Six Buchanan County Schools Deploy Maxta

Maxta, Inc., a provider of hyper-convergence and software-defined storage (SDS) solutions, announced that six schools in Buchanan County, IA have implemented its hyperconverged solution to store and protect its data.

Chris Bresson, the technical coordinator for these schools, maintains the complete IT infrastructure including servers, virtualization, networking, and storage for all six schools in the county. He oversees the technology at the main campus in Jesup: an elementary, junior high, and high school – all of which are under one roof. He also manages the IT at the other three schools that are located in a more rural part of the county.

The storage issues were mainly tied to the main campus where online testing, social media and lots of files and applications such as accounting called for a more robust storage solution. He was using vSphere and had about 500GB of space left on a NAS device and a hybrid SAN solution that was not reliable. He knew it was time for a solution that was user-friendly, could integrate well with applications and his backup systems, and would help him manage and protect the schools’ important data.

The schools work in an-all Windows environment, including SQL database, accounting applications, administrative files and file servers. The storage solution needed to integrate well with multiple Microsoft applications, databases, and file servers.

Jesup community schools did not have enough space to store all the data that was being used by both faculty and students. They could not transfer files and the SAN environment was too slow. Finding an affordable alternative was a priority. Bresson looked for solutions that were resilient, user-friendly and could fit into the budget of his not-for-profit school district.

“That is when I learned about hyper-convergence and how easy it was to set up such a system and how well it integrates – so I was hooked,” he said.

The installation of the Maxta solution was quick and easy. Bresson said his previous storage solution took several days to deploy with a lot of back and forth with support. The results of using Maxta literally “made the grade.” The Maxta team was able to get Jesup set up in no time and proved easier to manage.

He was impressed with Maxta and noted the following:

• Maxta turned out to be a resilient solution that can handle all the transcripts and grades for the students.
• The data reduction feature of software delivered significant capacity savings.
• The easy integration with Unitrends, Inc. as well as all the Windows applications, file servers, and databases.
• Easy to install and use with no elaborate staff to maintain the system.
  

Bresson would recommend the product to other schools: “The Maxta team worked hard with me. Overall, everything has been great with Maxta. When I saw how easy it is to manage – I thought wow – you don’t appreciate all that until you actually see it in action.“