Oak Hills Local School District Builds on NetApp, VMware, and Cisco

Public schools today must deal with increased student
enrollment, ongoing state budget cuts, and limited resources, which require
them to do more with less. Additionally, they need to figure out how to manage
the growth in mobile device and personal laptop usage by students and
faculty.

Oak Hills Local School
District in Western Ohio
was faced with these challenges and realized that smart decisions made about
its IT infrastructure would enable it to deliver anytime, anywhere learning to
each of its high school students in light of ongoing budget and resource
constraints.

As a result, Oak Hills made the transition to a virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) to centrally manage and deliver desktops to students and
educators from its data center, which is built on a NetApp, VMware and Cisco foundation.

Oak Hills was in the midst of a technology refresh and
needed to retire more than 850 aging laptop and desktop computers.
Unfortunately, buying a new laptop for each of its more than 3,000 high school
students was not a viable option. Instead, Oak Hills wanted a solution to
maximize the number of devices the district could afford while augmenting the
desktop pool by letting students use personal laptops and mobile devices to
access learning applications.

After an evaluation of technology vendors, Oak
Hills determined that NetApp, VMware, and Cisco delivered a VDI solution that
would enhance the school’s learning environment, reduce costs, and provide
flexibility to cope with future growth. To help with the implementation, Oak
Hills worked closely with NetApp, VMware, and Cisco reseller Champion Solutions
Group.

News Highlights:
NetApp, VMware, and Cisco delivered a FlexPod data center
solution that is designed to provide Oak Hills with IT and capital savings of
more than $1.27 million in three years, covering hardware, space, energy, and
administration. This level of savings will enable resources and money to be
directed toward other projects within the district. VMware View built on
FlexPod is a pretested data center solution that utilizes a flexible, scalable,
shared infrastructure based on Cisco Unified Computing System servers, Cisco
Nexus switches, VMware vSphere and VMware View cloud infrastructure and virtual
desktop technologies, and NetApp unified storage systems running Data ONTAP.

NetApp’s storage efficiency technologies are
optimized for virtual environments and require Oak Hills to use only 12TB of
total storage to support its entire deployment. These efficiencies help Oak
Hills reduce its power and cooling footprint and lower overall costs.

Oak Hills’ VDI provides students and teachers with 24/7
secure access to learning systems from a variety of school – and student – owned
devices and personal laptops, transforming when, where, and how students learn.

By moving to desktop virtualization and enabling students to
take advantage of the follow-me virtual desktop, Oak Hills has been able to
move closer to its goal of providing students with a one-to-one student-to-PC
ratio and has made it possible for students to catch up with coursework off
campus and improve their grades.

NetApp’s unified architecture provides Oak Hills with the
flexibility required to address the growing and changing needs of its
infrastructure without having to rip and replace with a new storage foundation,
saving valuable money and resources.

Because desktop virtualization enables desktop assets to be
decoupled from one another and the end point and be pushed into the data center
where they can be securely and more effectively managed, Oak Hills is able to
conduct desktop and application updates with less time and resources than it could
prior to the virtual desktop implementation. Previous desktop updates required
four days’ worth of work and up to six dedicated IT staff members. The process
can now be done in 4-8 hours by just one staff member, providing the district
IT staff with the flexibility to better support the district’s 9 schools, 150
teachers, and 8,100 students.

NetApp Flash Cache technology enables the high school to handle
the heavy input/output loads that occur during peak access times, like during
daily desktop startups and at the beginning of class, when many students log in
simultaneously. This prevents the infrastructure from freezing up and enables
uninterrupted student access to critical learning tools.

Tracy Pirkle, director of Technology & eLearning, Oak Hills
Local School
District, said: "Providing our schools with the best possible learning environment is
Oak Hills’ number-one priority, and we realize that our IT infrastructure is a
critical part of the equation. The deep integration between NetApp, Cisco, and
VMware technologies provided us with an ideal solution that not only allowed us
to take our e-learning initiative to the next level but enabled us to greatly
reduce our overall costs and build on a foundation that will be able to grow
with us and meet the ever-changing needs of our students and faculty."

Regina Kunkle, vice president of State and Local Government
and Higher Education (SLED), NetApp, said: "Schools at all levels are looking for new and innovative ways to
deliver advanced learning opportunities to students while staying within tight
budget parameters. Oak Hills’ decision to move to a virtual desktop
infrastructure built on a NetApp storage foundation is a great example of how
smart IT decisions can be the driving force to help schools achieve their
goals. NetApp is 100% committed to working with our education customers to
enable them to achieve the IT efficiency and flexibility they need to thrive in
today’s challenging environment."

Vittorio Viarengo, vice president, End-User Computing,
VMware, said: "Oak Hills is a
fantastic example of how schools can leverage IT in education to do more with
less. With VMware View virtual desktops, Oak Hills can foster anytime, anywhere
learning by getting campus tools and applications in the hands of more
students. Students can enjoy the flexibility of using their own devices.
Teachers can expect a more dependable, consistent technology and can focus
their time and effort on helping students. And IT can streamline desktop
maintenance and reduce the cost of services. The net result can be a more
productive learning environment for students and teachers, all provided with
fewer required resources, time and money."