College of Idaho Upgrades Storage for Virtualized Environment
The College of Idaho has
implemented new storage infrastructure to improve the performance of its
virtualized environment.
Students, faculty and staff at the college run applications such as Microsoft
Outlook, a learning management system (LMS), an enterprise resource planning
(ERP) system and educational applications in a
VMware virtualized environment. However, they were experiencing latency
problems with the college's old HP storage solution. After researching various
options, the IT team decided to switch to
SmartStack for Business-Critical Applications from
Nimble Storage.
The new system consists of a
Nimble
Storage CS-series array and Cisco UCS blade servers, and it uses a hybrid
storage architecture that integrates flash with high-capacity drives. According
to information on the company's site, SmartStack uses flash solid-state drives
(SSDs) to speed up the read process by dynamically caching hot data, and it uses
a write-optimized data layout to speed up the write process.
The system also uses Nimble Storage's Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout
(CASL) architecture, which features mechanisms such as inline data compressions,
instant redirect-on-write snapshots, zero-copy cloning based on snapshots and
thin provisioning to optimize disk usage. Alan Price, systems administrator at
the college said the CASL architecture has increased the system's overall
efficiency.
According to information from the company, people at the college can now load
e-mails from the Exchange server instantaneously, compared to 30 seconds with
the old system; IT administrators can update servers in two hours rather than
six hours; and they can spin up a virtual machine in less than five minutes
rather than 45 minutes.
"After our upgrade, implementing new business applications no longer requires
significant planning, and the latency problems we once experienced have been
replaced by immediate accessibility for employees and students alike," said
Price in a prepared statement.
The College of Idaho is a private liberal arts college located in Caldwell,
ID, serving more than 1,200 students and employing more than 300 faculty and
staff.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at leilameyer@gmail.com.