Major university finds flexible computing solution from Dell and VMware saves 40% in total cost of ownership compared to previous public lab solution

•  Flexible Computing•  Mobility•  Virtualization

“ One of the advantages that we’re really excited about is the ability to respond to demands for software changes in a fast, timely fashion.” Rick, Manager of Microsystems, Major Public Research University

Customer Profile

Company: Major Public Research University

Country: United States

Industry: Education

Founded: 1819

Students: 28,000

Institutional NeedA major public research university decided to close its computer labs to shift the burden of its services to more productive areas and look for more flexible mechanisms to provide the software delivery platform that the public labs had provided previously.

SolutionThe university decided to test two pilots consecutively, the first with Microsoft Terminal Services and the second with VMware View and Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers and Dell EqualLogic™ storage. VMware View was chosen based upon ease of image deployment and flexibility, and application compatibility.

  Benefits

•  40% lower TCO per desktop than public lab model 

•  $25,000 saved annually in power and cooling costs

•  2.6 fold faster deployment of new educational software  

•  Able to deploy new software without disrupting users

The concept may sound counterintuitive, but computer labs were first designed and built when it was unrealistic to expect that college students would have their own computers. Now that laptop computers are omnipresent, it makes economic sense in an era of educational budget-cutting to provide the students access to educational software on their own computers.

“Close to 100 percent of our incoming first-year students have laptops of their own,” says Tony, chief technology analyst of a major public research university in the United States which has recently announced that it will discontinue its computer labs in their present form. The university has closed down 10 labs, and will close three more shortly. One lab will remain open indefinitely. The labs might be repurposed as meeting places where students can collaborate on problems. “We’re not sure what shape these labs will ultimately take,” Tony says. “But they probably won’t have computers that we have purchased and need to maintain.”

Searching for a new software delivery model 

The university’s vision was that students would be able to access the software that they were using in the computer lab from a dorm room or any place that was convenient through an Internet connection. “Then we started looking around for different mechanisms to provide the same kind of software delivery that the public labs provided for 20 years,” says Tony.

The IT team set up two pilot studies to compare the total cost of ownership and relative benefits and drawbacks of using two alternate solutions compared to the physical lab model. The two solutions were: first, Microsoft Terminal Services (now known as Microsoft Remote Desktop Services), and second, VMware View desktop virtualization software, Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with Intel Xeon processors 5500 series and a Dell EqualLogic PS4000E iSCSI SAN.

The university ran the two pilots consecutively. Both were designed to be limited-term pilots, to provide the

With the growing role of technology in higher education, you might expect college computer labs to be increasing in number. That’s not the case, however. More than 11 percent of colleges and universities are either phasing out public computer labs or planning to do so, according to a national survey of college technology leaders by The Campus Computing Project.

“ The Dell and VMware pilot makes presenting software 2.6 times more agile because you’re updating a single image on the back end and then distributing it out to multiple users.” Rick, Manager of Microsystems, Major Public Research University

Technology at Work

Hardware

Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS4000E iSCSI SAN

Dell PowerEdge™ R910 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors 7500 series

Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with Intel Xeon processors 5500 series

Software

Fedora Core 10

Microsoft® SQL Server®

Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 and 2008

MySQL

Red Hat Enterprise Linux®

VMware vSphere 4

VMware View 4

team with a body of data that could be quantified. “We wanted to be able to say, ‘these were the problems and here are the costs,’” says Aron, manager of departmental computing support.

Virtual desktop pilot a  “paramount success”

The Terminal Services pilot was first. It was a small study, using approximately 200 students. “The pilot showed that the students could receive the information they needed on their own machines,” says Aron. “But we had a very limited selection of software titles, and we recognized that a number of titles that we have wouldn’t work under Terminal Services because of licensing or other limitations.”

The VMware View and Dell pilot was next. According to staff, the VMware and Dell pilot was a paramount success. The team opened it up to the entire university and it currently has 849 users. There has been lots of opportunity to receive feedback from students, and it’s been overwhelmingly positive.

VMware View and Dell were chosen based upon ease of image deployment and flexibility, and application compatibility.

2.6-fold faster software delivery 

The IT team immediately identified several benefits of the VMware and Dell solution.

“One of the advantages that we’re really excited about is the ability to respond to demands for software changes with less overhead and in a fast, timely fashion compared to the physical labs,” says Rick, manager of microsystems. “The Dell and VMware pilot makes presenting software 2.6 times more agile because you’re updating a single

image on the back end and then distributing it out to multiple users. All we have to do to deploy the software is install it on the base image and then reboot the clients. In the old world we would have had to install the new software separately on each machine. And we don’t have to wait until midnight to install these changes—we can do them any time. Now it takes up to 3 hours to provision one lab which used to take up to 8 hours, 2.6 times faster. This helps with virus remediation, too. All we have to do is reboot the clients.”

40% savings in total cost of ownership

The team scaled the hardware to host 60 virtual desktops per physical machine, and can support 200 concurrent users at present. “We haven’t come close to tapping the memory or the CPUs,” says Rick. “With VMware View, the memory and CPU demands are fairly balanced, and the Dell PowerEdge R710 delivers on both counts.”

The IT team was already well versed in virtualizing servers. We have experience in virtualizing servers on Dell PowerEdge R910 servers with Intel Xeon 7500 series processors,” says Rick. The university has a deployment of approximately 200 virtual servers on six Dell PowerEdge R910 servers running Microsoft Windows 2003 and 2008, Fedora Core 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The deployment includes Web servers, file servers, streaming media servers, Microsoft SQL servers, a MySQL server and third party applications.

The Dell EqualLogic PS4000E iSCSI SAN has 10K SAS drives for outstanding capacity, performance and scalable

“ With VMware View, the memory and CPU demands are fairly balanced, and the Dell PowerEdge R710 delivers on both counts.” Rick, Manager of Microsystems, Major Public Research University

storage. The IT team was impressed with the Dell EqualLogic iSCSI combined with the Dell PowerEdge servers as a platform for desktop virtualization. “For the purposes of the pilot, we really used just the minimal features of the Dell EqualLogic SAN,” says Rick. “But now that we have some more time, we plan to learn more about it. It performed very well.”

The university estimates that the Dell and VMware solution is saving 40 percent on the total cost of ownership

per desktop compared with the previous solution. “We’re saving 40 percent with Dell and VMware compared to 30 percent that we would have saved with Terminal Services,” says Rick. “Running the two pilots really benefitted us by allowing to see objectively what Dell and VMware had to offer to move from the computer lab paradigm to the level of flexible computing.”

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© February 2011. Intel and Intel Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States or other countries. Microsoft, SQL Server and Windows Server are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. This case study is for informational purposes only. DELL MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. Reference number: 10007641

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