San Joaquin Valley College Shifts to Virtual Storage

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 11/03/11

San Joaquin Valley College, a career college in California with 10 campuses, has moved storage functions to a virtual storage system from EMC. When it outgrew its direct attached storage system, the private institution chose EMC's VNXe unified storage system. VNXe, intended for smaller organizations, has two versions. The VNXe3100 supports up to 96 drives; the VNXe3300 can accommodate up to 120 drives.

The new EMC gear came with a single sheet of instructions for deploying the application, said Network Architect Nick Heryford, and installation took "less than one hour." Once the system was installed, he noted, the IT team migrated 80 production virtual machines to the new storage environment.

"The VNXe wizards, with embedded application best practices, ensured everything was configured correctly the first time," said Heryford. "We now leverage the wizards for ongoing system management which takes us half the time compared with our previous storage."

With the new storage setup, which integrates with the college's VMware virtual environment, IT can see the entire environment from one console. "It removes the step of having to go into the physical environment to provision storage. With VNXe everything is simple," he added.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.

  • digital network with glowing blue and red lines, featuring multiple red arrows shifting in different directions

    Report: Attackers Change Tactics as Ransomware Payoffs Decline

    Attackers are changing tactics as they collect less money from ransomware payoffs, according to a new report from Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm.

  • SXSW EDU

    Explore the Future of AI in Higher Ed at SXSW EDU 2025

    This March 3-6 in Austin, TX, the SXSW EDU Conference & Festival celebrates its 15th year of exploring education's most critical issues and providing a forum for creativity, innovation, and expression.

  • business leader standing confidently amid interconnected gears

    Leading Through Complexity: How Online Leaders Can Drive Digital Institutional Transformation

    Leaders charged with developing and expanding online programs at their institutions are finding themselves in increasingly complex roles, but there are a few core steps institutional leaders can take to ensure success.