Blue Springs School District Consolidates Data Center
Blue Springs School District in Kansas City, MO has consolidated its data and information technology
services within a centralized data center in an effort to simplify
management and reduce expenses.
The district serves 14,700
students at 22 elementary, middle and high schools. Before
consolidating the data center, IT staff managed 144 servers at more
than 23 locations. In 2015, students in grades 3-11 were
required to take their standardized tests online, and districts were
required to implement a test site management server for every 150
computers to ensure that the servers could handle the load during
online tests. Since Blue Springs operates more than 10,000 computers,
they would have had to set up 30 to 40 test site management servers.
That was when district administrators decided to consolidate the data center. As part of the process, the district upgraded its Avaya network backbone and implemented a centralized smart storage solution from Nutanix.
"We could bring all the data and services back to one centralized
location," said Tim Jones, director of IT for Blue Springs School
District, in a news release. "Now we're managing one, not 21, data
centers. Our Avaya backbone was one of the reasons to go to a
centralized datacenter model. I knew we had a backbone that could
handle it."
Since implementing the centralized networking
infrastructure, the district has realized numerous benefits, according
to a news release from Avaya. Blue Springs has reduced the amount of
time and number of people required to manage the servers and reduced
its electricity costs by $100,000 on an annualized basis. It can also
manage the entire district's standardized tests with a single test site
management server running on the Avaya backbone.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].