Case Study: Local Government

Virtual infrastructure built on a Microsoft and Intel Platform

With system limitations, stability problems and pressure on its ICT team growing by the day, a comprehensive school needed a new infrastructure to take it forwards. Freestyle IT provided the perfect solution - within the school’s limited budget.

The client and their challenges

Our client is a mixed comprehensive school in Surrey that looks after the educational needs of around 500 pupils. The school has a small ICT team that were under great pressure and with limited time available to manage the day-to-day needs of the school, its pupils and staff.

The ICT team were doing their best to cope. But the school’s server infrastructure was about five years old and was becoming expensive and difficult to support. There was no further headroom for expansion. What’s more, potentially serious platform stability issues needed to be addressed.

With only a limited budget approved to replace its infrastructure, the school needed a partner who could understand its requirements. A solution was needed that would provide the school with a stable, manageable platform with room for expansion - as demand increased over time for its ICT services.

The Freestyle IT solution

Recognising the school’s budget limitations, Freestyle IT recommended a solution built on an Intel Modular Server & Storage Device coupled with Microsoft Hyper-V to provide a virtualised infrastructure.

This solution provided all the features identified by the school as essential during the initial consultation with Freestyle. The Intel Modular Device provides both the server and storage hardware in a single chassis and delivers very simple, straightforward manageability and scalability.

Mindful of the pressure on the school’s spending limits, Freestyle looked around for the most affordable option. This proved to be one of the very attractive academic licensing programmes offered by Microsoft. This ensured the solution came within the budget without compromising functionality.

The Microsoft System Centre provided two products that were key to the solution:

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 - allowed centralised management of both the physical and virtual infrastructure. It also provided an easy solution for consolidating multiple physical servers onto virtual hosts and the rapid provisioning and optimising of new virtual machines.

Data Protection Manager 2010 - enabled Freestyle to deliver unified data protection for the school’s physical and virtual Windows servers.

With the school’s go-ahead, Freestyle then worked with their ICT staff to build, test, install and deliver the new solution. Freestyle provided an end-an-end service - with the same senior technical consultant leading the project from start to finish.

The project was delivered successfully, complete with on-site training and subsequent support while the school’s ICT team become more familiar with their new solution.

Discover more

Contact Freestyle IT today on 01256 760922 or by email at
sales@freestyle-it.co.uk

Key Features & Benefits

Highly available new infrastructure delivered within budget and without disruption
Performance gains and resilient technology with automatic failover of virtual servers
Scalable solutions with significant headroom for growth of both services and storage.
Greater manageability of day-to-day tasks and maintenance
Full documentation for configuration and infrastructure topology

The Results

The school now benefits from a new infrastructure, delivered without disruption and within budget. The new system offers high availability, performance gains and greater scalability, with significant headroom to increase services and storage. The solution is highly resilient too, with automatic failover of virtual servers.

Freestyle has ensured that the new system is easier to manage. Full documentation has been provided with full configuration details and the infrastructure topology.

Meanwhile, the burden on the school’s ICT team has eased. The Microsoft System Centre Suite provides management tools that make it very easy for the ICT team to perform day-to-day tasks and routine maintenance.

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