Chelmsford College used XMA during their redevelopment to deploy Viglen devices throughout their new media suite.
Chelmsford College used XMA during their redevelopment to deploy Viglen devices throughout their new media suite.
XMAs technical knowledge has helped Barnsley Academy successfully refresh and transform its server infrastructure so it can better support the IT requirements of its 1,000 students and staff.
The success of a major IT project is often due as much to how the solution was implemented – as to what exactly was put in place. That’s the opinion of Andy Mellor, network manager at Barnsley Academy, which was why when the Academy decided to refresh its server infrastructure he chose to partner with IT provider XMA.
Mr Mellor said: “A certain proportion of our IT budget is allocated to replacing hardware. In the case of our servers, once they get to four years old we automatically refresh them. So we put the project out to tender and shortlisted three organisations. XMA was one of those companies.”
“In all honesty, each was proposing very similar solutions. There was not much to choose between them but I picked XMA because of a feeling. It was a feeling I got about the organisation’s people. I thought I could work with them the best. I felt comfortable with them. It was mostly just about the impression they gave me.”
Since then, XMA has put in place a SAN installation and server virtualisation project for the Academy. Engineers set up a new SAN and used three servers as a virtualisation platform. Another server acted as a domain controller, management and backup server while the fifth ran the Academy’s MIS solution.
Mr Mellor said: “We used all physical servers before but virtualisation is where technology is headed so this was the next step for us. It has dramatically reduced the amount of energy and space we need to run our servers. The new infrastructure is also faster and more efficient. Our overheads are much reduced and the management of the Academy’s IT systems are easier – with just one place to look at all the servers.”
Mr Mellor added: “One of the key advantages is that the new infrastructure has enabled us to restore our server in 30 minutes where before it would have taken a full day. Disaster recovery time is nothing compared to what it was before and that’s a massive bonus.”
“The back-up is also fantastic. My back-up window used to take 30 to 40 hours but now it’s three or four. That’s a massive difference because it enables me to make more storage available to our users. The staff and students don’t notice any difference but the new system has made it so much easier for me to manage with everything being in the same place.”
Mr Mellow said XMA’s technical expertise was one of the major advantages of using the company. He said: “The technical guys have been great. They were very personable and their knowledge is fantastic. If I ask them to show me anything they are very accommodating. We are a small team here even though the Academy is growing quickly and so access to this technical expertise gives us a step up.”
“In fact, this technical knowledge was on display from the very start of the project.” Mr Mellor explained: “XMA was the only company that sent a technician to the initial consultation rather than just a sales person. I found that a benefit. The engineer had a look at our system and simply talked through what we needed. All the other companies only sent sales people which gave the meeting a very different vibe.”
The IT project is now up and running successfully at Barnsley.
“XMA provides the hardware and the systems support for everything they provide. That is also going well. We have had a couple of issues but they have been fantastic in sorting it out. The company has a large knowledge nase and the engineers working with us have just got on to it with no fuss. They have answered any questions and everything has gone very smoothly.”
One of the UK’s largest educational facilities, City College Manchester supports a growing number of students from around the world, and over 1,200 employees. In order to provide 24/7 access to essential materials and services online, the college needed a data storage and protection system to support this.
“As we increased the number of college services, we had to continually buy more servers and storage to keep pace with the data this produced. IT management costs were soaring, and we were worried about network integrity as we didn’t have consistent disaster recovery and backup processes.”
“At the time, all our data storage was direct attached. Each server had its own storage that couldn’t be accessed by other servers. This just wasn’t efficient.”
John Goulden, Network Support Manager, City College Manchester
City College Manchester began the process of selecting a vendor to build a storage area network (SAN) that would link each of its four major campuses and partner sites across the city.
“Our key requirements were quality of hardware and an ability to scale to meet future needs,” explains Goulden. “Disaster recovery was also critical.”
City College Manchester selected a complete solution from XMA, a specialist ICT provider to the UK’s education sector. XMA installed and integrated a SAN across the college’s campuses and implemented a disaster recovery suite to ensure data is stored and replicated for quick and simple recovery. XMA also provided training to the college’s network technicians to ensure they were fully utilising the system’s capabilities. The hardware installed comprised two Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 1000 models, one at each of the college’s two main data centres.
XMA states, “By designing and deploying this complex storage solution, City College Manchester can now quickly and securely store and replicate all of their data. It also provides them with a solid platform for growth.”
Implementation was fast and efficient and was completed in just two weeks. City College Manchester is investing in VMware virtualisation tools as part of a server consolidation drive, and XMA ensured that the new storage infrastructure supported this environment.
Network technicians at the college have found the consolidated storage solution easy to use and manage. If they do need assistance on either the hardware or software, support is available around the clock.
“We can now provision storage as and when we need it, which is absolutely brilliant. We’ve never been able to do it so fast,” says Goulden.
The college can also now monitor and manage its storage more efficiently, spotting problems faster and predicting future requirements. This in turn provides students and staff with higher information availability and better access to services and resources, in line with service level requirements.
Technicians have identified significant time savings by being able to perform data replication and backup procedures more efficiently, and reduced downtime means better time efficiency for users, too.
“With XMA’s new setup, if we lost our primary data centre, we could have all the data back within hours,” explains Goulden. “Before, it would have been a nightmare task that would have taken days to recover just some of the lost data.”
“Recently, one of our network volumes was corrupted. In the past we would have spent hours searching through the tape library for the backup, but thanks to the advanced Hitachi software which is built into the solution, we were able to recover it within 15 minutes.”
John Goulden, Network Support Manager, City College Manchester
The college uses a Novell GroupWise e-mail system and, since deployment, technicians have found that a disaster recovery task which used to take several days can now be completed within an hour. Data replication capabilities have also been found to be very robust. Data at the two main campuses is backed up locally, then between each other while data from remote sites is replicated to the two central data centres. This ensures that no matter where information is stored, it is automatically and securely replicated at a different location. The college’s opening hours are extending and a growing body of international students want access to information from anywhere, at any time.
Goulden concludes, “The College is becoming a 24/7 learning environment and its IT infrastructure is now able to support this important shift. At the time of implementation our data requirement was for 3.5TB and this is growing at 50% year on year. It’s a significant mountain to climb, but we are now equipped with the tools we need to meet the challenge.”
Hitachi Data Systems Research-Data Storage Solution gets high marks from Lancaster University.
As one of the United Kingdom’s top 10 universities, Lancaster University is a research-led institution with an ambitious strategy to become truly globally significant. The university required a robust, high quality and scalable storage and backup solution to support its business applications and research data storage for at least the next five years.
The existing infrastructure was approaching full capacity and unable to continue supporting its growing data demands. The NAS environment (provided by EMC) was reaching maximum capacity and did not have a non-disruptive route for expansion of its research data storage. The existing EMC backup hardware had also reached end of life, and the backup window and tape quantity as at the practical capacity limit.
In partnership with Hitachi Data Systems, we utilised the National Server and Storage Agreement framework to provide a solution for Lancaster University that covered SAN, NAS and backup environments.
Migration was completed in two phases, and two separate NAS platforms were proposed for each main data type: user and research data. For cost efficiency, Lancaster University’s user data is now stored in Hitachi NAS Platform (HNAS) with intelligent tiering based on access frequency. To ensure scalability and reliability, research data is stored in a virtualized Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).
HCP is ideal for the management of business-critical information and utilises Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS): HUS 150 via HUS VM. To provide a high-performance gateway and ensure fast file retrieval and additions, research data is presented via HNAS to users with Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) across the two data center locations.
With the university’s current environment composed of about 90% virtualized infrastructure, the optimal solution was to consolidate all data into the virtualized HUS VM, a competitive, cost-effective solution that delivered flexibility and scalability. Best-in-industry capabilities were installed across all areas using HNAS and HUS 150, with backup-free architecture put in place for high-performance NAS research data using HCP.
Upon installation of HDS solution, a benchmark test proved its high-performance capabilities, superseding IOPS requirements by 250%. The difference was highly notable as end-user services greatly improved, allowing students, faculty members and administrative staff to work more efficiently, access required services, and maximise use of the research data produced by the university.
Due to virtualisation and advanced flash technology, Lancaster University has accelerated application performance and reduced costs. The university also manages capacity and services more efficiently. To meet government guidelines, data retention was important and Lancaster now has the flexibility to support its projected data growth over the coming years.
With Intel® Xeon® Gold processors based on the new Skylake architecture, offering significant per- core performance, Lancaster University are able to meet growing and support of a wide range of HPC workloads on premise.
The University of Lancaster is one of the UK’s largest research institutions, so having access to enterprise class HPC power is mission-critical, the university receives more funding through research than through tuition fees alone. The University of Lancaster has been an HPC user for a few years but decided to adopt a more strategic and centralised approach when they began looking at refreshing and upgrading its resources.
Lancaster University chose XMA as a partner to deliver the new HPC resources, which will allow the university to maintain an enviable record in cutting edge computer-based research. The difference is that Viglen products and services are tailor made for each and every client. By weaving together the team’s high level of experience and expertise, with a solution orientated approach to hardware, XMA can deliver on budget and on brief every time.
HPC platforms—from the smallest clusters to largest supercomputers—demand a balance across compute, memory, storage, and network. The Intel Xeon Scalable platform was designed to deliver and enable such balance with massive scalability—to tens of thousands of cores. From its improved core count and mesh architecture to newly integrated technologies and support for Intel Optane memory and storage devices, the Intel Xeon Scalable platform enables the ultimate goals of HPC—to maximise performance across proved core count and mesh architecture to newly integrated technologies and support for Intel.
It is vital that IT delivers an infrastructure platform enabling the University to meet the requirements today and in the future. This platform is based on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) server and storage technologies and VMware Virtualisation software technologies.
To meet the needs of 23,000 students, 5,000 staff and plans for continual growth in the University’s data and services, the University chose us to refresh and expand their core Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure utilising the latest HPE 3PAR storage and providing a dual-site, replicated highly available platform.
In order to respond to the increasing demands being placed on such a large institution, the University’s new technology solutions need to have high capacity, resilience and performance.
The University needed to replace an existing HPE 3PAR T800 that was due to be decommissioned, and also update software on their existing HPE 3Par V400 array enabling cross-functionality between arrays. At the same time, the University also needed to implement a new SAN fabric into the newly commissioned data centre which would support current and future requirements.
The new environment, utilising hardware, software and the SAN Fabric had to connect the existing HPE based infrastructure, providing a dual site, highly available and resilient platform.
One of the challenges that the project faced was that it needed to be invoiced by December but
could not take delivery until the following March. As part of our commitment to excellent service
delivery, we provided a secure bonded warehouse facility at our St Albans Head Office to store the
19 pallets of HPE infrastructure for four months at no additional cost to the University.
Working in partnership with HPE and XMA the University was able to deliver the project on-time and
on-budget.
The project commenced with a workshop discussing the requirements in detail with Warwick University’s IT Services, HPE and XMA working together, in partnership. It was clear that the requirement was for a tailored solution maximising the investment in existing HPE and VMware infrastructure whilst also being able to meet current and future requirements and expanded to a dual-site deployment.
The University was already using HPE ProLiant Server and 3Par storage, with VMware vSphere virtualisation software delivering a highly virtualised infrastructure which worked.
This made the decision to expand the environment using HPE technology an easy one and the
University decided to expand to a dual-site, replicated environment utilising:
• HPE ProLiant DL560 Servers
• HPE 3Par V400 StorServ Storage
• HPE SAN Fabric Switches
• HPE 3Par StorServ Replication Suite, including Peer Persistence
• VMware vSphere Virtualisation Software
This enabled the University to maximise existing investment and knowledge, reduce risk and provide
a highly available and resilient infrastructure platform to meet current and future needs.
The highly available, saleable and manageable infrastructure based on HPE Server and Storage and
VMware Infrastructure has enabled Warwick University to achieve their goal of expanding IT
Services to support today’s requirements as well as future growth and demands.
Ofsted issued a tender for the supply, implementation and ongoing managed support of a Microsoft Private Cloud solution with over 300TB storage, 500 CPU cores and 8TB RAM (plus a smaller platform at a second site). The requirement included fully-managed migration of approximately 300 production and test/dev systems to the new platform, while addressing their need for a number of secure network environments including a combined user acceptance testing environment and a Disaster recovery failover.
We recognised that Ofsted required a platform that provided significant computing resource and a highly resilient storage platform. In response, we proposed a Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) comprising automatically-tiered Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) and CB500 blades based on the latest Intel Sandybridge processors. Core networking (based on Brocade VDX) was included, as was firewalling and load balancing using F5 Big IPs. We addressed the solution requirements in their entirety and provided training and migration services on top of hardware, software and extended managed support for the complete infrastructure stack.
As HDS’ largest public sector partner in the UK market, we recognised this as an ideal fit for the HDS Unified Compute Platform. This was an opportunity to introduce a disruptive yet constructive technology, despite the length of relationship with the incumbent technology partner. Our solution provided to Ofsted replaced the entire existing estate as it hurtled past the end of its economic life.
The migration process, which included virtualising over 100 legacy physical servers (including SQL and Exchange clusters), also required the migration of their on-premis datacentre to a secure remote datacentre, all without any business disruption.
On completion of the Infrastructure Refresh project, Ofsted engaged with us to develop the platform further by extending the storage layer to a content platform. We are also involved in consulting on the effective use of its infrastructure to achieve delivery of its regulatory and statutory objectives.
XMA’s technical expertise has proved invaluable for helping Lincoln Minster School install a SAN and carry out a server virtualisation project which has given staff and students a much improved service.
“Having an impressive technical team on the end of the phone was very helpful.” That was the verdict of Simon Cornish, network manager at Lincoln Minster School, after XMA helped the school design and deliver a SAN installation and server virtualisation project. In fact, he attributed much of the final success of the project to the company’s ability to offer sound technical advice at every step of the way.
The solution was designed by XMA after the school decided to explore moving towards a modern virtualisation environment during a hardware refresh. Mr Cornish said: “We were refreshing our server infrastructure and we wanted to virtualise it. Previously our servers were old and tired and out of warranty. We knew virtualisation was the way IT was going but we needed help to move forward with the right solution.”
The entire project ran very smoothly. Members of the XMA team were happy to answer
questions about anything we wanted to know about. We were really impressed.
The school, which caters for 900 pupils across three sites, needed XMA’s help to make sure their plans could become an effective reality. Therefore, XMA designed a solution and installed a cost- effective SAN which enabled the school to reduce its server estate from 15 servers to 4.
The benefits of virtualisation were clear to Lincoln Minster. Mr Cornish said: “This is the way IT is going. By cutting down our servers from fifteen to four, we have reduced our overheads dramatically and it has also made the management of our IT systems much easier as we only have one place to look at all the servers – rather than having to maintain each separately. Thanks to this project, we have refreshed hardware, our operating systems are up to date, we have more power and, generally, we now have in place a faster, more effective system than before.”
However, ensuring the school reaped the benefits of a virtualisation solution was not a foregone conclusion. Mr Cornish said: "We have our own technical team but finding people who were at the next level up was essential. One of my aims was to find a solution provider with good technical expertise.
“Today, both staff and students at Lincoln Minster are enjoying the advantages of XMA’s solution which has proved to be value-for-money, as well as reliable and scalable.”
“We were most impressed with XMA’s technical knowledge. From that point of view, it was absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t have asked for anything more at all. It was quickly apparent that XMA staff knew what they were doing and had the knowledge to help
us.”
Another reason that Lincoln Minster chose XMA to deliver the solution was because the IT provider was happy to create a solution that was fitted to the school's requirements exactly. For example, the school had already chosen to use HP and Microsoft technology – so XMA ensured this preference was factored into the final design.
Mr Cornish said: “Our account manager made an effort to come and sit down with us and find out exactly what our issues were. By doing so, XMA could plan out exactly what we needed. Now we have a solution that fulfils our needs.”
Today, both staff and students at Lincoln Minster are enjoying the advantages of XMA’s solution which has proved to be value-for-money, as well as reliable and scalable. The system can also support much faster backup times and improved disaster recovery. The solution provides redundancy within the SAN solution through two fibre controllers to service the servers and data traffic and three high performance specification servers to manage data requests to the SAN from the school’s network. A storage server was also installed to backup all data from the main SAN.
Mr Cornish said: “Our storage is improved so the service we can offer our students is much better. What’s more, the staff know they can rely on the IT facilities. In the past we have had complaints about the systems performance. That was not an acceptable situation because if the computers are down, teachers cannot deliver lessons to the standard they want, which is a major problem for any modern school. Now we just don’t have these complaints coming in.”
He went on: “The entire project ran very smoothly. Members of the XMA team were happy to answer questions about anything we wanted to know about. We were really impressed. They knew their stuff and because of that we would absolutely use XMA again in the future.”
The Windsor Forest Colleges Group is made up of three college campuses (Windsor, Langley and Egham) all managing different technologies and virtualisation software. Supporting IT for more than one campus and in different locations, presented challenges for the group; with too much physical infrastructure, inconsistent systems, poor service levels and time and resource intensive management.
We worked with the Group to implement an identical 3-node Hyper-V cluster and DPM backup solution into each of the three sites. By integrated best of breed HPE servers and storage, the College gained three major components.
A production environment consisting of a three node Hyper-V cluster with 1024GB RAM and 70TB of shared storage per site that hosted each sites IT services and data, with spare capacity that allows for one site to be replicated to another to form a 3-way mutual Disaster Recovery environment.
A Microsoft System Centre DPM backup solution configured with 60TB usable storage at each site that
provides disk to disk backup for local services and data.
A 3-way mutual disaster recovery environment that allows virtual machines to be replicated between sites
allowing for failover of services should one site become unavailable.
As a result, each site is now able to work independently with local failover clustering and the ability to replicate virtual machines to another site for added resiliency using Hyper-V replica.
3D printers are revolutionising how schools teach design and technology, science and arts subjects but, just as importantly, XMA finds they are offering primary school children an alternative way to learn.
Did you know that the McLaren Formula 1 team print out spare parts trackside to make instant repairs to their cars; that Coco-Cola makes huge savings on bottle design by printing out new prototypes for pennies rather than paying out large sums for traditional redesigns; or that Gummy Beans are being printed off ready to eat?
Industry is looking increasingly to schools, colleges and universities to produce 3D print-savvy employees familiar with technology that is now using anything from plastics through to carbon fibre and metals to save precious design and production time and cash.
So how are schools preparing young people to handle one of the most exciting developments in design and technology at a time when curriculum reforms are prioritising ‘academic’ subjects above all other disciplines?
Back in 2012, one of the first schools to adopt 3D printing was Windsor Boys’ School. The Department for Education was searching for innovative ways of teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and design that made full use of 3D printers and asked schools to bid for a year’s free use of one of 21 Makerbot printers in a pilot scheme. Windsor was one of the ‘winners’, explains its long-standing design and technology (D&T) teacher, Phil Hall.
“We pretty much taught ourselves after half a day’s free training on specialist software,” says Phil, winner of the 2017 D&T Association’s Outstanding Teacher of D&T Award. “The more we used it, the better we became. After a year we’d seen the machine’s potential, we were allowed to keep it and we got our parent teacher association to invest in three more (second-hand) Makerbots.
“Four years later they are still going strong. We installed and networked the printers ourselves – they are simple to set up and really robust. They can be put together with alum keys and nuts and bolts – and if anything goes wrong, you can fix it yourself!”
The school now has six printers – besides the original four, one is donated and the other is being trialled for a manufacturer.
At first, staff and pupils were amazed by the technology. “We just wanted to show off and print final showpiece models for D&T GCSE and A-level exams,” says Phil. “But we quickly realised our students were not learning much doing that. We now make best use of them earlier in the design process at the development and prototype stage.
“Students earn many exam marks for showing learning through making. You can print a prototype, evaluate, test and modify it, then reprint it again within a day, overnight or, in some cases, just an hour. The students might want some very complex parts that you’d struggle to manufacture any other way – now you can print them quickly and have them in your hand to test them, take them to a client, and evaluate and learn from them.”
Students can have their designs printed off at any time they see fit during the design cycle. All the machines are open access and just need a quick check every 20 minutes or so to ensure the plastic filament is still flowing through to feed the machine.
Pupils spend year 9 just getting a feel for D&T, learning how to use the software, and then start using the printers for their designs if they opt to take D&T at GCSE and/or A-level.
Every year brings surprises. Students regularly push the boundaries, asking to do new things, and Phil will work out how to do it. “We have been doing it long enough to gauge the tolerance of different parts that we need to twist, lock or push together, and we’re getting better at this all the time.”
So what projects are being worked on now? “The large ones are the most ambitious; sometimes parts take up to 10 hours to print,” says Phil.
One student designed carriers for surfboards that hung on the side of a bike frame. It was quite ambitious and comprised many component parts. All the brackets were 3D-printed and then connected by metal tubes – a mix of resistant materials and printed plastic parts.
Smaller projects include an exam brief for portable working speakers, fitted out with all the electronics that were mounted on 3D-printed parts; angle-poise lamps with 3D-printed joints and, most recently, drones designed with specialist CAD software and then flown in front of MPs at Westminster. Phil and two students had been invited to Parliament to talk about the benefits of 3D printing and mark the launch of a national STEM project for schools supported by Autodesk, supplier of the software.
But D&T is not the only subject to benefit from 3D printers. XMA’s sales account manager and 3D printer specialist Virendra Kayakar says the technology is also becoming popular in primary schools as it offers children another way to learn.
“It’s not just about learning visually or audibly but kinaesthetically through touch and feel,” he says. “It’s very difficult to understand a concept in your head without being given evidence, but now 3D printing means you can hold something in your hands.
“The primary curriculum has changed recently, introducing basic computer-aided design, and 3D printing is an ideal and very simple way of getting kids involved and bringing the subject to life.”
The technology is also becoming popular with biology teachers as they can print out different parts of the body and then hand them out to students.
“One teacher I know designed and printed out all 14 parts of the heart and they all connected together. You could take the heart apart and see how it works – it was also labelled and you could see all the veins and arteries.
“You can’t expect everyone to learn the same way, everyone’s different,” says Virendra. “It also helps those students who do understand it to get another perspective.
“If you incorporate this sort of knowledge at an early age rather than at 18 or 19, it works much better as students hunger for knowledge and they’ll pick it up a lot quicker. It’s not just about D&T. Everyone can use it.”
For more information on 3D printers, please contact our 3D specialist at XMA on 01422 444 666 or email halifax@xma.co.uk
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