Ricky Fuentes, the director of user services at Clovis Community College in New Mexico, was staring down two challenges: Providing dedicated servers upon request and refining the backup process on those servers.
“If a department says they had software that needs a dedicated server, I would have to find a vendor to help build out a server, which would take weeks,” says Fuentes. “And with the servers that we did have, the backup process seemed kind of archaic, and I wasn’t really comfortable with it.”
Fuentes turned to Scale Computing. The company’s HC3 platform brings storage, servers, virtualization and management together in a single, comprehensive system. With no virtualization software to license and no external storage to buy, HC3 products lower out-of-pocket costs and radically simplify the infrastructure needed to keep applications running. HC3 products make the deployment and management of a highly available and scalable infrastructure as easy to manage as a single server.
Other benefits include installation in less than an hour and deployment of new virtual machines in minutes. There is also built-in browser-based management and a software-defined, hybrid storage system with automated tiering; fully integrated, clusterwide resource utilization and alerts; single vendor support experience; and an integrated all-in-one appliance.
Easy implementation
Ease of use and rapid deployment were important to Fuentes, who has a small staff and a limited budget. Implementing Scale Computing’s solutions were done with one 30-minute phone call, with Fuentes then passing along the information from that call to his techs in a 15- to 20-minute walkthrough.
“Ease of use was a big one for me because in my department, I’m the director and then I have two techs who work under me,” says Fuentes. “I didn’t have a big team to go in and do research and training for servers, in addition to the hardware, networking and storage.”
Fuentes adds that Scale Computing gave him a list of references he was able to call, which reassured him “that it really is that simple to get started.”
Putting it to use was just as easy. Doing more with less was important to Fuentes. The ease of use of the Scale Computing solution allowed Fuentes and his team to focus more time on other projects and responsibilities.
“It was literally unbox the hardware, set up a phone call, and you’re up and going,” says Fuentes. “I was able to concentrate on other parts of my job that I had to deal with.”
Fuentes adds, “Scale is so easy that you are not going to spend a lot of time trying to manage it or maintain it. If you’re a small IT shop, definitely go for it.”
In terms of cost savings, Fuentes says Clovis was able to purchase Scale Computing solutions through grant money. He says that when the grant funding disappears in a couple of years, the ongoing costs with Scale Computing will be significantly less expensive compared to other solutions the school evaluated.
“That is definitely a big benefit,” says Fuentes.
With Scale Computing, servers could be provisioned in minutes instead of weeks, allowing Fuentes to more quickly respond to department requests. Scale Computing also provides a number of native backup and disaster recovery features that allow Fuentes and his team to implement a more robust backup strategy at no additional cost.
For more information, visit info.scalecomputing.com/LTW
