VDI on Cisco USC, VMware and Netapp + Champion Solutions Group = $1.27 Million in savings

1. Virtualization & Cloud Computing Data Management & Security Professional Services Maintenance Consulting IT Sourcing & Procurement Services
Application Brief
Oak Hills Local School District Does the Math:
VDI on Cisco UCS, VMware, and NetApp +
Champion Solutions Group = $1.27M Savings
CUSTOMER PROFILE Unfortunately, this refresh cycle coincided
Highlights: The Oak Hills Local School District in with district-wide budget reductions of 10%.
western Hamilton County, Ohio, is the Although we retained a capital budget for
INDUSTRY county’s third-largest district, serving about the refresh, we needed a solution that would
Education 8,100 students in preschool through grade significantly reduce ongoing costs. At the
12. For 9 years, Oak Hills has earned an same time, we had to build on a foundation
THE CHALLENGE Excellent rating on the state report card that could accommodate long-term growth
Deliver anytime, anywhere teaching and while maintaining the county’s lowest per- and support objectives for e-learning
learning despite district-wide budget
student spend. Caring, highly qualified leadership.”
reductions
teachers and staff deliver a wide range of
THE SOLUTION youth and adult services, including The district’s goal was to deliver “anytime,
Champion Solutions Group built a virtual programs for gifted students, special anywhere” learning-systems accessibility to
desktop solution on Cisco UCS / VMware / education services, and vocational and every Oak Hills high school student. But
NetApp community education. “Among the best, we Kearns recognized that with flat or shrinking
continue to strive for better.” (Source: operating budgets on the horizon, buying
BENEFITS www.oakhills.k12.oh.us) 3,000 or more new laptops was not an
• Give students and teachers 24x7 access
option. IT approached the problem from two
to learning systems
• Enhance extensibility for growth and CHALLENGE directions: maximize the number of devices
e-learning leadership Reduce IT costs while delivering the district could afford by deploying a
• Virtualize 1200 desktops in 2 months anytime, anywhere teaching and learning solution that would reduce ongoing costs, as
• Support access from student-owned For the Oak Hills Local School District IT well as enable the use of more affordable
devices team, summer vacation is never a day at the thin clients; and augment the desktop pool
• Update desktops 98% faster beach— it’s a brief, two-month window in by letting students use personal laptops and
• Achieve 13-month payback, 3-year which to make needed technology changes mobile devices.
savings of $1.27M
and prepare for the new school year that
• Slash desktop TCO by 67%
starts in August. Oak Hills IT worked with Cisco Services and
SOLUTION COMPONENTS Champion Solutions Group, a 30+ year
In 2010, Oak Hills IT launched an technology infrastructure solutions and
NetApp Products aggressive project to implement a new professional services provider and
NetApp HA FAS3140 with NetApp Flash virtual desktop infrastructure to expand participant in Cisco, NetApp, and VMware
Cache solution accessibility to online teaching and learning partner programs. The team designed a
NetApp FlexClone® software systems. Dave Kearns, instructional support desktop virtualization solution to help the
administrator for the district, describes the district do more with less. Specifications
Protocols
NetApp SAN (FC, iSCSI) challenges: included:
Environment “Our schools operate on a 5-year • High availability for 24x7 accessibility
Cisco UCS, B250 M2 blades technology-refresh cycle, and we needed to • Accessibility from desktops, laptops,
VMware View, vSphere 4.0 retire some 850 aging and increasingly high- cell phones, and other mobile devices
Microsoft Windows Server ® 2003/2008 maintenance desktops and laptops at the • Low total cost of ownership (TCO)
high school.
“We had an aggressive schedule that required live production testing. Critical to success was deploying the
right infrastructure and choosing the right partner, Champion Solutions Group. We’ve built a highly
extensible infrastructure that will help us deliver the highest-quality education and achieve e-learning
leadership—all while maximizing the value of taxpayer dollars.”
Dave Kearns, Instructional Support Administrator– Oak Hills Local School District
Champion Solutions Group • 791 Park of Commerce Blvd., Suite 200 Boca Raton, FL 33487
Phone: 800-771-7000 • Fax: 561-997-4043
www.championsg.com
APPLICATION BRIEF: Oak Hills School District

2. Virtualization & Cloud Computing Data Management & Security Professional Services Maintenance Consulting IT Sourcing & Procurement Services
• Management simplicity to help offload Deployed at the Oak Hills primary data The infrastructure also enables 24/7 access
management tasks from a lean IT staff center, the Cisco UCS solution is configured to data and services from a broad array of
• Scalability for student-population growth with eight full-width UCS B250 M2 Extended end-point devices, including personal
and future e-learning initiatives Memory Blades, each running two six-core laptops and mobile devices such as Apple®
Intel® Xeon® X5680 processors with 192GB iPad® and iPod® touch tablets.
THE SOLUTION of memory. A high-availability NetApp
Build a virtual desktop solution on Cisco FAS3140 provides 12TB of storage “In the past,” says Kearns, “students had to
UCS, VMware, and NetApp capacity, via Fibre Channel. work from the school’s media center or in
The evaluation process included visits to Ohio classroom mobile labs with restricted access
schools and universities that were already To date, Oak Hills has deployed about 1,200 hours. Today, information is at their
using virtual desktop infrastructures, as well virtual desktops. Configured with NetApp fingertips, any time, day or night. They can
as reviews of networking, server, and storage Flash Cache intelligent read cache, the use their laptops or iPads to work on
solutions from leading vendors, including NetApp solution effectively handles the projects during study hall or in the evenings
Cisco, NetApp, and incumbent server and heavy I/O loads that occur during peak to download homework assignments or to
storage provider HP. The Champion team access times—for example, during daily use Adobe Dreamweaver e-learning
assessed Oak Hills’ IT environment to help desktop startups and at the beginning of applications. This infrastructure has
analyze project cost and impact. classes, when large numbers of students log changed the rules about when and where
in simultaneously. students can learn— it dramatically expands
The team determined the best fit to be a their opportunities to research, develop
VMware View™ desktop delivery system on Kearns notes, “Cisco Services design teamwork and problem-solving skills, and
the VMware vSphere™ 4.0 virtualization validation and knowledge transfer and progress through a curriculum.”
platform running on a Cisco Unified Champion’s strategies for smooth adoption
Computing System™ (UCS) data center helped us meet an aggressive schedule and A+ performance, plenty of room in the
platform with NetApp unified storage. ensure that our staff could effectively locker
Selection of the Cisco UCS was based on its manage the solution.” Mike Cooper, technology coordinator for the
efficient form factor and high-performance Oak Hills Local School District, says that the
processors, extended memory, and BUSINESS BENEFITS infrastructure keeps up with demands, even
scalability, which make it well suited for virtual All learning, all the time at peak usage: “Boot storms have not been
desktop hosting workloads. On the storage Kearns reports that the solution was up and an issue. That’s important, because you
side, NetApp was chosen for its deep running for the start of the school year on can’t ask classrooms to stagger logins.
integration with VMware, performance, August 25. Students and teachers can now
efficiencies, manageability, and scalability. access learning applications from any of the
high school’s more than 1,000 desktops and
laptops.
Champion Solutions Group • 791 Park of Commerce Blvd., Suite 200 Boca Raton, FL 33487
Phone: 800-771-7000 • Fax: 561-997-4043
www.championsg.com
APPLICATION BRIEF: Oak Hills School District

3. Virtualization & Cloud Computing Data Management & Security Professional Services Maintenance Consulting IT Sourcing & Procurement Services
“We know that we can bring at least 1,500 Lunch money and innovation Among the best, striving for better
virtual desktops online with the current Kearns suggests that although the initial capital “Our staff and teachers have been patient
configuration. UCS extended memory investment required was comparable to a and supportive of this project,” summarizes
technology will be especially beneficial as traditional desktop deployment, long-term cost Kearns. “We had an aggressive schedule
we move to new platforms like Windows® 7 savings make the virtual desktop solution much that required live production testing without
that may require a larger memory footprint. more economical. Bill Ginn, client manager at the luxury of comprehensive Q&A. Critical to
We now have scalability to reach our goal of Champion, offers the financial details: “We our success was deploying the right
providing one virtual desktop to every high- worked with Oak Hills to do comprehensive infrastructure and choosing the right partner.
school student or to expand services to cost analyses that show a13-month payback, The Champion team has been with us at
other district schools. Affordable growth was 166% ROI, and IT capital and operating every bump and every milestone. They
a key benefit of combining Cisco UCS with savings of more than $1.27M over 3 years. The understand the technology and the
NetApp storage. savings from this infrastructure come in many demands of our environment where
forms, including hardware, space, energy, and everything is time sensitive. As a result,
“When we spec’ed this solution, we administrative efficiencies. Oak Hills, for we’ve built a highly extensible infrastructure
estimated that we’d need 12TB of NetApp example, can now leverage low-cost thin that will help us continue to attract the best
storage for our initial deployment. clients—instead of buying $1,200 laptops for teachers, deliver the highest-quality
Supporting the same 1,200 virtual desktops students, they bought $450 HP thin clients. education, and achieve our goals for e-
on a competing SAN would have required Desktop TCO is 67% lower.” learning leadership—and do it all while
100TB, or more than 8 times the storage we maximizing the value of taxpayer dollars.”
needed from NetApp. The efficiencies of Kearns emphasizes administrative benefits:
NetApp storage make it a much more viable “Teachers seem by nature to be always NetApp, VMware, Cisco, Microsoft, and Apple are
solution for virtual environments.” researching, exploring, and striving to expand trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp,
horizons. It can be challenging for an IT team Inc., VMware, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc.,
Microsoft, or Apple Inc. in the United States, or
NetApp also provides storage resources (via to keep up with their appeals for better, faster,
other countries or both. Other company, product,
iSCSI) to the Oak Hills VMware-based more innovative. But this new infrastructure and service names may be the trademarks or
virtualized-server environment. “NetApp’s helps us be more responsive.” service marks of others.
native multiprotocol gives us flexibility,” says
Cooper. “Today we’re leveraging FC and “In the past, a desktop update would have
iSCSI connectivity, but we may move to FC taken five or six people 4 days,” Cooper
over Ethernet. When you’re making this kind observes. “Using Cisco UCS preconfigured
of investment, you have to know that as service profiles in conjunction with VMware and
your needs and technologies evolve, the NetApp rapid cloning capabilities enabled us to
solution can evolve with you, and that you complete the same process in 6 hours—and
won’t be faced with a costly rip-and-replace. because much of that process is automated, it
With the Cisco UCS, VMware, and NetApp actually took just an hour of my time. We have
infrastructure, we don’t have to worry about tremendous flexibility to support our 150
that—we’ve deployed a solution from teachers without overburdening a lean IT staff
industry-leading vendors collaborating to of 9 that supports 8,100 students at nine district
deliver technologies that work and scale schools.”
together.”
“Supporting the same 1,200 virtual desktops on a competing SAN would have required 100TB, or more than
8X the storage we needed from NetApp. The efficiencies of NetApp storage make it a much more viable
solution for virtual environments.”
Mike Cooper, Technology Coordinator– Oak Hills Local School District
For more information about this application brief or Champion Solutions Group’s ability to architect a
solution to meet your needs, please call 800.771.7000 and speak with a Champion Solutions Specialist.
Champion Solutions Group • 791 Park of Commerce Blvd., Suite 200 Boca Raton, FL 33487
Phone: 800-771-7000 • Fax: 561-997-4043
www.championsg.com
APPLICATION BRIEF: Oak Hills School District