Nutanix Acropolis and Hypervisor Improves Performance, Saves Time, and Cuts Costs for Canadian School District
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- Canada
Product
- Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform
- Nutanix NX-3000-series systems
- Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
- Nutanix Prism management solution
Tech Stack
- Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
- KVM hypervisor
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
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
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Private Cloud
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) is the largest Catholic school district in Alberta, Canada, serving over 52,000 students across 105 schools. The district employs more than 5,000 full and part-time staff dedicated to providing quality education to the communities they serve. As an educational institution, CCSD is committed to leveraging technology to enhance learning experiences and operational efficiency. The district's IT infrastructure plays a crucial role in supporting various applications, including MS Exchange, in-house developed applications, a student information system, accounting, finance, MS SQL Server, and Oracle databases. With a focus on modernization and cost-effectiveness, CCSD continuously seeks innovative solutions to improve their IT operations and deliver better services to students and staff.
The Challenge
Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) faced challenges with their existing IT infrastructure, which relied on HP blades for compute and NetApp FAS systems for storage. The environment was virtualized using vSphere 5.5, with over 270 virtual machines handling production, development, and test workloads. Despite the large scale, only two IT team members managed all data center operations. In 2010, a one-time cash infusion from the Alberta government allowed CCSD to modernize their data center with blade architectures, SANs, and VMware. However, as technology advanced, the district needed to further modernize their environment to keep up with the times. The challenge was compounded by a major flood that compromised their IT facility, prompting the need to move some infrastructure to a colocation facility due to rising real-estate costs in Calgary.
The Solution
CCSD decided to purchase a Nutanix NX-3000 series system for a VDI implementation, but later revised their goals and used the system for their server environment instead. The pilot project on the Nutanix system was highly successful, leading to the migration of CCSD's entire production environment to Nutanix. This included critical applications such as MS Exchange, in-house developed applications, a student information system, accounting, finance, MS SQL Server, and Oracle databases. To accommodate growth, CCSD also purchased a second Nutanix system. The transition to Nutanix allowed CCSD to reduce their physical infrastructure footprint significantly, moving from four full racks of blade servers and NetApp storage to just half a rack of Nutanix. This change enabled the district to save on colocation costs and plan for a 'cloud first' approach for future projects. Additionally, CCSD switched from VMware vSphere to Nutanix's built-in virtualization, AHV, to eliminate hypervisor licensing costs and simplify management. Nutanix's infrastructure stack, which includes the hypervisor, does not require specialized skillsets, making it easier for CCSD's IT team to manage and support their environment.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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