DataCore Powers Scottsdale Community College

DataCore Software announced that Scottsdale Community College (SCC) has deployed DataCore’s SANsymphony storage virtualization software in conjunction with XenDesktop from Citrix in order to realize a fully virtualized IT environment. The responsiveness of virtualized environments – and in particular – the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), is closely tied to the availability and performance of the underlying storage systems.

DataCore SANsymphony and Citrix run with server hardware from HP and storage hardware from Xiotech. Collectively, they power the mySCC (my Scottsdale Community College) virtualized environment. With mySCC’s virtualization strategy, Scottsdale Community College has significantly reduced the total costs of its IT operations by $250,000, while increasing the number of services offered and improving access to them through a richer, more powerful desktop interface.

"DataCore front-ends our Xiotech storage arrays and actually improves I/O performance," said Dustin Fennell, vice president of IT and CIO, Scottsdale Community College. "And next year, if we get a better hardware option in terms of price-performance – we can hang that behind DataCore too. By embracing total virtualization of servers, desktops and storage, the college is now saving a quarter million dollars a year that would have been spent on hardware had we not deployed best-of-breed virtualization solutions from DataCore and Citrix."

A Virtual IT Environment
Powered by DataCore and Citrix
DataCore’s SANsymphony software enables institutions of such as SCC to use their existing storage equipment and devices to achieve the  shared storage infrastructure necessary to support dynamic virtual IT environments, including desktops. This contrasts sharply with the alternative ‘rip and replace’ approach, which is often prohibitively expensive and results in a rigid infrastructure that cannot adapt to future storage needs.

DataCore software runs on HP DL 380 servers and these DataCore storage virtualization nodes connect to Xiotech Emprise 5000 hardware. The combination of Citrix’s provisioning technology and DataCore’s storage virtualization software reduces demands on storage and improves performance significantly – giving users availability and performance from their virtual desktops.

Virtualization has turned technology operations at SCC from a cost center into a resource that actually funds innovation. SCC now offers technology innovation grants from the money it is saving in its technology operations budget.

The mySCC Virtual Environment:
Today’s Online, Digitized University of the Future
mySCC is an end-to-end virtual IT environment whose virtual desktops enable access to over 230 applications across all of SCC’s faculty, staff and students. It serves the needs of approximately 12,000 students and 1,000 employees, including both full-time and part-time staffers, as well as adjunct and residential faculty. Through mySCC’s virtual desktop experience, users are presented with remote access to simple Windows applications like Microsoft Office – as well as more esoteric ones like AutoCAD. SCC sought to make its learning materials and resources completely accessible and affordable for any student – regardless of physical whereabouts, academic discipline and socioeconomic status.

IT administrators at SCC are now able to manage their older storage devices behind the same unified DataCore interface as the newer, higher-speed Xiotech arrays. SCC centrally controls DataCore’s feature set across their entire infrastructure rather than being forced to deal with model-specific variations as is the case with device-by-device administration.

"The IT needs of our country’s colleges and universities are growing increasingly complex and expensive," said George Teixiera, president and CEO of DataCore Software. "With tuition growing at alarming rates, colleges must drive operating costs down significantly to keep higher education affordable and accessible. By virtualizing their infrastructure, SCC has not only been able to extend their online resources to every student regardless of location and focus of study, they were able to generate incredible savings – funds that can be re-allocated to support critical assets and functions, such as the faculty and academic programs."

DataCore offers 50% discounts to qualified educational institutions.

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