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Summary

• INDUSTRY - University
• ORGANISATION SIZE - 15,000 users
• BUSINESS CHALLENGE - Ensure staff and students have continuous access to core applications
• SOLUTION - Deploy a consolidated storage, backup and server infrastructure using virtualisation technology
• RESULTS - Reduced complexity of IT management, enhanced business continuity capabilities, improved student access to core applications
• INTEREST AREAS - Virtualisation Storage and backup, blade servers

Customer profile

The Robert Gordon University (RGU) is a dynamic modern university with an international reputation for providing high quality education from undergraduate to PhD level. It offers a range of degree programmes in disciplines as diverse as engineering, law and art - many of which can be studied part-time using the university’s virtual learning environment.

Business challenge

More than 1,200 students from 113 countries and over 10,000 on-campus and part-time students learn via this Virtual Campus, which offers internet access to a wide range of courses. The availability of RGU’s datacenter infrastructure is critical to the students' education.

This infrastructure, however, was struggling to meet the growing needs of its users and performance was becoming a concern. As Peter Glennie, Head of IT Services for the university, explains: “We were finding it increasingly difficult to manage our growing server estate and keep the infrastructure up-to-date. As a result, access and availability to core staff and student systems could have been at risk.”

To address these issues and simplify the university's IT management, RGU needed to both upgrade and consolidate its datacenter systems. “The availability of our IT infrastructure is critical,” comments Andrew McCreath, IT Director for The Robert Gordon University. “We therefore had to have an environment that was robust and reliable but also flexible and costeffective to manage. By consolidating and standardising our datacenter, we knew we could achieve these goals.”

Computacenter solution

To ensure it maximised its investment in the new infrastructure - which is based on IBM technology - and minimised the migration risks, the university turned to Computacenter. “We needed a partner that not only had a close relationship with IBM, but also had extensive systems integration expertise across a range of technologies,” adds Peter.

How Computacenter helped

As well as deploying a new server farm, storage area network and backup system, Computacenter implemented virtualisation software from VMware to increase server utilisation, improve availability and achieve greater consolidation of the estate. “The project involved rolling out a number of technologies which were completely new to us, such as Linux and blade servers,” comments Andrew. “Computacenter played a key role in helping us understand the impact of implementing a shared services environment and refining our IT infrastructure strategy.”

To ensure RGU optimised the potential of the new solution, Computacenter also helped deploy a number of IT management tools. As Paul Casey, a Senior Technical Consultant at Computacenter, explains: “These tools help to improve the university’s IT efficiency by automating key processes, such as asset management, deployment and predictive failure analysis. The infrastructure has been specifically designed to deliver high levels of availability, business continuity and flexibility to the university staff and students.”

This flexibility includes the ability to dramatically scale up the volume of users and data being supported by the infrastructure. Currently around 15,000 staff, students and partners use RGU's IT systems, but the solution has the capacity to expand to as many as 50,000 users and 12 Terabytes of data.

Results

Since the new environment went live in 2005, a staged migration has seen the gradual transfer of systems. Core applications, such as the Virtual Campus, email, and a business intelligence solution, are already being supported by the new backbone - with excellent results. As Mary Ann, Project Manager at RGU, explains: “Our IT infrastructure is now more resilient and robust. Previously a single hardware fault could have crashed an entire system, which had serious ramifications for business continuity. Safeguarding the performance of our Virtual Campus is vital for students and maintaining our highquality education services.”

The university has further reduced the potential for unplanned downtime with the new backup solution. “Data volumes are constantly increasingly and we were struggling to complete the backup overnight,” comments Mary Ann. “With the new system, it takes around 3.5 hours.” As well as helping to improve operational efficiency, the upgraded infrastructure will enable RGU to reduce its IT overheads. “By deploying blade servers and virtualisation technology, we are able to decrease the number of physical servers. This will not only help to free up valuable space but also reduce IT support costs and complexity,” adds Andrew.