Cleveland State Community College Saves 40% on VDI Investment with Nutanix
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform
- VMware ESXi
- Horizon View
- Nutanix NX-3350
Tech Stack
- Virtualization
- VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
- Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Implementation Scale
- Pilot projects
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
- Virtual Training
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Cleveland State Community College is an accredited public community college serving about 3,500 regular and 1,500 non-credit students. The college’s 105-acre campus is located in Southeastern Tennessee, 30 miles northeast of Chattanooga. The IT department supports about 1,300 desktop computers and mobile devices on campus. Committed to quality education, Cleveland State operates within the governance of the Tennessee Board of Regents. In addition to the offerings on the main campus, Cleveland State has offices and classrooms in Athens and Madisonville and offers classes throughout its service area of Bradley, Meigs, McMinn, Monroe, and Polk counties.
The Challenge
When Chris Mowery joined Cleveland State Community College as Director of Information Technology, he and his team inherited a VDI pilot project that was not working out. It was a 25-client system running on a rack server and iSCSI SAN. The performance was poor, even slower than physical desktops. The platform was also difficult to manage, even for a small configuration, and scaling it out was not going to be financially possible. However, the benefits of VDI, especially simplified desktop administration, still appealed to them. They decided to look at other options and discovered the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform hosting VMware ESXi and Horizon View was exactly what they needed. The college’s mathematics lab exemplified the desktop challenges they faced. The lab is high-use and stays full most of the day. The hardware was a mix of 90 old and new computers. Management was time-consuming, and the lab itself was too hot due to high thermal output.
The Solution
The Nutanix-based VDI solution cost $170,000 or 40% less than the competitive alternatives. In fact, the total capital cost of VDI hardware and software was slightly less per client than physical desktops. In three years they will also be able to skip a desktop refresh cycle which would result in tremendous savings overall. From the perspective of the IT team, the biggest draw was Nutanix’s management simplicity. It saved several consultant hours for initial configuration and streamlined ongoing management. Cleveland State purchased a 3-node Nutanix NX-3350 for phase one of their VDI implementation. Setup was straightforward and took only a few hours. The Nutanix appliance fits in 2U of rack space, yet supports 200 virtual desktops. The competitive solutions would have required 6U to support that number of desktops. The virtual desktops run on PCs as well as thin clients. The applications used include math modeling, office productivity software, and video streaming for coursework. The performance and user experience of virtual desktops is actually far better than the physical desktops they replaced.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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