An established, high performing secondary school, was being held back by problematic and ageing infrastructure so needed an efficient and cost effective solution to take them forward into the future. Trident’s detailed hybrid cloud proposal offered a significant boost to reliability and plans for future growth.
A leading member of the Inspire Teaching School Alliance, who are in the top 100 non-selective secondary schools nationally, approached Trident for an independent assessment of their existing infrastructure which was due for replacement. A huge part of the establishment’s success is the enablement of technology to engage students and teachers to reach their full potential, so highly efficient infrastructure is of paramount importance.
Main points for consideration were:
- Migration of email from an Exchange 2007 environment, preferably to a secure and reliable cloud solution
- Replacement of aging and sometimes problematic fibre Channel Storage infrastructure
- Assessment of existing backup and disaster recovery solution to replace existing tape library solution
- The engagement of an expert IT partner to assist as an extension to the internal IT resource for escalation of issues when required, and to help with future IT strategy
The initial part of our engagement process uncovered the client’s operational needs and their goals for simplified infrastructure. Our technical team then visited site to assess the existing network and identify further specific requirements. We understood, from further consultation, that it was important to reduce the complexity of the onsite infrastructure and to minimise the internal resource required to support their email system.
Once our technical and commercial teams had analysed performance, resource and budgetary requirements through our in-depth discovery process, we established a Dell VRTX Shared Infrastructure Platform would meet the needs of the client. Providing servers, storage, networking and management in a single compact chassis, for a similar cost as a standalone fibre channel storage array, offering fantastic return on investment.
The customer was impressed with our findings and were keen to go ahead. The successful delivery of the VRTX solution was able to bring the entire virtual infrastructure up to date and offer lots of room for future growth, providing a simplified infrastructure with improved availability.
