University of Scranton Accelerates Global Learning With NetApp

“We knew we needed to build a more powerful foundation to support our long-term e-learning and achieve our Bring Your Own Device goals,” says Lee J. DeAngelis, senior systems administrator, University of Scranton. “We looked at other flash storage solutions, but the plug-and-play deployment of NetApp solutions made it an easy choice.“

Located in Pennsylvania, the University of Scranton decided to take e-learning to the next level by connecting students and faculty anywhere in the world, with BYOD program. It also planned to offer university-owned software free of charge to students and faculty. However, the institution was already experiencing performance issues and delays with existing resource-intensive applications. To make the BYOD program a success and to support existing applications, the university needed a highly scalable storage system.

The university moved its VMware Horizon View VDI deployment to NetApp AFF storage systems to expand its mobile-friendly content-delivery solutions, eliminate existing performance issues, and build a solid foundation for the future. It also deployed non-flash NetApp FAS 8040 systems to host critical applications, such as its student information system, in a virtual environment.

With the solution in place, applications launch faster and, are more responsive and virtual desktop login times have decreased by approximately 50%. As a result, the average student saves at least one minute of wait time every lab session. With around 2,000 students using the labs daily over 350 school days each year, more than 11,000 hours a year are reclaimed for learning.

The University of Scranton has also been able to:

• Deliver performance to students using on-campus labs for resource-intensive applications to enable anytime, anywhere learning.
• Free IT employees from the time-consuming task of maintaining physical machines in labs allowing them to redirect more of their time to key educational initiatives.
• Offer quality learning experiences to help the university be more competitive and attract students worldwide.