Case Study

Weald of Kent Grammar School

Challenge

Weald of Kent had been using an existing Dell EquaILogic iSCSI SAN, but that this device was nearing end of life.

Scalability was a high priority, as the new platform would need to handle an increasing number of machines with ongoing server consolidation. For all these additions, the stability and security of the new system would be crucial.

“Our existing EquaILogic SAN was reaching the available space limits,” he explained, “and we needed to add additional storage. We weren’t sure whether it would be able to cope with the SQL transactions of our main MIS server, so performance was key in our evaluation process of new vendors.” Tom Allwood, Network Manager

Solution

SysGroup and Nimble Storage worked in collaboration to analyse Weald of Kent’s data storage challenges and recommend the best strategy for improvement.

All their technical and support questions were answered
Special educational pricing was obtained
Nimble Storage array is now the primary storage platform for 160 staff and around 1,200 students
It also managed the main school MIS database, all Domain Controllers, User Storage, Application servers and the VMware vSphere virtual environment

Result

Weald of Kent experienced these benefits from their new solution:

Signiﬁcant increase in both storage performance and capacity
Excellent value compared to other hybrid array vendors
User friendly UI and day to day ease of management
CASL architecture enables integrated snapshots
Proactive, remote monitoring from Nimble support team

Testimonial
I’d recommend Nimble Storage to anyone looking for optimised storage and performance. Migrating our services to the Nimble array took only half of a day working with an onsite engineer. We’ve received excellent support and proactive monitoring from the Nimble and SysGroup teams, which gives us great confidence in our choice of provider. SysGroup were really helpful and consultative in their approach.
Tom Allwood
Network Manager, Weald of Kent Grammar School