Challenge: Deliver superior IT services in the midst of budget cuts and with an aging IT infrastructure. Solution: Run a highly efficient virtual desktop and server environment with NetApp FAS3240 storage system and VMware.

1. Success Story
IHCC Slashes Power Costs
by 100X with VMware View
on NetApp
Another NetApp
solution delivered by:
SM
Customer Profile Health Occupations, Skill Building,
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Indian Hills Community College (IHCC) Customized Learning, High School Pro-
Industry is one of 15 community colleges in the grams, and the college’s particular area
Higher Education state of Iowa. Founded in 1966, the of expertise, Advanced Technologies.
college offers a diversity of academic
The Challenge Offering more technology programs
programs and online courses to its
Deliver superior IT services in the than any other community college in
more than 8,000 students. The college’s
midst of budget cuts and with an the state of Iowa, IHCC leverages its
district spans 10 counties in southeast
aging IT infrastructure. own technological expertise to ensure
Iowa, though students come to Indian
that its IT services meet the intensive
The Solution Hills from throughout the state of Iowa,
and changing needs of staff and stu-
Run a highly efficient virtual across the nation, and even around the
dents. Steady growth in recent years
desktop and server environment globe. There are students from 24
in areas such as online learning, along
with NetApp® FAS3240 storage countries on 6 continents enrolled in
with significant state funding cuts,
system and VMware®. classes at the college. IHCC’s main
have led the organization to search for
campus is in Ottumwa, Iowa. (Source:
opportunities to streamline IT opera-
Benefits www.indianhills.edu)
tions and reduce expenses.
Deploy virtual servers in
minutes versus hours for The Challenge
“As a community college, IHCC pro-
physical servers Optimizing IT budget and resources
vides a very cost-effective way for stu-
Achieve 2-hour RPO Indian Hills Community College is dedi- dents to further their educational and
Decrease storage requirements cated to excellence in educational career paths and engage in programs
by up to 80% opportunity, economic development, they’re passionate about,” says Shane
Reduce physical servers from cultural understanding, and social Molyneux, chief information officer at
40 to 3, saving power and enrichment. IHCC students engaged in IHCC. “To help keep tuition low, we
cooling costs the college’s degree, diploma, and cer- need to remain diligent about reducing
Support campuswide green tificate programs develop the skills and costs in our IT environment while still
initiative; reduce electrical knowledge needed to grow in their delivering superior services to students
costs by 100x areas of interest and excel in their and staff.”
careers. Students can take on-campus
and online courses from academic divi- The college’s aging SAN infrastructure
sions that include Arts and Sciences, and physical server sprawl contributed

2. “By virtualizing more and more desktops and
running them centrally on NetApp storage, we’re
greatly reducing IT staff mileage to the campuses
across our 10-county region. This not only
reduces costs, but also frees up our staff for
important projects that help further our
educational mission.”
Shane Molyneux
Chief Information Officer, Indian Hills Community College
to excessive data center management, selected NetApp FAS3240 storage sys- SnapMirror® technology. NetApp Snap-
power, and cooling costs. With 11 tems for IHCC’s primary data center and shot™ and SnapRestore® technologies
campus sites, the college’s physical FAS2040 systems for its Centerville, help the college protect data locally
desktop environment was maintenance Iowa, disaster recovery site. with incremental backups that occur
intensive, at risk from frequent random hourly for critical applications such as
software downloads by students, and IHCC made the transition from physical Datatel Colleague and every few hours
costly. Computing inefficiencies, perfor- to virtual servers on NetApp storage or daily for other applications.
mance issues, an expanding data cen- and rolled out virtual desktops in the
ter footprint, and a growing campus college’s computer labs and libraries. The highly efficient data center environ-
green initiative drove IT management The IT team leverages the VMware ment is supported by NetApp Data
to investigate a new storage solution vSphere® 5 virtualization platform with ONTAP® 8 software operating in 7-Mode,
to support both server and desktop VMware View™ 5 to deliver its end-user NetApp multiprotocol connectivity for
virtualization. computing environment, which today the college’s CIFS and NFS network
includes close to 500 virtual desktops. protocols, as well as Cisco® Nexus®
Data protection and disaster recovery VMware View enables IHCC users to 5548 10Gb switches. NetApp provides
activities such as backing up to tape connect to their virtual desktops from the storage efficiency imperative to
and moving the tapes off site created PCs, thin or zero clients, and mobile accommodating budget cutbacks and
IT management and data restoration devices such as iPad® tablets and growth in areas such as online learning,
challenges. The team wanted to enhance Android smartphones. which has seen class enrollment double
its disaster recovery plan with robust in the past few years and the number of
backup and recovery capabilities and a “Through virtualizing on the unified online classes offered approach 200.
disaster recovery site that would help NetApp storage platform, we’ve been
provide business continuity. able to accommodate steady data NetApp deduplication and Flash Cache
growth and manage our storage envi- drive the efficiency and performance
The Solution ronment with two full-time employees, that help IHCC optimize its technology
Advanced server and desktop a number that hasn’t changed in five investment. The college is reducing
virtualization years,” says Molyneux. “It’s a good thing storage requirements by up to 80%
IHCC worked with IP Pathways – a value- that storage management has gotten with NetApp deduplication. NetApp
added reseller focusing on data storage easier with NetApp.” To further reduce Flash Cache, which combines storage
and management, core networking and expenses, the college is replacing some efficiency technologies and intelligent
virtualization, unified systems, and appli- of its workstations with Wyse P20 and caching, boosts IHCC system perfor-
cation performance and security – to X50c Thin Clients, which reduces hard- mance by prioritizing workloads and
design the right solution to address its ware costs by more than 50%. ultimately reduces the college’s
growing data center challenges. Working storage costs.
IHCC protects its storage systems by
together, IP Pathways and the college
replicating data daily from its primary to
secondary data centers using NetApp

3. Primary Data Center DR Site
Wyse P20 and X50c Thin Clients
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008
Datatel Colleague Solution 500 virtual desktops
Oracle 10g Database
VMware View 5
VMware vSphere 5
NetApp SnapMirror
Cisco Nexus
NetApp Snapshot
5548 10Gb switches
NetApp SnapRestore
NetApp Flash Cache
NetApp Deduplication
NetApp FAS3240 running
Data ONTAP 8 operating NetApp FAS2040
in 7-mode
Figure 1) IHCC Storage Infrastructure.
NetApp FAS3240 storage system supports the virtual desktop and server environment, including 500 virtual desktops and virtualized Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008, Oracle10g Database environments, and Datatel Colleague. IHCC replicates data daily from
its primary to its secondary data center with NetApp SnapMirror. NetApp Snapshot and SnapRestore protect data locally with scheduled backups.
Business Benefits “We can now deploy a new virtual desk- Eliminating tape backups, enhancing
Cost efficiency with virtual desktops top in under 10 minutes as opposed to business continuity
IHCC is achieving significant opex and the 1 to 2 hours required for each physi- NetApp backup and recovery capabili-
capex benefits with its virtual desktop cal desktop, and upgrade applications ties are streamlining IT management for
environment. Many computer labs were such as Microsoft® Windows® on all IHCC while better protecting valuable
underutilized at times, but were pow- desktops at once in minutes by simply academic and operational data. Using
ered up consuming energy and aging building the parent image and pushing NetApp SnapMirror, IHCC has com-
the hardware. To keep systems up to it out,” says Molyneux. System mainte- pletely eliminated manual, time-consum-
date, campus IT upgraded hundreds nance activities appear seamless to end ing tape backups and enhanced its
of PCs one by one across the college’s users – from nursing students to tech- disaster recovery plan with two-hour
11 sites. IT issues such as hard-drive nology professors – who overall report RPOs. IHCC leverages storage experts
crashes and viruses also had to be performance improvements in the highly from IP Pathways to help enable disas-
addressed at the physical workstation efficient VMware View desktop environ- ter recovery success. “Given budget
site, often a remote location. ment on high-performance NetApp constraints, our IT staff must be diverse,
FAS3240 storage systems. so we depend on IP Pathways experts to
Today, IHCC deploys and manages complement our in-house IT strengths.
the desktop environment and applica- Reducing server sprawl
Their expertise in areas such as disaster
tions centrally from the data center. “By IHCC also leverages NetApp storage recovery and virtualization is invaluable
virtualizing increasingly more desktops and VMware for server virtualization, and to IHCC.”
and running them centrally on NetApp to date has reduced 40 physical servers
storage, we’re greatly reducing IT staff to 3. “Physical servers and an inefficient SnapRestore offers an easy way for
mileage to the campuses across our storage environment caused data center users to retrieve inadvertently deleted
10-county region,” says Molyneux. “This power and cooling costs to continue to data. “Recently, an administrative staff
not only reduces costs, but also frees rise, which we’ve been able to mitigate member accidentally deleted important
up our staff for important projects that by virtualizing on NetApp,” notes Moly- files and we showed her how easy it is
help further our educational mission.” neux. The college has virtualized Micro- to locate the latest file version in her
soft Exchange 2010, Microsoft SQL on-screen directory and restore it,” says
Running thin clients on NetApp storage Server® 2005 and 2008, Oracle® Data- Molyneux. “From an IT management
in IHCC’s virtual desktop environment base 10g™ for its library system, and its perspective, we didn’t have to track
has reduced desktop power costs by a mission-critical Datatel Colleague ERP down off-site tapes, and our employee
factor of 100 to .004 of a cent per day. on approximately 60 virtual machines was able to quickly get back to work.
The college has simplified desktop running on NetApp storage. The IT staff That’s a huge operational improvement.”
management with the ability to upgrade can deploy virtual servers on NetApp in
or deploy new desktop applications less than two minutes. As IHCC benefits from the efficiencies
from the data center, plus manage all that server and desktop virtualization
desktops day to day as a single pool running on NetApp provide, the college
of resources.

4. “Through virtualizing on the unified NetApp storage
platform, we’ve been able to accommodate
steady data growth and manage our storage
environment with two full-time employees, a
number that hasn’t changed in five years. It’s a
good thing that storage management has gotten
easier with NetApp.”
Shane Molyneux
Chief Information Officer, Indian Hills Community College
will continue to identify opportunities to
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
stretch its tight IT budget further. In the
meantime, IT management is investigat- NetApp Products Third-Party Products
ing exciting new services for students NetApp FAS3240 and FAS2040 Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
and educators, with projects on the storage systems Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008
horizon such as remote, off-campus
Data ONTAP 8.0 operating in VMware View 5.0
desktops.
7-Mode
VMware vSphere 5.0
Flash Cache
Cisco Nexus 5548 10Gb switches
Snapshot technology
Oracle10g Database
SnapRestore
Datatel Colleague
SnapMirror
Wyse P20 and X50c Thin Clients
Deduplication
Partner
Protocols IP Pathways
CIFS www.ippathways.com
NFS
NetApp creates innovative storage and © 2012 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document
may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc.
data management solutions that deliver Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the
NetApp logo, Go further, faster, Data ONTAP, SnapMirror, SnapRestore,
outstanding cost efficiency and accelerate and Snapshot are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc.
in the United States and/or other countries. VMware and vSphere are
www.netapp.com business breakthroughs. Discover our registered trademarks and VMware View is a trademark of VMware,
passion for helping companies around the Inc. iPad is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. Cisco and Nexus are
registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and
world go further, faster at www.netapp.com. SQL Server are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Oracle
is a registered trademark and Oracle10g is a trademark of Oracle
Corporation. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered
Go further, faster ®
trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
CSS-6564-0612