Niagara College’s Success Stories
(tied to the use of Dell Services)
John Levay
Director, ITS
Niagara College
Agenda
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Background
Issues and Drivers at College last 4 years
Strategies to capitalize on
Dell Engagements
Future
Recommendations
Questions
Background
• Approx. 9000 FT, 15,000 PT students
– Everything from extreme computing literacy to
“what’s a mouse?”)
• 2 main campuses and 2 satellite sites in Niagara
Region of Ontario
• Ontario Government KPI - Number One in
Student Satisfaction for the last 6 out of 7 years
• My claim to fame – organized and hosted first
CANHEIT (2003) at Brock University
Issues and Drivers
• Storage all over the place – 2007-08
– Old EMC SAN needing renewal
– Individual servers
– Desktops/laptops etc
• Backup - 2008
– eVault
– Out of space 5 TB X 2
• Renewal of 70 centralized servers across 4 years
• Peoplesoft servers renewal for upgrade - 2009
• Continued expansion due to growth 07-012
Issues and Drivers … cont
• Desktop and Lab renewal and deployment getting
expensive
• Not really using wireless other than in hallways
($400k+ investment over 4 years) 2011
• Microsoft licensing changes (Office 2010@home)
• 5 PBXs needing upgrades 2012
• Groupwise and everyone new hires wanting
Exchange/Outlook 2012
Strategies at the College
(We could capitalize on)
• Greening in the College Strategic Plan
– Green is good!
• Moving to “mobily enhanced teaching”
– Reduce dedicated labs – helps scheduling, renewal, access, etc
– Allow access to academic software on wireless in classroom
(enhanced teaching) and from outside the College (where applicable)
– Don’t want to increase laptop programs – maybe even eliminate them
– move to BYOD if possible
• Renewal is a capital cost
– some staff renewal – some covered in operating
– Labs, Servers, Network – general pool – ask each year with academic
requirements – CERF – no yearly budget for central servers
– except PeopleSoft which gets renewed every 4-5 years from yearly
reserve
Strategies at the College
(We could capitalize on) … cont
• We are/were growing ourselves out of a deficit
(more of the same is still more!)
• Save operational $ on maintenance contracts
• Expand functionality for users
– Anywhere/anytime for students
– More requirements from faculty for access to
software and storage from off campus/wireless –
many faculty with desktops only (their choice)
– No additional resources available of course – but still
do it!
First Engagement
• Engaged Dell Professional Services
• Storage assessment – details follow
– Direction wanted to go iSCSI – 1 Gb first then 10Gb
– File simplification assessment
– Look at rate of growth over 3 months but first report
over 4 weeks
• Virtualization assessment
• Flex computing assessment came with
virtualization assessment – thin app
Results - Storage
• SOW -Limited to no more than 3 Operating
systems, 65 servers, 1 storage array, and 25 TB
Storage. Capacity and vaults to be analyzed
located in two sites
• SAN 76% full
• DAS – 51% over 60 servers
• 12 file system over 90% full including eVault
• 46% of files 180 days or older
• Study is here
Results - Virtualization
• Data Collection for 30 days on 60 servers
• 10 (ish) others identified as stand alone – example
PeopleSoft database server (which we later virtualized)
• 56 servers into 6 blades (WOW!)
– then we grew more 
• 670MBTUs of cooling down to 109MBTU
• 294,336 KWhs down to 47,304 KWhs
• VMWare efficiency web page and Green Calculator from
VMWare
• Study results here
Projects for Storage and Server
Virtualization
• Storage
– 10K rpm (4.2 TB usable) email, some
datawarehouse, file services
– 7.2K rpm (18.2TB usable) all other storage and
eVault backup
– 2x7.2K rpm (36TB usable) replicated off site (other
campus) for data storage and near line archive
– Change eVault backup processes (ugly)
– Have #s on efficiency but not with me
Projects … cont
• Virtualization
– VMWare training for College staff
– Started with some academic servers once storage is in
place
– Migrate other servers over as time permits and EOL
occurs
– Virtualized PeopleSoft environment pre 9.1 Upgrade
– Virtualized all SQL Database onto one quad core blade
with eye to cluster if we ever get money
• Started playing with thin apping applications for
home/wireless access – more later!
Second Engagement
• Looked at remote desktop project
– Staff – 100 desktops
– 1000 remote desktops
– Office + academic software
• Engaged Dell Services to size and install VDI via
train the trainer
• Hardware and software purchased and installed
• Small hiccup in configuration fixed quickly and for
free
VDI Project and Results
• Remote Desktop Computing
– Access for faculty and staff to Office 2010 and Windows 7
at home as well as all files – about 100 remote desktops
– Access from wireless to academic software – and access in
classrooms without infrastructure for students – more
flexibility
– PC (access for all regardless of OS), MAC, Linux
– iTouch, iPad access – kind of cool! Android also
– Thin provisioning for 2 new pharmacy labs - funny story …
– Thin client and apps provisioning for one of the open
access labs – this year – started and gathering results
– Looking to move desk bound staff to flex computing – less
renewal at the desktop level
VDI Project and Results
• Students love the access but only seeing
about 250 concurrent
• ITS staff like it for secure backend access
• Faculty and staff using it with new iPads
– Staff actually used system more than anyone
• I love the access – all files, email, storage in
one place
Third Engagement
• Groupwise to Exchange conversion
– Came out of requirement to consolidate 5 PBXs
into 2 and move to unified communications
• 2 week engagement – 3 days on site
• Produced assessment containing
– Hardware and software requirements/licenses
– Training requirements
– Costs
– What to do and what to watch out for
Future
Current future
• Evaluating thin client desktops and continued thin
apping
– Greatest success with thin apping
• Little worried about video on VDI – testing
• Want to get rid of laptop program – tested AutoCAD
but want academics to really test it and Solid Works –
possible move to BYOD as replacement
• Continue to migrate to more VDI as well as virtualizing
servers where possible
• PeopleSoft Upgrade complete Nov 2012 and virtualized
Future
Next 2 years
• Large document management project
(storage)
• Implementing first phases of ITIL for our
service desk – becoming bottleneck as we
grow
• PMO and IT steering committee
• Supporting research more – now 5% of budget
Recommendations and things I
wouldn’t do again!
• Dell Services have really helped
– At College - not enough staff, product access or
time to conduct required storage and
virtualization audits
– Dell - Expertise in training as well as train the
trainer
– Could not have moved forward as fast without
additional help – just not enough staff or time
– 3rd domain of knowledge – don’t know what you
don’t know you don’t know
Recommendations and things I
wouldn’t do again!
• 1000 desktops was overkill – for now
• Would not try to train too many people at once – need
to be more focused!
• Was very hesitant at first to look at Dell for Service
engagements – very new to the market
– When Dell enters the market they do it in a big way –
excellent resources and expertise
– Great experience for us – reference site and case study for
VDI (http://www.dell.com/ca/highered/p/d/corporate~case-studies~en/Documents~2011-niagara-college10009714.pdf.aspx)
– No real savings after VMWare licenses – better
functionality and support (VMotion)
• Cut/paste only not drag drop – where are you?
Questions?