Slashdot Mirror
NZ School Goes Open Source Amid Microsoft Mandate
Dan Jones writes "Kiwis have built an entire school IT system out of open source software, in less than two months, despite a deal between the New Zealand government and Microsoft that effectively mandates the use of Microsoft products in the country's schools. Albany Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Auckland has been running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. It's using a range of applications like OpenOffice, Moodle for education content, Mahara for student portfolios, and Koha for the library catalogue. Ubuntu Linux is on the desktop and Mandriva provides the server. Interestingly, the school will move into new purpose-built premises this year, which include a dedicated server room design based on standard New Zealand school requirements, including four racks each capable of holding 48 servers for its main systems. The main infrastructure at Albany Senior High only requires four servers, suggesting an almost 50-fold saving on hardware requirements."
There is no mandate for NZ schools to use Microsoft software. There is a collective agreement (one of many agreements, including one with Apple), and the schools have always been able to choose the software they want.
Standard slashdot bias and hype. FUD FUD FUD
Agreed. I don't know how big their network is, but I expect at least:
8 Us for Switch
8 Us of Patch pannels for Ethernet.
8 Us for PBX patch pannels
8 Us for the actual PBX + Accesories (Eg. ATAs, GSM -> SIP GWs, etc).
10 Us for UPS
6 Us for Audio system.
8 Us for Servers
4 Us for routers
20 Us for DIsplay/keyboard (2 Displays/kb on 2 different Racks)
10 Us for Power strips (across all racks)
And I'm missing a lot of things, probably.
That is 90 Us.
Off course, the first 10 or so Units in a Rack are rarely used, since they are not comfortable. If you add some space between equipments (It's good practice, also, many systems are not rackable, and they take up more space). That can take you to, let's say, 120 Us. Plus, some room for expansion.
4 Racks seems like a good setup to me.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
1. The school is projected to grow to 1500 pupils over the next few years
2. The server room thing was the standard said they needed 8 racks of servers, instead they just needed 4 servers taking up less than half a rack.
"To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.
Rubbish I work in a NZ school as an IT admin and schools have to sign up each three years (was each year). Only these schools are included in the deal and they have to activly sign up to it. This is the usual Slashdot FUD, if they don't sign up then the school is not included in the agreement and the government pays nothing. There are simmilar deals as stated above with Apple and even at one point a major linux distribution/support provider. As far as I can tell this deal is no longer open to new schools but is still maintained for those that did sign up.