Shelton State Gains High Performance and Availability with Brocade Network
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Brocade ICX campus network access and aggregation switches
- Brocade FCX Series switches
- Brocade FastIron WS Series Switches
- Brocade VDX Switches
- Brocade Network Advisor
Tech Stack
- Network Switches
- Network Management Software
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
- Networks & Connectivity - Gateways
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Campus Area Network
- Remote Collaboration
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Shelton State Community College is part of the Alabama Community College System. The college originally combined Shelton State Technical College with the Tuscaloosa branch campus of Brewer State Junior College and later consolidated with the C.A. Fredd State Technical College to become today’s Shelton State Community College. Shelton State also is recognized for its contribution to music, dance, and theatre, earning its designation as Alabama’s Junior College of the Fine Arts. More than 5,600 students launch their postsecondary educations at Shelton State across two campuses and numerous distance-learning sites. The college plans to double enrollment to 12,000 students by 2020 and deliver a university-caliber education as it prepares students for the future.
The Challenge
Shelton State Community College, part of the Alabama Community College System, was facing a challenge of providing a high-performance, high availability network that supports teaching and learning, rapid growth, and demanding applications. The college needed full line-rate performance from the network edge to the core to meet day-to-day computing requirements for labs and classrooms, which can vary greatly. It also needed high availability, because education cannot stop if a network system goes down. The new network had to support the college’s aggressive virtualization plans, as well as a new Voice over IP (VoIP) deployment. Ease of management was important, and of course, price was a factor.
The Solution
In 2010, the college initiated a major network upgrade, which involved comparing potential solutions from Brocade and Cisco. After a direct comparison of solution specifications and performance, the college chose the Brocade solution for its significantly better performance, reporting features, and pricing. The college's infrastructure is built on two redundant data centers across the Martin Campus with links to a third data center on the Fredd campus. Four off-site distance-learning locations connect to the Martin campus data centers through VPN links. The college has implemented Brocade campus, data center, and Storage Area network (SAN) switches across its infrastructure. Campus aggregation and edge switches are being migrated to Brocade ICX® switches with Power over Ethernet (PoE) or PoE+ capabilities for aggregation and edge switching to support wireless and video camera equipment.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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