Weald of Kent Grammar School
Weald of Kent Grammar School is a grammar school with academy status based in Tonbridge, Kent for girls aged 11-18 and boys aged 16-18. It is acclaimed as an outstanding, high achieving, oversubscribed, forward thinking school with specialisms in languages and science.
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.
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
- 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
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
