One of the greatest challenges IT can face at any substantial public educational institution is managing large scale environments with limited resources. Big universities are constantly looking for ways to consolidate resources and manage their environments efficiently. It is what many people in the IT world face in today’s environment of learning how to do more with less. As an example, at an institution as large as North Carolina State University they have to deploy a wide range of applications in an environment that must work effectively with different performance and uptime requirements as well as the different needs of their customers.
North Carolina State University was approached earlier this year to become one of EMC’s beta test customers for Unity Storage. If you haven’t heard about Unity, it is a simple, modern, flexible and affordable storage solution that delivers enterprise capabilities with like simplicity in all-flash, hybrid, converged and software-defined configurations. Joining us at EMC World to tell his Unity beta experience story was Patrick Williams, the IT Infrastructure Architect from North Carolina State University. I was lucky enough to have been able to sit in several sessions where Patrick spoke. Here is what I learned about this customer’s experience with Unity Storage:
- The product deployment was great from a planning perspective because the systems were designed consistently. Since they are all 2U it was easy for North Carolina State University to plan their environment to scale
- They were able to install a Unity system in just minutes
- The use of different tiers of storage in the Unity platform helped them manage their diverse environments
- No more dependency on Java was a giant plus for them
- Unity allowed them more efficiency because they could manage file and block snapshots together
You don’t have to take my word for it. Hear Patrick tell his Unity Beta experience story in this brief video:
Patrick tells a great story of his experience with Unity. If you want to try it out, there is a simulator you can download for free. You can also chat with our experts and other users by checking out the Unity Community or following @EMCStorage on Twitter.