A small farm school in the Free State, called Gelukwaarts Farm School, starts 2010 with a complete new server and lab setup, and a brand new website at www.gelukwaarts.co.za. This all started when the principal, Danie Wilken, attended a Joomla Boot Camp in Johannesburg during September 2009
The objective of the Boot Camp was to take control over their website and be able to add and update information, events and more. After getting the basics of Joomla under the belt, the website’s content slowly started taking form online. The website was not completed by the end of the 4-day Boot Camp, but Danie went back home with the knowledge of how to change and extend on what had been created in the 4 days.
It was during the Boot Camp that Mr Wilken first mentioned to me that he had 20 desktop computers, 5 laptops, a windows server … and no idea how it all worked! He had a 24/7 VSAT connection, and would also liked to have it shared to the computer lab.
After arriving back home in Cathcart, correspondence started and we slowly got an idea of how the IT infrastructure was put together for the school … and then abandoned by their IT Administrator. Working from what they had, to what they wanted, we needed to fill in a few new hardware items along the road such as Senao Access Points. Most of the work would have had to be done on-site however, as their existing lab server would have to be reloaded and transformed into an ACTIONBOX
The ActionBox would be placed in the lab, and would isolate and manage all the computers in the lab. It then also manages all the user accounts for students coming into the lab, stores all the files they work on, and then also provides them with censored Internet access.
It was long before the sun peaked into Cathcart when I left for Gelukwaarts, and it took me the better part of 3 hours to get there. The last 60 km on a dirt road took me deep into the heart of the Free State. From arriving at Gelukwaarts around 11 am that morning, until shortly after 3 pm the following day, 20 desktop computers were reloaded with Windows, the lab server reloaded with Suse 11.1 and turned into an ACTIONBOX. We also reloaded the laptops in between, just to make sure they also got a clean bill of health.
