Today’s digital-native students expect everything they need for their studies to be available at the click of a button. Supported by high-performance Lenovo hardware, Washburn University is making that a reality.

1. WASHBURN UNIVERSITY
Scoring top marks for student services.
Today’s digital-native students expect everything they need for
their studies to be available at the click of a button. Supported
by high-performance Lenovo hardware, Washburn University is
making that a reality.

2. Access to Wi-Fi, checking email, submitting coursework online,
downloading learning material – the list of IT services that
students rely on for their studies is vast. To deliver these
services, Washburn University’s IT team needs a robust, reliable
infrastructure.
Mike Watkins, Senior Systems Administrator at Washburn
University, begins: “Our goal is to provide students and staff
with everything they need to get on with their work. With that
in mind, we’re always looking to improve and expand our
service offering.”
Annually ranked as one of the best colleges in the Midwestern
United States, Topeka, Kansas-based Washburn University has
more than 7,500 students, and 1,000 faculty and staff.
Mike Watkins remarks: “To deliver essential IT services to a
growing number of students and staff, we needed more
hardware resources. An added challenge was that we are
currently in the process of bringing the Washburn School of
Law and Washburn Technical College IT systems in-house to
our central data center, so we wanted to beef up our
infrastructure quite considerably.”

3. To support its mission-critical VMware environment, which runs
95% of user services, Washburn University chose to implement
two Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850 servers, equipped with
Intel® Xeon® Platinum processors , along with three Lenovo
System x3850 X6 servers and one Lenovo System x3650 M5
server, featuring Intel Xeon E7 and E5 processors respectively.
The university worked with trusted Lenovo Business Partner
Huber & Associates to secure the hardware, and a team from
Lenovo to complete the implementation.
“The level of service we received from Lenovo went above and
beyond what we had anticipated,” recalls Mike Watkins. “The
Lenovo team came out to make sure we got the servers
configured and deployed correctly, which was really helpful. We
were then able to complete the migration ourselves, which
went without a hitch. And the Lenovo servers have been
running beautifully ever since.”
With its new, high-density Lenovo systems, Washburn
University successfully added 1.2 TB of memory to its
infrastructure, increasing resources by 60%, while
simultaneously reducing its footprint.
Mike Watkins comments: “We now have a very healthy
environment with plenty of room for growth, so we can add
more users, more VMs and more applications to meet demand.
It also means that we have some wiggle room if we need
to do any maintenance or if a host fails. Previously, if we had
to take a machine down for maintenance, we had to limit
resource allocation, which would drag down overall
performance. That’s no longer a problem – we have more than
enough resources to keep performance levels high during
planned, or unplanned, downtime.”

4. For Washburn University, having more hardware resources
means less constraint and more capabilities. Today, the
university can dedicate more resources to end user services.
“The more hardware resources we have available, the better
we can serve students and staff,” confirms Mike Watkins.
“Not only do existing services run faster and more smoothly,
we also have the resources to test out new solutions.
“For example, we’re working on a Wi-Fi onboarding solution
that will enable new students to set up their university
Wi-Fi account ahead of time, so that they can get online on
the very first day they arrive on campus. Right now, the
helpdesk ends up with a long line of students unable to
access the internet and we’re overwhelmed with hundreds
of support requests and password reset jobs all at once. It
will make for a much better experience if students are
already connected to Wi-Fi and ready to go as soon as
they arrive.”
With high-performance, high-availability Lenovo servers
underpinning IT services, Washburn University is
better placed to support students and staff – now and
in the future.
Mike Watkins concludes: “With the Lenovo servers, we now
have a truly enterprise-grade infrastructure in place. It
means we have the resources we need to focus on exciting
new services that will help students get the most out of
their time at Washburn.”
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“With the Lenovo servers, we now
have a truly enterprise-grade
infrastructure in place. It means we
have the resources we need to focus
on exciting new services that will help
students get the most out of their
time at Washburn.”
– Mike Watkins, Senior Systems Administrator,
Washburn University
CS00068-00
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5. WASHBURN UNIVERSITY
Scoring top marks for student services.
EDUCATION
“With the Lenovo servers, we now have a truly enterprise-grade
infrastructure in place. It means we have the resources we need
to focus on exciting new services that will help students get the
most out of their time at Washburn.”
—Mike Watkins, Senior Systems Administrator, Washburn
University
Solution components
Hardware
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850 with
Intel® Xeon® Platinum processors
Lenovo System x3850 X6 with Intel
Xeon E7 processors
Lenovo System x3650 M5 with Intel
Xeon E5 processors
Software
Lenovo XClarity Pro
D2L
Ellucian Banner
VMware vSphere
Zoom
To deliver the digital services that students expect, Washburn
University refreshed its IT infrastructure with high-performance,
high-density Lenovo servers equipped with Intel® Xeon®
processors. Now the university has the hardware resources it needs
to ensure seamless services and to develop new solutions that
make life easier for students and staff.