Challenge: Unleash innovation and speed throughout the university to accelerate research in higher learning. Solution: Leverage a NetApp unified storage platform for a hybrid cloud that supports the university’s education and research.

1. Success Story
University Saves $3.6 Million
and Accelerates Research
with Hybrid Cloud Built
on NetApp
Another NetApp
solution delivered by:
Customer Profile “All university activities are underpinned
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Loughborough University is one of the by some aspect of IT,” says Dr. Phil
Industry United Kingdom’s leading universities, Richards, IT director at Loughborough
Education with more than 13,000 full-time students, University. “We have a large campus
a reputation for excellence in teaching and 15,000 technology users. Whether
The Challenge and research, strong links with business researchers are conducting world-class
Unleash innovation and speed and industry, and a highly competitive research, students are learning online
throughout the university to sports development program. The award- or engaging in school activities, or
accelerate research in higher winning university has 21 academic university administrators are managing
learning. departments and more than 40 research programs, everyone needs highly
centers and institutes. Loughborough available systems and anytime,
The Solution
University is the largest single-site anywhere access.”
Leverage a NetApp® unified
storage platform for a hybrid campus in the country, with 437 acres
Recently, IT management identified
cloud that supports the of land. With a staff of over 3,000,
an opportunity to significantly reduce
university’s education and the university is Loughborough’s
costs and increase the return on the
research. largest employer.
university’s IT investment while improv-
The Challenge ing IT services that support education
Benefits
Building a platform for innovation and research initiatives. Its 30-year-old
Located in the Borough of Charnwood data center offered limited capacity and
IT costs to reinvest in higher
in the county of Leicestershire, a low power utilization efficiency rating.
education programs
Loughborough is a thriving town and The university needed to upgrade its
prominent high-technology center that data center and end-of-life components
a foundation for the future
attracts investors from around the and faced the daunting prospect of
globe. Loughborough University spending $3.6 million to keep their
focuses on making smart investments legacy data center operating. “We were
requests for IT, accelerating
in technology, specifically those that reluctant to invest our resources in a
groundbreaking research
support efficient university operations massive data center building project
and a superior student experience. based on predictions,” says Richards.

2. “The FlexPod solution based on NetApp
and Cisco technologies helped save us
$3.6 million in data center costs. We’re able to
allocate that budget to world-class research
and to providing the educational programs
that can make a difference in the lives of
our students today and tomorrow.”
Dr. Phil Richards
IT Director, Loughborough University
IT management searched for a cost- includes FlexPod ® data center solutions Logicalis. “The NetApp and Cisco part-
effective IT solution that would provide deployed at either end of the campus, nership has solidified the virtual, robust
the bandwidth and scalability required with additional FlexPod solutions for architecture of the FlexPod solution in
for educational programs and world- extra capacity in Logicalis’ public a way that allows us to deliver a highly
class research for the next 10 to 15 years. cloud. Each FlexPod configuration is competitive hybrid cloud service.”
The university hoped to find an innova- composed of NetApp MetroCluster™
tive solution that would allow it to focus Logicalis leverages NetApp MetroCluster
more resources on its core educational storage system, Cisco Unified Computing array-based clustering with synchronous
and research missions, as well as to ™ mirroring to deliver continuous availa-
improve the educational environment Cisco Data Center switches, with bility and zero data loss. The company
for students and instructors. VMware® ™
and vCenter™ achieves maximum flexibility in the
for virtualization. shared storage infrastructure of its hybrid
After considering many different cloud ®
,
solutions, Loughborough University “NetApp provides a single architecture which provides secure multi-tenancy
selected a hybrid cloud solution from that Loughborough University leverages to support the storage needs of
to tie together the private and public Loughborough University and other
Berkshire, Logicalis is an international clouds essential to our enhanced customers.
IT solutions and managed services IT strategy,” says Richards. “We only
provider, specializing in communications had to learn one hybrid cloud envi-
and collaboration; data center and ronment, making it much simpler to to eliminate “distributed data centers
cloud services; and managed services manage.” Loughborough further under desks,” where professors,
to clients across both the public and streamlines storage management researchers, and other personnel used
private sector. with CA Technologies software, which local servers and storage, creating
automates service delivery and the information and IT management silos.
The Solution provisioning of its physical, virtual,
Unified storage platform across and cloud environments. multiple virtual storage systems within
a hybrid cloud our single consolidated FlexPod plat-
Logicalis UK consolidated Loughborough’s Logicalis chose FlexPod for the pub- form,” says Gabriel. “Loughborough
existing data center into two “minipods” lic and private clouds based on the University faculty members, for example,
that created a local private cloud, and solution’s flexibility and scalability, as can have access to their own secure,
then integrated the onsite storage well as the success of the long-standing private storage environment, without
environment directly with the Logicalis NetApp and Cisco partnership. “There the risks associated with storing their
hosted, shared cloud services platform. are few enterprise-grade clouds oper- academic and administrative data in
The private cloud solution onsite at ating today,” says Chris Gabriel, Vice a classroom, lab, or office.”
the university, managed by Logicalis,

3. Loughborough University recognizes core educational mission. “In the case Delivering IT services from an integrated
Logicalis as an IT services innovator of FlexPod as an enabler for the hybrid storage platform that spans its onsite
with a commitment to the educational cloud, less is definitely more,” says private cloud and the Logicalis public
sector, as evidenced by Logicalis’ deci- Richards. “The FlexPod solution based cloud gives Loughborough University
sion to connect directly into the U.K.’s on NetApp and Cisco® technologies a new level of IT service agility, appli-
premier education and research network, helped save us $3.6 million in data cation portability, and data protection.
the Joint Academic Network, or JANET. center costs. We’re able to allocate that Loughborough IT and Logicalis can
“JANET is a highly efficient communi- budget to world-class research and to easily move application workloads
cations environment with incredibly providing the educational programs that between the university and Logicalis
high bandwidth and competitive costs can make a difference in the lives of our data centers. “The underlying technology
that provides us a very fast channel of students today and tomorrow.” enables a truly hybrid cloud, allowing
communication between our local data us efficient data protection capabilities
IT on demand and accelerated
center and the Logicalis data center in research to transfer an entire data center across
200 miles and back again in minutes,”
Today, Loughborough University leverages
says Gabriel.
Business Benefits a highly flexible, agile IT environment
$3.6 million in IT savings to respond to the needs of university Loughborough University mitigated the
With the integrated hybrid cloud plat- departments and its 13,000 students. risks associated with investing in a new
form based on the FlexPod solution, Loughborough, named one of three data center based solely on predictive
Loughborough University IT delivers rising stars among research-intensive modeling. Instead, the university can
its services to the university from a universities by the Times Higher easily adapt its flexible, scalable FlexPod
considerably more flexible, powerful, Education (THE) magazine, can launch solution and move IT services back and
and cost-effective IT infrastructure, new research projects rapidly with forth between its private and public
with plans to virtualize the majority if accelerated IT support and a flexible cloud environments based on cost
its IT environment. “With our Logicalis IT infrastructure. optimization and the best approach to
hybrid cloud solution based on NetApp providing an exceptional educational
“With our old data center infrastructure,
storage, we reduced our data center experience. The university also has
procuring IT support for new research
the flexibility to burst out to additional
projects took weeks,” says Richards.
“Power, cooling, and administrative Logicalis public cloud storage when
“The hybrid cloud now enables IT to act
expenses have been equivalently needed for particularly data-intensive
as a research accelerator. Faculty in
reduced and we have accelerated our projects and services.
fields including health and life sciences,
service to the university community.” systems engineering, informatics, “The hybrid cloud based on FlexPod
The university has saved millions of materials, and sustainability now and MetroCluster offers us enormous
dollars by eliminating the need to build receive IT infrastructure on demand, flexibility,” says Richards. “Now we can
a new data center, and instead can use which decreases time to discovery quickly and cost effectively deliver the
the funds to enhance its focus on its across the university.”

4. “There are few enterprise-grade clouds
operating today. The NetApp and Cisco
partnership has solidified the virtual, robust
architecture of the FlexPod solution in
a way that allows us to deliver a highly
competitive hybrid cloud service.”
Chris Gabriel
services that support the needs of our
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
research and academic community, and
make them accessible from anywhere, NetApp Products Third-Party Products
anytime. We can also easily scale our
data centers to accommodate growth
series storage systems ™
and add new educational programs,
which is vital to continuing to attract Data ONTAP ®
top-notch students to Loughborough
University, and to offering a remarkable MetroCluster software CA Automation & Assurance
educational experience once they arrive.”
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