Back to School with Virtualisation
30th September

Intercept release new case study on three schools uniting to implement VMware vSphere 4 and a Dell EqualLogic SAN to reduce costs and carbon footprint for 3,500 users.

Challenges

• Inefficient servers reaching the end of their useful life
• Reduce power and cooling
• Improve the user experience, business processes and collaboration
• Unite to gain greater purchasing power

Solution

• Select a partner with proven experience with other public sector organisations
• VMware vSphere4 to consolidate schools servers
• Dell EqualLogic SAN to provide central storage for remote sites
• Veeam backup and replication for native vSphere and vStorage support

Benefits

• Power saving by up to 75% compared to traditional server infrastructure
• Rollout of new services is much easier such as VDI in the future
• Reduce hardware costs and time spent maintaining servers
• Service bottlenecks removed and increased reliability

The Customer
Three schools in Cambridgeshire, the county best known for its world-class university and ‘Silicon Fen’ - the term given to the large cluster of high-tech businesses in the region - faced issues of overheating IT servers, excessive consumption of electricity and ad-hoc business continuity regarding their technology and operational processes. The schools included St Bede’s Inter-Church School, the only Christian state secondary school in the county; City of Ely Community College, a comprehensive secondary school appointed a Business & Enterprise College; and Bottisham Village College, one of the first Humanities Specialist Schools in the country. With thousands of users and a responsibility to the students and staff to keep the IT estate running efficiently under the pressures of a 21st century education programme, the schools faced tough challenges.

The Challenge
The schools began the process by looking at replacing existing servers, reducing the consumption for power and the need for cooling, improving the reliability of the infrastructure and increasing the capacity to role out new services. Bottisham, Ely and St Bedes’s collaborate on community projects, and each were experiencing similar difficulties.

Serving a combined user group of 3,500, the schools’ IT departments found that the main challenge was identifying technology that enabled cutting edge solutions and greater flexibility at minimal costs. They also wanted to reduce their overheads and carbon footprint by around 75 percent, as well as simultaneously improving business processes. The latter being a large step for any organisation, with the situation being compounded as this instance involved three separate institutions.

Both Ely and Bottisham had existing traditional server infrastructures that had been deemed inefficient and costly, while St Bede’s was in need of much more server capacity and was effectively a new project requiring the complete implementation of a new infrastructure. With such a number of users across the three organisations, the educational institutions decided to unite in an attempt to gain greater purchasing power and drive down costs collaboratively.

The Solution
St Bede’s, Ely and Bottisham selected award winning virtualisation and cloud computing specialist Intercept to optimise their IT infrastructure. Intercept’s open methodology and proven experience at implementing cloud technology for other large public sector organisations gave them the edge over competing firms. On the basis of the challenges the schools described, Intercept recommended the installation and use of a Dell EqualLogic SAN to provide storage to the different sites, which are effectively remote offices. Dell was recommended because of the features included and its ease of use. The specialist provider also recommended the adoption of VMware vSphere4 as the central management ‘front end’ solution of the entire implementation. vSphere4 had been just recently released in the UK in June 2009, and the aim was for the schools to leapfrog earlier evolutions of the software to adopt the industry’s first cloud operating system.

To protect the schools from data loss or unavailability Veeam Backup and Replication software was chosen for the native vSphere and vStorage support. More than this, St Bede’s, Ely and Bottisham decided to unite to ensure best value and facilitate a skills transfer from Intercept to the schools’ own IT staff. By adopting this strategy the schools prepared for the future by providing for their own support needs.

The Benefits
The schools now have the latest platform to add new services as they require such as VDI in the future. David Knappett, ICT Manager at St Bede’s School believed the move provided the schools with far greater agility, “Intercept has allowed our school to maximise the use of the IT estate, while also enhancing our service offering to our many end-users. Adopting virtualisation enables us to enjoy long-term flexibility benefits as well, by making any future changes or improvements much easier. We will also have the added bonus of not having to buy servers as often, and therefore not spend as much time maintaining them.”

Richard Mayer, ICT Manager at Bottisham Village College added “The technology helps release the service bottleneck that was becoming increasingly damaging and minimises the time spent maintaining our servers.” While Matt Sampson at City of Ely Community College concluded, “Now the existing physical servers have been replaced with three new hosts, we can increase the number of servers, without increasing the space needed to house them. This will help achieve our desired green gains in power and cooling reduction while reducing costs. The aim is to speed up the entire network, make it more reliable and vastly improve the end user experience,”
Intercept’s technical director, Nigel Woods, oversaw the implementation of the project and believes it will become a landmark case and role model for other education bodies considering migrating to virtualisation technology.

“The education sector often spends long periods of time between technology updates, leaving them with legacy servers languishing at sub-optimal usage rates. Virtualisation allows greater use of the resources these organisations have already invested in, as well as offering better analysis and control of their future IT spending. We won the tender on the basis of delivering greater IT use and consequent savings through employing virtualisation techniques, as well as by demonstrating a measurable return on investment within the public sector,” concludes Nigel.

About Intercept:
As award winning specialists, Intercept focuses on helping companies of all sizes reap the rewards of virtualised IT and cloud computing. From the desktop to the data centre, we will help you get the most out of your IT to reduce costs, improve the user experience and increase business agility.

The company has years of real world experience designing innovative solutions to fit client needs, all delivered with exceptional tailored support. Intercept has virtualised over 5,000 servers, over 100,000 desktops and more than 2,000 different applications in 30 languages, realising millions of pounds worth of savings to its customers. What’s more, some 60,000 users rely on Intercept’s managed and online services.

As specialists in delivering virtual IT infrastructure, Intercept consultants are different. Using the most resilient, scalable and high-performing technology available today, Intercept’s solutions empower client teams to get the very most out of their ICT investment.

For more information, please contact:
Luke Derbyshire
Spreckley Partners
T: + 44 (0) 20 7388 9988
F: +44 (0) 20 7388 8588
E: derbyshire@spreckley.co.uk