The University of Cambridge has plumped for NetApp HCI in an IT infrastructure overhaul that underpins online teaching and learning.
The Covid-19 ready solution sees Citrix Workspace desktop software, running on NetApp hardware. Citrix Consulting helped to install the NetApp HCI hardware and Citrix Workspace is now available to thousands of users.
NetApp HCI enables Cambridge University Information Services (UIS) to take advantage of cloud and scale storage and compute and reduce software licensing costs.
NetApp will help UIS to centralise, consolidate, and migrate the IT portfolio to a private cloud environment. The company says it will help develop an IT billing system for use across the university.
UIS said it “consolidated multiple storage systems and services offered by the university. We then searched for efficiencies through automating processes, improving scalability and eventually move some of our larger workloads to the cloud. Our partnership with NetApp allows us to consolidate many of our services, and saving much needed resources while delivering to staff and students’ needs in the ‘New Normal’.”
UIS has selected NetApp HCI, previously known as the Solidfire all-flash arrays with the Elements OS. NetApp HCI comprises software running on H series hardware nodes, as this datasheet illustration depicts:
NetApp says that the UIS move to the cloud has enabled students and staff to work and lecture remotely, and also meet high performance and reliability SLAs and service-level objectives for nuclear physics simulations and big data analysis involved in the university’s research programmes.
Cambridge University’s Department of Computer Science and Technology has run NetApp file servers in a system called Elmer since 2002.
