Cutter Project Limited
Sustainable Computing for Smart Users

At the time of writing, Billericay School has some 400 SunRay 270 thin client devices delivering Microsoft Windows applications to the desktops, the computing power being provided by 18 load-balanced terminal servers located in a central server room. The servers are augmented by a Cutter Network Management Server which provides network monitoring and onsite provision for rebuilding any of the other servers if they should fail or need replacing - Cutter is able to do this remotely without having to visit the site.

The thin client devices are used by both students and staff giving a ratio in the school of approximately 50% thin clients and 50% traditional desktop devices or laptops. Billericay, like most schools, has applications such as video and sound editing and machinery control where it's much more appropriate to use a traditional desktop computer: a ratio of between 50% to 70% thin clients is typical in these circumstances. The staff and financial resources released by using thin clients where they are appropriate allows better support to be given to the other computer systems.

All staff have access to their school software (including SIMS from Capita) whether in school or from home using the Sun Global Desktop remote access services. The school has noticed a distinct change in staff behaviour since the remote access was implemented, with staff able to go home when the school closes, collect their own children and attend to domestic duties before logging in later in the evening and finishing their adminstrative tasks when it suits them. According to Clive Darley, Head of Specialist School "The Sun Global Desktop has changed our lives. If you took it away, the staff would lynch me".

Smart cards are used with the SunRay devices to ensure that pupils cannot access the administrative systems deliberately or accidentally.

The school spent nine months evaluating various alternatives to 100% traditional PCs. The reasons for wanting to find a better solution were predominantly cost-driven, with the management and replacement costs of PCs proving to be unsustainable. The extensive evaluation process finally chose SunRay thin clients as the best solution available that provided long-term sustainability and reduced costs.

The school now finds that almost no time is spent on managing the 400 thin clients and the remote access services. The total on-site deployment time was five days, which could now be reduced to two days using Cutter's improved remote commissioning and installation techniques.

Numerous side-benefits have been found from the use of the thin client systems. Login time is reduced to just a few seconds from power-on, increasing the available lesson time for teachers in those classrooms. Classrooms with thin clients are much quieter and also no longer require air-conditioning. Power consumption has dropped considerably and both pupils and staff have now become accustomed to computers that "just work".

If you are researching the possibility of installing your own thin-client installation, visits to Billericay can be arranged when appropriate. Please get in touch using our contact form.

A classroom of thin client desktops. Click the image for a larger version.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office Consulate-General in San Francisco uses 32 thin-client systems supplied by Cutter as part of an evaluation of alternate desktop technologies. The servers for these desktops are remotely situated some thirty or so miles from the Consulate-General in a data centre, removing the need for local housing and air conditioning in busy office space as well as freeing up desktop pace for the users and further reducing office air-conditioning requirements through their low poer usage.

The servers were pre-configured before being shipped to San Francisco, needing only to be racked at the data centre and powered-up. Final commissioning and continuing support is provided from Cutter Project by our staff located in the UK and Dubai. No customer site-visits were required during commissioning although, since this was the first time we worked with the FCO, a precautionary visit was made to the Consulate General after the initial installation just in case difficulties were encountered and also to provide customer care.

Caroline Chisholm School approached Cutter to provide a cost effective, low maintenance, high availability system to provide access to Curriculum services and schools administration via laptops and thin client desktops.
Cutter proposed and implemented a system based on centralised servers including SunRay 2 thin clients and Sun Global Desktop to provide remote access to both curriculum and administrative systems.

Caroline Chisholm reports

• Substantially improved availability compared to traditional desktops
• Improved classroom discipline due to reliable systems with faster logins
• Reduced noise, heat and air-conditioning needs as well as lower power bills

By providing off-site access to administrative systems (in this case SIMS) staff are able to work when and where it suits them rather than having to be onsite for marking, scheduling and making reports.

Several visitors to the school have been so impressed by what they have seen that they have placed orders for similar systems themselves. Caroline Chisholm is available for demonstrations of the system by prior arrangement.

Northampton School For Girls required a comprehensive email system to be installed which would meet simultaneously the needs for open interfacing, high volume, good filtering capabilities, easy upgrades and low cost. Approximately 2,000 user accounts would need to be supported.

The school had been trialling Moodle in a hosted environment and decided that they wanted to bring the system in house. Cutter Project Limited were commissioned to bring the two Moodle sites from the hosting provider and deploy them in the school.

Unity College is using Cutter's network monitoring and management software to provide alerts about problems or potential problems in their IT delivery systems. The tools in use are based on the well-known Nagios and Cacti packages running on Cutter hardware and configured by Cutter to monitor the specific systems in use. Service outages are detected and alerted to management staff with reports available on uptime and systems problems. Graphs showing long-term trends on network usage, server load, disk utilisation and other resource management isues are useful in predicting when problems may be starting to show up. A particular plus is the ability to monitor toner usage on printers around the network allowing replacement to be done before, rather than after the customers start to complain!

Though simple and not really competing directly with expensive mainstream network management packages, the Cutter solution provides astonishing value for money and is a huge step forward from the alternative - nothing at all - that would be the only other economical option for many of our customers.

Uplands Middle School replaced unsustainable 'fat client' desktop PCs with a thin-client Cutter system using mostly open-source software. Many old PCs that would have had to be sent to landfill were able to be re-used via the LTSP software package that allows them to act as thin client devices. A number of commercial thin-client devices are now also in use.

By recycling old PCs and judiciously deploying new thin-client devices the school has managed to save substantial amounts of capital expenditure. Rather than needing to be on a 3-4 year hardware upgrade cycle as driven by commercial software requirements, the school is now able to plan its expenditure to suit its means.

The high reliability of the Cutter System means that the school now sees IT provision as a solved problem, not a continuing source of issues and unavailability. Scarce resources are no longer channeled towards computer provision but instead to teaching - as it should be in every school.

Cornwallis School started by dipping a toe in the water, deploying an Internet Cafe based on SunRay Thin Clients. The system has provided ease of access, reliability and a near-zero-maintenance requirement.

Following on from the success of the Internet Cafe, the school has decided to introduce a wider use of SunRay thin clients to reduce costs in other parts of the school and expects to go on to replace the majority of its fat client network with thin clients.

Sir Frederic Osborn School approached Cutter to provide a Thin Client Linux based system which was installed and inaugurated by the local MP, Grant Shapps, in January 2006. The system was based on Sun servers and reused existing PC hardware as thin clients. The reliability of the system has proved to be very successful and the school is now working on a deployment of SunRay thin client devices coupled with Sun Global Desktop to provide remote access. The basis for the switch was figures showing a saving of almost £125,000 compared with a traditional desktop setup.

Initially the school used predominantly recycled PCs as thin clients but is now moving more and more towards specialised thin-client equipment (SunRay 2 devices). Curriculum requirements push hard in the direction of using standard desktop software in place of the various low-cost open source packages and the flexibility of the system to deliver either kind of desktop experience has proved to be highly valuable, leaving options open, not closing them off.

Natalie Jordan, Head of ICT at the school said about Cutter:

I am always impressed with the ability of the Cutter team to propose and implement innovative projects, quickly and effectively for the school.

The Cutter Project team have recently implemented a Windows thin client architecure. The thin client system has had many benefits.

• reduced power consumption
• reduced time required to configure and upgrade users systems
• and most importantly in a classroom, reduced noise and heat

This has had a considerable impact on learning and teaching.

The most recently implemented solution that Cutter team have provided is the Sun Secure Global Desktop project, this allows us to access the school infrastructure remotely. The main benefits that we have identified are

• reduced licencing costs.
• improved access for pupils to curriculum resources and applications and their workspaces, using a standard web browser and a broadband connection from anywhere.
• improved work life balance for teachers who will be able to access their work areas and appications using a standard web browser and a broadband connection from anywhere.

We hope in the future to be able to deploy low cost thin client terminals to reduce the impact of the digital divide and improve inclusion to those pupils who might require tutoring outside of school, such as those pupils who are off school due to ill health.

Overall I have been delighted with the level of service and support that the Cutter Project have supplied to Sir Frederic Osborn School.

NAG's DNS, NIS and mail services were reaching end-of-life on the current hardware. A telephone approach was made to Cutter and the replacement hardware and software environment was worked out by email and phone conversation.

The hardware was ordered and delivered to Cutter for initial installation then shipped to NAG where it was connected to their network. DNS zone files and NIS maps were transferred to the new servers and then the new servers commissioned entirely remotely. A high volume low cost front-end mail exchanger based on Postfix helps reduce the load on expensive proprietary software mail services behind the firewall.

This was a classic example of performing a significant systems upgrade without needing to visit the customer site. Over twelve months passed before we happened to be visiting Oxford when a courtesy call was paid to NAG. This was our first-ever face-to-face meeting with our customer, all other contact had been by phone or email only, reducing our costs and allowing us to pass valuable cost savings on to our customer.

The charity Centrepoint required web cacheing and proxying services with content filtering for the people they work with: homeless and socially excluded young people rebuilding their lives. Cost is naturally an important issue for charities and Cutter's deployment of Squid proxying with Dan's Guardian filtering services has proved fast, reliable and highly cost-effective.

Centrepoint is now considering a further rollout of the cacheing and proxying services coupled with a virtual learning environment based on Moodle. Cost-effectiveness, low maintenance and reliability are essential properties of any deployment like this and these are areas where Cutter focuses.