Parrs Wood Technology College

From Schoolforge-UK

Case Study

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4642461.stm This BBC Education report provides an update on Parrs Wood. (3 Jul 2005)

School Name Parrs Wood School

Role in school Network Manager

School Location South Manchester

Student numbers 2000

Grade range 11-18

Teachers 150

Computers 900

GNU/Linux computer 40 servers, all clients dual boot, 300 linux thin clients

Length of Time (Start) 4 years

User GROUP Affiliation ManLUG

Request Assistance?

Project Leader Tim Fletcher

Project URL http://www.parrswood.manchester.sch.uk

Contact E-mail tim at parrswood.manchester.sch.uk

How Project Started:

I was given the task of setting up the network from scratch and as I knew more about linux than windows I chose to use linux

Why use GNU/Linux?

Greater depth of knowledge and price / performance

Project Description

Parrs Wood Technology College is a large (1800+ pupil) secondary school in South Manchester, that about 5 years started to build a new school through a land swap deal.

The new building was fully cat5e cabled, I and 2 colleagues where given the task of turning the old network (100 486 clients and a Netware server) INTO a cutting edge network based on Citrix thin clients over the 6 week break.

As we knew a great deal more about linux and where working to an exceptionally tight deadline we chose to use what we knew best (and also knew worked). We built a full network infrastructure (mail, dns, dhcp, web filtering, filestorage, windows domain auth, etc) using opensource software.

The only windows machines we had where Citrix based terminal servers that were asked via linux based thin clients running on 2nd user hardware.

Project Evaluation

The project can we feel be considered as success as we actually delivered and carry on delivering a reliable, secure and manageable infrastructure to a cutting edge school with a small team of staff

Future Uses

Difficult to comment on this, we are constantly adding new services for staff and students.

Additional Info

For further details feel free to contact me