Advice request: Dual platform Ethernet schools
Gary Zak(gzak[at]sd61.bc.ca)
Mon, 7 Dec 1998 00:53:27 -0800
Lengthy post with questions at end...
I would appreciate advice from anyone who manages or works in a Wintel -
Mac, Ethernet environment, especially at the secondary school level, and
especially those who have had experience setting up both Windows NT and
AppleShareIP 6.0 or 6.1 servers for a school-wide WAN.
My situation:
I am a math teacher who has kept the Mac side of our school (1000 students
in grades 8 to 12) together by helping individual teachers with the
approximately 21 standalone Macs in the school and also by setting up and
maintaining our MacLab LANs of 23 Mac 5260's, two mini-labs of 5 Classics
each, and one mini-lab of 10 MacPluses, all running Waterloo MacJanet
server software over Localtalk networks using PhoneNet connectors.
The school also has 28 Wintels of varying vintages from 486's to Pentiums
as standalones, and 3 NT LANs of 12, 9, and 27 machines, respectively,
currently running 10Bt Ethernet. These labs are maintained by a physics
teacher in the school, who also teaches a block of Computer Science in the
Pentium lab.
I have no desire to learn NT and he has no desire to learn the Mac OS. Our
school technology committee has decided that it would be a good idea if we
had the whole school networked on 100Bt Ethernet so that any student could
use any machine after accepting our AUP and obtaining an account. (I know
our 5260's can only be upgraded to 10Bt and I'll need a bridge for the
Classic and MacPlus labs.) We both think it a good idea too but are
concerned that we already have fulltime jobs and we maintain the existing
facilities so far out of the goodness of our hearts. A school-wide WAN is a
much bigger kettle of fish, however.
He is concerned that the network be properly planned and would like the IT
department of our district to use us as a template for future WANS in our
district (only one other school out of 50 in the district has a school-wide
network). Our IT department has recently decreed that all school offices
shall be Wintel, wired to the central admin office via NT (this network
will be separate from the "educational" network in each school). I am
somewhat dubious of the concommittant growth in number of personnel that
will be required to maintain this "office" network, to say nothing of the
loss of productivity in offices as all the admin people are required to
switch platforms from what is now largely a Mac-oriented workforce. Be that
as it may, I hope to preserve the place of Macs in the "educational"
network, especially with the advent of the iMac and all the incredibly
powerful copper-based chips soon to be in the G4's.
I fear that the "solution" that the IT department may come up with for our
school is to bang in one big NT server for our school-wide network and let
the Macs run off NT's "Services for Macintosh" (SFM). I can see nothing but
grief from this as I know how many hours my colleague has put in trying to
set NT up in the first place as well as trying to troubleshoot it on an
ongoing basis. He is fearful of setting up such a server himself and wants
the IT people to do it. I have also read on these mailing lists that NT's
SFM is not so hot.
I have had a two day workshop on AppleShareIP from Apple Canada last summer
and have no fear of setting up the whole Mac side of the school myself (and
hooking the Wintel machines in using SMB). I imagine that I could maintain
the network with a bit of clerical assistance. The school district is just
now getting around to providing technical assistance to schools on a
consistent basis. Our school will be in a "pod" of four - three elementary
schools and us (the elementary schools are almost exclusively Macs). We
will receive a 0.2 FTE (full time equivalent) assistant to help us (no
guarantees as to capability, whether Mac or Microsoft Certified Systems
Engineer).
I am inclined to think the best approach for our school is to run two
servers, one NT and one AppleShareIP 6.1 (thus re-deploying five of the
seven servers we currently use to client status), perhaps each with a RAID
HD system. The Macs could primarily use the AppleShare server and the
Wintels, the NT server, but if we mirrored critical pieces of software on
each server we would still be in business if one goes down. We have in mind
putting most-frequently-used software on each client HD and reserving the
servers for student files and less-used software. Our NT labs are currently
used for Career Resources (one 28.8 modem proxied into 7 Wintels),
Keyboarding, and various Information Technology courses. The Mac labs are
used for word processing, Pagemaker and PhotoShop yearbook production,
MiniCad 7 drafting classes, and delivering Math software.
So...
1. Am I nuts?
2. Can two "independent" WANs be run over the same wires with no problems?
3. What problems do you see/have you seen in similar situations?
4. We stand a good chance of getting a cable modem into the school once we
are fully networked. Which server should it pass through? Can it pass
through both?
4. If our IT department lays a heavy command down to submit to the Borg,
should I roll over and play dead until retirement (6 years)?
5. Is my good opinion of AppleShareIP unwarranted?
6. Are my fears of NT unfounded?
Apologies for the lengthy post, but this is very uncharted territory for us
and I would rather you know as much of our full situation as possible so
that if you choose to reply, you will not have wasted your bandwidth and
time on any misconceptions.
To spare everyone else the agony of my personal melodrama, you could reply
off the list and I will compile a digest of the best advice I get and then
post it.
Thanks for listening.
TIA,
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Gary Zak
Victoria, BC
gzak@sd61.bc.ca
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, but today
is God's gift. That's why they call it the "present".
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