Chinese University Rolls Out Infrastructure-as-a-Service To Support Digital Campus Initiative
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 11/14/12
A university in China has launched a digital campus and campus card system using infrastructure-as-aservice technology.
Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology (XAUAT) in the Shaanxi Province in central China, with about 40,000 students, will use IBM's PureFlex to provide users with online access to services for administration, learning, and collaboration. The PureFlex system will also support the university's new campus card, which will be used by students to pay for expenses on campus, borrow books at the library, and enroll for different activities, among other uses.
PureFlex is an integrated virtualization data center system that combines computing, storage, systems management, and networking components. The configuration of this private infrastructure-as-a-service solution includes an IBM Flex System x220 compute node, Flex System Manager, DS5000 Storage, Flex Chassis, IBM Power 740/720, and virtualization tools.
"To stay ahead of the ever changing demands of today's students, who require constant access to the university's virtual campus, we decided to launch the Digital Campus platform and provide a campus card especially tailored to the needs of our student communities," said Li Longji, the university's director of the network center. "To help us achieve the scale, utilization, and reliability required to establish the digital campus in line with current and future needs of the university, we realized we needed an integrated, cloud-ready, data-ready, and secure IT infrastructure. IBM PureFlex provided that infrastructure."
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.