Are you sure you want to remove this component?
To install Schoolbox, there are a few system requirements that need to be met.
NOTE: The requirements of Schoolbox depend on the scale it is being implemented, but the following is relevant for a full-school implementation
On this page, you will find the following information:
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
Although Schoolbox Cloud is managed by the Schoolbox Infrastructure Services Team, the school must take certain steps to ensure the Schoolbox Cloud instances operate smoothly.
"v=spf1 +include:spf.schoolbox.cloud ~all"Users must use one of the following to authenticate to Schoolbox
Schoolbox Cloud does not support LDAP authentication.
If the school uses the Digistorm application, the school must ensure Digistorm is configured to use OAuth (and not LDAP) for authentication.
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
Every school runs two instances of Schoolbox:
The following information needs to be provided to Schoolbox Support upon completion of the server set up as part of the Config Form provided to you.
Schoolbox will encrypt all connections using either TLS 1.2 or TLS 1.3 depending on browser support. We will also automatically create a LetsEncrypt certificate for your chosen Schoolbox domain name. The LetsEncrypt certificate will automatically renew every month. To ensure security best practices we no longer support user-supplied certificates for more information please read this article.
The school must ensure that any Schoolbox servers running on school-managed infrastructure have VM level or equivalent backups in place.
See Backups for further detail.
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
Schoolbox requires the following to be working for normal operation and access.
NOTE: Please ensure that when opening port 443 that the port is opened as TCP and is not filtered to only HTTP traffic. Filtering to only HTTP traffic will break websocket connections.
NOTE: We highly recommend locking inbound SSH access to the Schoolbox IP addresses listed above. If you choose to not complete this step, be aware that this will allow public SSH access to your servers, conversely we will be limited in out ability to support you if you do not make ssh access available to all the addresses listed. We cannot support additional layers of authentication as we are unable to manage certificates and secrets securely for 3rd party VPN services.
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
VM Server or Dedicated Server (64bit x86)
Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS only - (must be installed as per our Initial Setup)
NOTE: Please ensure that you follow the directions in our Initial Setup when installing Ubuntu.
Production (Less than enrolled 1000 students):
Production (More than enrolled 1000 students):
Staging server:
This depends on how many users you would expect to use the server concurrently during peak loads and may vary depending on what they are doing
The formula is:
(number of concurrent users / 50) = CPU's
(number of concurrent users / 50) x 3.6 = GB of RAM
So if you have a school of 1600 students, but only expect 800 of them to ever be using the system at the same time (like morning login or a whole year level assessment)
800 / 50 = 16CPU's
800 / 50 * 3.6 = 58GB of RAM
ISO Download (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS): https://releases.ubuntu.com/22.04.1/ubuntu-22.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso
For Hyper-V, please use VHDX format disks to online expansion in future.
NOTE: If you are using VMware as your virtualization host, it may report that the install vmware-tools version is out of date. Please ignore this warning as we use a specific version of vmware-tools provided, updated and supported by the OS provider - Ubuntu.
NOTE: If you are using Hyper-V as your virtualization host, please disable Memory Ballooning (Dynamic Memory) for the Schoolbox VMs as there have been stability issues found using this configuration. Please also ensure you use VHDX format virtual disks to ensure easier future online disk expansion.
Marketplace (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS): https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-f2if34z3a4e3i
Example instance (< 1000 students):
Example instance (> 1000 students):
Example instance (high load scenario):
Example Staging instance:
Marketplace (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS): https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/canonical.0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy
Example instance (< 1000 students):
Example instance (> 1000 students):
Example instance (high load scenario):
Example Staging Instance:
NOTE: On provision Azure Linux servers may present with a /dev/sdb1 disk. This is volatile by nature, do not use it for storage as all data stored on it is deleted on reboot.
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
Schoolbox requires two disks - the operating system disk and the file storage disk.
We recommend the system disk is approximately 80GB in size. This should be located on fast SSD storage. You can expect that the 80GB capacity will accommodate all future growth of system components stored on this disk including logs and the database. The second disk is used for file storage. File storage usage is expected to grow by 200-400MB per student a year. This growth is due to student submissions, teacher resources and attachments to various posts.
This file storage can be located either on premise, or using our hosted storage solution. If you select the cloud option, there are no limits on file storage. You will be billed yearly for your usage.
You can see pricing info on this page: https://help.schoolbox.com.au/homepage/2967
If you choose to maintain local file storage, we initially recommend you set up enough storage for your first 2 years. To calculate this, complete the following calculation: students * 300MB * years = Initial storage. For a school of 800 students this will be around 480GB, with an expected growth rate of about 250GB a year. We recommend using an SSD for this also.
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
The Schoolbox filesystem automatically dedupes files as they are uploaded. So each use of the file is a pointer to an object in the filesystem. When you delete a file, you are soft deleting by removing the reference, while the actual object is left behind on disk, even if it is no longer accessible via the Schoolbox interface.
In order to be able to comply with privacy regulations, and also support schools wishing to purge certain files, there is a hard delete function available via our support desk. In order to hard delete a file we need to have the ‘SHA1’ hash of the file.
If you know the details of a file, or a list of files you wish to delete, please provide this list to our support team. They will perform an initial run without execution to identify the places the file is currently being referenced. Please note this list is not exhaustive, and hard deleting files may result in broken links within Schoolbox.
Once you have confirmed you would like the file and its references to be deleted, we will completely remove the file and any hard references from disk.
Are you sure you want to remove this component?
Please note that it is not possible to merge Schoolbox databases together. If you need to migrate your Schoolbox instance from one VM/Hypervisor to another, please raise a support ticket via support@schoolbox.education so we can help you ensure a smooth transition.