Lee University Upgrading to Tintri VMstore for VDI At Scale

Tintri by DDN, Inc. announced the performance, reliability and cost-savings experienced by Lee University after implementing Tintri VMstore for its VDI and virtual server environments.

The high education private university in the south-eastern region of the US, maintains 16 computer labs that leverage VDI, providing software services to thousands of students and faculty.

With growth in student enrolment and academic programs, its conventional storage systems proved inadequate to adapt and scale successfully. The IT team spent time tweaking storage to try to improve performance for its VDI environment. Plus, the near-simultaneous logons by a large volume of lab users created big spikes in read I/O. These activities impacted the log-in time for users of VDI services – oftentimes exceeding 7 minutes – which was an unacceptable service level for the labs.

“The computer lab plays an integral role in the education of our students and user experience is a priority,” explains Aaron Looney, systems administrator, Lee University. “We needed a better solution that could deliver the performance our lab environment demands and the ease of management our IT team needs to effectively support VDI services. It was all about increasing speed with faster storage.“

The university evaluated several storage solutions that promised to deliver the required speed, but they all lacked the stability and reliability for consistent VDI services. Lee University’s technology partner, WrightCore, Inc., recommended deploying Tintri VMstore, which demonstrated a level of performance that exceeded the other storage vendor options for VDI. This ultimately led the university to also move its virtual server environment and backup and replication-based DR to VMstore.

“VMstore really is a ‘set it and forget it’ solution,” Looney notes. “It’s not just fast, it’s reliable and stable as well. We have never had any issues – it’s just a solid appliance.“

Since upgrading to Tintri VMstore, the university IT team has experienced several benefits including an increase in overall application performance which, in turn, eliminates a large number of management tasks. With the VMstore system in place, it was able to offer remote classes and content when the pandemic hit because both the IT team and infrastructure were prepared for the I/O demand. In addition, VMstore has reduced the financial impact on backup and replication operations.

“Tintri’s Intelligent Infrastructure was designed to simplify and automate VDI management and scale with ease to accommodate continued growth while delivering a better and consistent end-user experience,” said Dr. James Coomer, VP of products, DDN. “We are pleased that VMstore has helped the university IT team shift focus from managing storage to managing other strategic campus projects that help drive the university’s legacy as a leader in higher education.“

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