Niagara College’s Success Stories (tied to the use of Dell Services)

John LevayDirector, ITS

Niagara College

Agenda

• Background• Issues and Drivers at College last 4 years• Strategies to capitalize on• Dell Engagements• Future• Recommendations• Questions

Background

• Approx. 9000 FT, 15,000 PT students– Everything from extreme computing literacy to

“what’s a mouse?”)• 2 main campuses and 2 satellite sites in Niagara

Region of Ontario• Ontario Government KPI - Number One in

Student Satisfaction for the last 6 out of 7 years• My claim to fame – organized and hosted first

CANHEIT (2003) at Brock University

Issues and Drivers

• Storage all over the place – 2007-08– Old EMC SAN needing renewal– Individual servers– Desktops/laptops etc

• Backup - 2008– eVault– Out of space 5 TB X 2

• Renewal of 70 centralized servers across 4 years• Peoplesoft servers renewal for upgrade - 2009• Continued expansion due to growth 07-012

Issues and Drivers … cont

• Desktop and Lab renewal and deployment getting expensive

• Not really using wireless other than in hallways ($400k+ investment over 4 years) 2011

• Microsoft licensing changes (Office 2010@home)

• 5 PBXs needing upgrades 2012• Groupwise and everyone new hires wanting

Exchange/Outlook 2012

Strategies at the College(We could capitalize on)

• Greening in the College Strategic Plan– Green is good!

• Moving to “mobily enhanced teaching”– Reduce dedicated labs – helps scheduling, renewal, access, etc– Allow access to academic software on wireless in classroom (enhanced

teaching) and from outside the College (where applicable)– Don’t want to increase laptop programs – maybe even eliminate them –

move to BYOD if possible• Renewal is a capital cost

– some staff renewal – some covered in operating– Labs, Servers, Network – general pool – ask each year with academic

requirements – CERF – no yearly budget for central servers– except PeopleSoft which gets renewed every 4-5 years from yearly reserve

Strategies at the College(We could capitalize on) … cont

• We are/were growing ourselves out of a deficit (more of the same is still more!)

• Save operational $ on maintenance contracts• Expand functionality for users– Anywhere/anytime for students– More requirements from faculty for access to

software and storage from off campus/wireless – many faculty with desktops only (their choice)

– No additional resources available of course – but still do it!

First Engagement

• Engaged Dell Professional Services• Storage assessment – details follow– Direction wanted to go iSCSI – 1 Gb first then 10Gb – File simplification assessment– Look at rate of growth over 3 months but first

report over 4 weeks • Virtualization assessment• Flex computing assessment came with

virtualization assessment – thin app

Results - Storage

• SOW -Limited to no more than 3 Operating systems, 65 servers, 1 storage array, and 25 TB Storage. Capacity and vaults to be analyzed located in two sites

• SAN 76% full• DAS – 51% over 60 servers• 12 file system over 90% full including eVault• 46% of files 180 days or older• Study is here

Results - Virtualization

• Data Collection for 30 days on 60 servers• 10 (ish) others identified as stand alone – example

PeopleSoft database server (which we later virtualized)• 56 servers into 6 blades (WOW!)

– then we grew more • 670MBTUs of cooling down to 109MBTU• 294,336 KWhs down to 47,304 KWhs• VMWare efficiency web page and

Green Calculator from VMWare

• Study results here

Projects for Storage and Server Virtualization

• Storage– 10K rpm (4.2 TB usable) email, some

datawarehouse, file services– 7.2K rpm (18.2TB usable) all other storage and

eVault backup– 2x7.2K rpm (36TB usable) replicated off site (other

campus) for data storage and near line archive– Change eVault backup processes (ugly) – Have #s on efficiency but not with me

Projects … cont

• Virtualization– VMWare training for College staff– Started with some academic servers once storage is in

place– Migrate other servers over as time permits and EOL occurs– Virtualized PeopleSoft environment pre 9.1 Upgrade– Virtualized all SQL Database onto one quad core blade with

eye to cluster if we ever get money• Started playing with thin apping applications for

home/wireless access – more later!

Second Engagement

• Looked at remote desktop project– Staff – 100 desktops– 1000 remote desktops– Office + academic software

• Engaged Dell Services to size and install VDI via train the trainer

• Hardware and software purchased and installed • Small hiccup in configuration fixed quickly and

for free

VDI Project and Results

• Remote Desktop Computing– Access for faculty and staff to Office 2010 and Windows 7 at

home as well as all files – about 100 remote desktops– Access from wireless to academic software – and access in

classrooms without infrastructure for students – more flexibility– PC (access for all regardless of OS), MAC, Linux– iTouch, iPad access – kind of cool! Android also– Thin provisioning for 2 new pharmacy labs - funny story …– Thin client and apps provisioning for one of the open access labs

– this year – started and gathering results– Looking to move desk bound staff to flex computing – less

renewal at the desktop level

VDI Project and Results

• Students love the access but only seeing about 250 concurrent

• ITS staff like it for secure backend access• Faculty and staff using it with new iPads– Staff actually used system more than anyone

• I love the access – all files, email, storage in one place

Third Engagement

• Groupwise to Exchange conversion– Came out of requirement to consolidate 5 PBXs

into 2 and move to unified communications• 2 week engagement – 3 days on site• Produced assessment containing– Hardware and software requirements/licenses– Training requirements– Costs– What to do and what to watch out for

Future

Current future• Evaluating thin client desktops and continued thin apping

– Greatest success with thin apping• Little worried about video on VDI – testing• Want to get rid of laptop program – tested AutoCAD but

want academics to really test it and Solid Works – possible move to BYOD as replacement

• Continue to migrate to more VDI as well as virtualizing servers where possible

• PeopleSoft Upgrade complete Nov 2012 and virtualized

Future

Next 2 years• Large document management project

(storage)• Implementing first phases of ITIL for our

service desk – becoming bottleneck as we grow

• PMO and IT steering committee• Supporting research more – now 5% of budget

Recommendations and things I wouldn’t do again!

• Dell Services have really helped– At College - not enough staff, product access or

time to conduct required storage and virtualization audits

– Dell - Expertise in training as well as train the trainer

– Could not have moved forward as fast without additional help – just not enough staff or time

– 3rd domain of knowledge – don’t know what you don’t know you don’t know

Recommendations and things I wouldn’t do again!

• 1000 desktops was overkill – for now• Would not try to train too many people at once – need to

be more focused!• Was very hesitant at first to look at Dell for Service

engagements – very new to the market– When Dell enters the market they do it in a big way – excellent

resources and expertise– Great experience for us – reference site and case study for VDI

(http://www.dell.com/ca/highered/p/d/corporate~case-studies~en/Documents~2011-niagara-college-10009714.pdf.aspx)

– No real savings after VMWare licenses – better functionality and support (VMotion)

• Cut/paste only not drag drop – where are you?

Questions?