Self-hosted IT monitoring for UK schools and multi-academy trusts.
Groundskeeper runs on a Windows Server in your school. It connects to the systems you already use -- your network, servers, backups, Microsoft 365, security tools and school services -- and shows you what needs attention in one feed. Nothing leaves your network unless you choose a cloud AI provider.
Website: groundskeeper.rsjsoftware.com
- One feed of what needs attention. Problems only: a quiet feed means everything is healthy. Each issue says what changed, when, and how long it has been going on.
- Connectors for the tools schools use -- Meraki, HP/Aruba and other SNMP switches, Windows servers and Active Directory, Hyper-V, Veeam, DNS and DHCP, WatchGuard, Dell iDRAC, UPSes and printers, Microsoft 365, Action1, and the online services the school depends on. The full list is on the Connectors page of the wiki.
- The RSJ Agent on your Windows PCs and servers reports BitLocker, Defender, updates, disk health, local admins and more. Deploy it by Group Policy, your RMM, or Groundskeeper's own push-deploy; it keeps itself up to date.
- Switches, understood. Groundskeeper tells uplinks from device ports, so a PC being switched off is not treated like a link to another switch going down, and keeps a history of each port's traffic.
- Readiness reports for Cyber Essentials and the DfE filtering and monitoring standards, built from live data and exportable as a PDF.
- A traffic-light view for senior leaders, in plain English.
- An AI assistant for morning briefings and "why is this happening?" -- running locally with Ollama by default, so no data leaves the school.
- Built for groups: Central brings every school in a trust into one view, while each school keeps its own Groundskeeper server.
- The essentials: email, Teams and Slack alerts with quiet hours and maintenance windows, two-factor sign-in, nightly database backups with one-click restore.
- Your data stays on your network. No monitoring cloud, no third party holding a map of your infrastructure.
- Read-only by design. Groundskeeper observes and reports; it never changes anything on the systems it monitors.
- GDPR-friendly by default. Nothing leaves the school unless you choose to send it.
- Download the installer from the Releases page. It includes everything it needs; there is nothing else to install first.
- Install on a Windows Server and open the dashboard. The setup wizard walks you through your first connectors.
- Request a free Community key from the dashboard.
The wiki has the setup guide (Getting Started), connector configuration and troubleshooting. System requirements are in each release's notes and on the website.
Prefer to watch? Short how-to videos on YouTube: getting started (install, your first connector, the agent) and day to day (the dashboard, alerts, the leaders' view, Cyber Essentials and DfE readiness).
- Community -- free, up to five connectors of your choice, with a key renewed each year.
- Pro -- every connector, priced per school by phase.
- Central -- for groups of schools: one view across the group.
Prices are on the website: groundskeeper.rsjsoftware.com/#pricing.
- Questions and ideas: Discussions.
- Bugs: Issues on this repository.
- Paid editions: email support as well.
There is no helpdesk with opening hours. Groundskeeper is built to be installed and run by a school's own IT.
Groundskeeper is built by RSJ Software -- a school IT professional who built it for himself first -- for the school IT community.
- Privacy notice: groundskeeper.rsjsoftware.com/privacy
- Website: rsjsoftware.com
- Reporting a security issue: see SECURITY.md
Copyright RSJ Software. All rights reserved.
This repository is provided for transparency, release distribution and community support. No licence is granted for reuse, modification or redistribution of the source code.