.
- clean up lingering AD migration from 2009 items
- share permissions & layout
- email archives
- Upgrade 3000 switches OS to support SSH and current code. Not hard, but requires some attention
- 2009 -- almost the death of me and my group. Never again.
- Migrate from eDir to AD and Groupwise to Exchange
- prep work with the contractor doing the move. Contractor was successful. Took care of our issues generally. Nothing is perfect, but the issues were acceptable. Plus, I know what 2 items i missed in my RFP. Damn. More GPOs.
- Actually move all items. This was done over a 2 week period. Pretty much threw a switch for about 3500 accounts. Friday you have Groupwise. Monday you have Exchange. email will back fill. Important people's email moved first, obviously -- like mine!
- Open several new schools
- 1-1 high school (yes, my group did all the items below except where noted)
- manage all cabling installation
- Includes data, fiber, Teacher AV, outside plant fiber...
- Vendor did the cabling, switch mounting, & AP installs
- install & document switches
- deliver, image, and install 1000 computers
- Teacher station
- student stations
- install ip phones
- configure, design and implement wireless for 1-1
- open renovated ES (see above for how much of a pain these are)
- Assist with Business and Student information systems change
- Install servers
- Deploy BIS and SIS apps on workstations as selected
Slacker
Wow. I've been slacking in my duties to post. Had vacations and momentary lapse in interests. I'll get back at it. I don't think the daily thing is working. There'll just be posts.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Day in Review - Geek Speak
I've been delegating a few more assignments that aren't hard, but are new to the people getting them, such as renewing a certificate, creating load balancing objects, modifying dns entries, updating switch entries, managing sub-contractors, etc. They are learning which is good. Some of my people jump right in, others toe the water.
Worked on more KACE help desk stuff. Doing our auto-assignment rules. We have some entries for other departments cause as everyone knows if it runs on a computer it is a technology work order. We are trying to get some of the rules to auto-close, reply with the KB article contents and not just the link (Select Title, Notes FROM table WHERE ID = KB Article). We have some rules that auto-assign based on status (New) and originating location. Nothing spectacular. I'll post some of our custom scripts if I get them working. Kinda cool.
Worked on more KACE help desk stuff. Doing our auto-assignment rules. We have some entries for other departments cause as everyone knows if it runs on a computer it is a technology work order. We are trying to get some of the rules to auto-close, reply with the KB article contents and not just the link (Select Title, Notes FROM table WHERE ID = KB Article). We have some rules that auto-assign based on status (New) and originating location. Nothing spectacular. I'll post some of our custom scripts if I get them working. Kinda cool.
Day in Review -- Admin Overhead
A lot of little things. Phone calls, emails, visits to meet people, talking with people, dealing with purchases, verifying procedures for the next year, and on on. It is amazing how much time gets taken up by these things. All this while trying to do our geek stuff.
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