Challenge: Deliver anytime, anywhere teaching and learning despite district-wide budget reductions. Solution: Build a virtual desktop solution on Cisco UCS, VMware, and NetApp.

1. Success Story
Oak Hills Does the Math: VDI on Cisco UCS,
VMware, and NetApp + Champion Solutions
Group = $1.27M Savings
CUSTOMER PROFILE “Our schools operate on a 5-year technology-
The Oak Hills Local School District in western refresh cycle, and we needed to retire some
Hamilton County, Ohio, is the county’s 850 aging and increasingly high-maintenance
third-largest district, serving about 8,100 desktops and laptops at the high school.
students in preschool through grade 12. Unfortunately, this refresh cycle coincided
For 9 years, Oak Hills has earned an Excellent with district-wide budget reductions of 10%.
rating on the state report card while main- Although we retained a capital budget for
taining the county’s lowest per-student the refresh, we needed a solution that would
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
spend. Caring, highly qualified teachers significantly reduce ongoing costs. At the
Industry and staff deliver a wide range of youth and same time, we had to build on a foundation
Education adult services, including programs for gifted that could accommodate long-term growth
students, special education services, and support objectives for e-learning
The challenge and vocational and community education. leadership.”
Deliver anytime, anywhere teaching and “Among the best, we continue to strive for
learning despite district-wide budget The district’s goal was to deliver “anytime,
better.” (Source: www.oakhills.k12.oh.us)
reductions. anywhere” learning-systems accessibility
to every Oak Hills high school student. But
The solution THE CHALLENGE Kearns recognized that with flat or shrinking
Build a virtual desktop solution on Cisco® Reduce IT costs while delivering anytime, operating budgets on the horizon, buying
UCS, VMware®, and NetApp®. anywhere teaching and learning 3,000 or more new laptops was not an
For the Oak Hills Local School District option. IT approached the problem from two
Benefits directions: maximize the number of devices
IT team, summer vacation is never a day at
the beach— it’s a brief, 2-month window in the district could afford by deploying a
access to learning systems solution that would reduce ongoing costs
which to make needed technology changes
and prepare for the new school year that
e-learning leadership
starts in August.
In 2010, Oak Hills IT launched an aggressive This solution provided by:
devices project to implement a new virtual desktop
infrastructure to expand accessibility to
online teaching and learning systems. Dave
savings of $1.27M Kearns, instructional support administrator
for the district, describes the challenges:

2. “We had an aggressive schedule that required live production
testing. Critical to our success was deploying the right
infrastructure and choosing the right partner [Champion
Solutions Group]. We’ve built a highly extensible infrastructure
that will help us deliver the highest-quality education and
achieve e-learning leadership—all while maximizing the value
of taxpayer dollars.”
Dave Kearns
Instructional Support Administrator, Oak Hills Local School District
as well as enable the use of more affordable extended memory, and scalability, which “In the past,” says Kearns, “students had
thin clients; and augment the desktop pool make it well suited for virtual desktop host- to work from the school’s media center or in
by letting students use personal laptops and ing workloads. On the storage side, NetApp classroom mobile labs with restricted access
mobile devices. was chosen for its deep integration with hours. Today, information is at their finger-
VMware, performance, efficiencies, manage- tips, any time, day or night. They can use
Oak Hills IT worked with Cisco Services and ability, and scalability. their laptops or iPads to work on projects
Champion Solutions Group, a technology during study hall or in the evenings to
infrastructure solutions and professional Deployed at the Oak Hills primary data download homework assignments or to use
services provider and participant in Cisco, center, the Cisco UCS solution is configured Adobe Dreamweaver e-learning applications.
NetApp, and VMware partner programs. with eight full-width UCS B250 M2 Extended This infrastructure has changed the rules
The team designed a desktop virtualization Memory Blades, each running two six-core about when and where students can learn—
solution to help the district do more with Intel ® Xeon® it dramatically expands their opportunities
less. Specifications included: of memory. A high-availability NetApp to research, develop teamwork and
problem-solving skills, and progress
via Fibre Channel. To date, Oak Hills has through a curriculum.”
deployed about 1,200 virtual desktops.
cell phones, and other mobile devices Configured with NetApp Flash Cache A+ performance, plenty of room
intelligent read cache, the NetApp solution in the locker
effectively handles the heavy I/O loads that Mike Cooper, technology coordinator for the
management tasks from a lean IT staff occur during peak access times—for exam- Oak Hills Local School District, says that the
ple, during daily desktop startups and at the infrastructure keeps up with demands, even
and future e-learning initiatives beginning of classes, when large numbers at peak usage: “Boot storms have not been
of students log in simultaneously. an issue. That’s important, because you
THE SOLUTION can’t ask classrooms to stagger logins.
Kearns notes, “Cisco Services design
Build a virtual desktop solution on
validation and knowledge transfer and “We know that we can bring at least 1,500
Cisco UCS, VMware, and NetApp
Champion’s strategies for smooth adoption virtual desktops online with the current
The evaluation process included visits to
helped us meet an aggressive schedule configuration. UCS extended memory
Ohio schools and universities that were
and ensure that our staff could effectively technology will be especially beneficial as
already using virtual desktop infrastructures,
manage the solution.” we move to new platforms like Windows® 7
as well as reviews of networking, server,
that may require a larger memory footprint.
and storage solutions from leading vendors,
BUSINESS BENEFITS We now have scalability to reach our goal
including Cisco, NetApp, and incumbent
of providing one virtual desktop to every
server and storage provider HP. The Champion All learning, all the time
high-school student or to expand services
team assessed Oak Hills’ IT environment to Kearns reports that the solution was up and
to other district schools. Affordable growth
help analyze project cost and impact. running for the start of the school year on
was a key benefit of combining Cisco UCS
August 25. Students and teachers can now
The team determined the best fit to be a with NetApp storage.
access learning applications from any of the
VMware View™ desktop delivery system high school’s more than 1,000 desktops and “When we spec’ed this solution, we estimated
on the VMware vSphere™
that we’d need 12TB of NetApp storage for our
platform running on a Cisco Unified Com- access to data and services from a broad initial deployment. Supporting the same 1,200
puting System™ (UCS) data center platform array of end-point devices, including per- virtual desktops on a competing SAN would
with NetApp unified storage. Selection of the sonal laptops and mobile devices such as have required 100TB, or more than 8 times the
Cisco UCS was based on its efficient form Apple® iPad ® and iPod ® touch tablets. storage we needed from NetApp. The efficien-
factor and high-performance processors,
cies of NetApp storage make it a much more
viable solution for virtual environments.”

3. NetApp also provides storage resources Lunch money and innovation clients—instead of buying $1,200 laptops
(via iSCSI) to the Oak Hills VMware-based Kearns suggests that although the initial
virtualized-server environment. “NetApp’s capital investment required was comparable
native multiprotocol gives us flexibility,” to a traditional desktop deployment, long-
says Cooper. “Today we’re leveraging FC term cost savings make the virtual desktop Kearns emphasizes administrative benefits:
and iSCSI connectivity, but we may move solution much more economical. Bill Ginn, “Teachers seem by nature to be always
to FC over Ethernet. When you’re making client manager at Champion, offers the researching, exploring, and striving to
this kind of investment, you have to know financial details: “We worked with Oak Hills expand horizons. It can be challenging for
that as your needs and technologies evolve, to do comprehensive cost analyses that an IT team to keep up with their appeals for
the solution can evolve with you, and that better, faster, more innovative. But this new
you won’t be faced with a costly rip-and- IT capital and operating savings of more infrastructure helps us be more responsive.”
replace. With the Cisco UCS, VMware, and than $1.27M over 3 years. The savings from “In the past, a desktop update would have
NetApp infrastructure, we don’t have to this infrastructure come in many forms,
worry about that—we’ve deployed a solution including hardware, space, energy, and observes. “Using Cisco UCS preconfigured
from industry-leading vendors collaborating administrative efficiencies. Oak Hills, for service profiles in conjunction with VMware
to deliver technologies that work and scale example, can now leverage low-cost thin and NetApp rapid cloning capabilities
together.”
Primary Data Center
NetApp Snapshot
NetApp SnapRestore
NetApp Deduplication
NFS NetApp SnapManager for Virtual Environments
Virtual Infrastructure
NetApp FlexClone
NetApp Flash Cache
NetApp PAM Cards
VMware Host Servers
NetApp FAS3140HA
Figure 1) Oak Hills School District storage infrastructure.

4. “Supporting the same 1,200 virtual desktops on a competing
SAN would have required 100TB, or more than 8 times
the storage we needed from NetApp. The efficiencies of
NetApp storage make it a much more viable solution for
virtual environments.”
Mike Cooper
Technology Coordinator, Oak Hills Local School District
enabled us to complete the same process in to our success was deploying the right
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
infrastructure and choosing the right partner.
is automated, it actually took just an hour of The Champion team has been with us at
NetApp products
my time. We have tremendous flexibility to every bump and every milestone. They
support our 150 teachers without overbur- understand the technology and the demands
Flash Cache solution
dening a lean IT staff of 9 that supports of our environment where everything is time
8,100 students at nine district schools.” sensitive. As a result, we’ve built a highly NetApp FlexClone® software
extensible infrastructure that will help us
Among the best, striving for better continue to attract the best teachers, Protocols
“Our staff and teachers have been patient deliver the highest-quality education, NetApp SAN (FC, iSCSI)
and supportive of this project,” summarizes and achieve our goals for e-learning
Kearns. “We had an aggressive schedule Environment
leadership—and do it all while maximizing
that required live production testing without Cisco UCS, B250 M2 blades
the value of taxpayer dollars.”
the luxury of comprehensive Q&A. Critical
Microsoft Windows Server ® 2003, 2008
Partner
Champion Solutions Group
www.championsg.com
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