College institutions are meant to shape the minds of our youth and should have the ability to fully focus on this mission. Agreed? But at Colby-Sawyer College, a private comprehensive baccalaureate college in New London, New Hampshire, system downtime from storage-related bottlenecks started to put a damper on students’ education.
Implementing a Metro Storage Cluster Solution
Prior to the DataCore Software solution, Colby-Sawyer College had fully replicated its data storage across two server rooms with its old storage platform. However, when the college switched to a hybrid array that combined flash and spinning disks, it lost the replication capabilities from previous systems. Moreover, before the DataCore solution was implemented, the college had a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment that relied solely on one array with no redundancy. The result? Excessive storage downtime.
This is when the college IT staff decided that enough was enough! To ensure high availability and reduce downtime, Colby-Sawyer College deployed DataCore SANsymphony storage software in a synchronously mirrored, “metro-clustered” configuration.
The College Saw a 100% Reduction in Storage-Related Downtime
Most users of DataCore solutions report up to a 100% reduction in storage-related downtime by using the DataCore SANsymphony software platform and Colby-Sawyer College was no exception.
With DataCore we have been able to mirror all data disks between our two NexGen arrays located in the two server rooms
David Blaisdell, Assistant Director of Information Technology at the College emphasized that DataCore makes “always-on” infrastructure possible and that he has seen it firsthand. “With DataCore we have been able to mirror all data disks between our two NexGen arrays located in the two server rooms,” he commented. “We can now take one room offline for maintenance and still serve up all storage, so that databases and applications are unaffected and the users’ experience is unaffected.”
The Lasting Benefits of a Software-Defined Storage Solution
As an organization that seeks to maximize the value of every purchase, Colby-Sawyer College has been able to delay and even avoid outright certain storage costs with DataCore. No longer does it have to “throw away” its software investment as part of refresh cycles. Now, the college can extend the life of storage investments as well as skip expensive refresh cycles completely.
Learn More About this SANsymphony Solution
Overall, The IT team at Colby-Sawyer College has now become a strong proponent of software-defined storage (SDS), giving DataCore a “5” or “Excellent” rating (on a scale of 1-5) in response to the question “How well has DataCore delivered software-defined storage to your organization?”
For more information, please read the detailed case study here or click to learn more about our data solutions for the Education industry.
