He explains: “As one of the UK's largest Further and Higher Education College’s, we provide high quality training and qualifications for 25,000 students. We have six main 
centres, two Learning centres and the use of more than 60 community centres across Warwickshire. We are a progressive college with a reputation as an excellent provider of quality education – so it’s vital our facilities are also excellent.”
To ensure the College had the best possible IT environment, Mr. Tennant decided to replace Warwickshire’s physical servers with a virtual solution via a Storage Area Network (SAN). The move cut the amount of hardware the College needed and dramatically reduced its power and cooling requirements.
The virtual servers also meant storage space was always available wherever and whenever it was needed and any future requirements could be quickly adopted.
Mr. Tennant says: “We were keen to proceed after realising our 60 servers, which catered for 4,000 desktops across our sites, were starting to cause problems. We had so many physical servers we were running out of power and space and cooling was becoming an issue. We also knew we were underutilising our available disk space, which was often in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The College’s usual manufacturer did not have an effective solution so, with the help of IT provider, XMA, Mr. Tennant chose a new model, HP’s EVA4400 SAN. He says: “Although implementing such a new technology was not the easy option, XMA convinced me 
it was the right product. It met all our criteria and was on budget – but was only available in America at the time. We literally waited for HP to launch this product in the UK because we couldn’t find a solution to fit our requirements 100 per cent. We didn’t want to be pioneers but we had no choice.”
A better environment
Since then, the advantages of introducing the SAN have outweighed the difficulties. Mr. Tennant says: “By using the SAN as a central data site for our virtualisation project, we reduced the physical boxes in our data centre by around 50 per cent. It’s going to save us quite a lot of money in the long term in terms of physical hardware maintenance, save space and reduce the cooling required.”
The SAN also allows the College to be ready for the future. Mr. Tennantexplains: “Now, disk space isn’t in individual boxes but in a central location where we can expand it and give us more space in the areas where we need it.”
The SAN also helps support a successful web-based, Virtual Learning Environment for the College’s students, who are located all over the world. Consequently, reliability is a key
issue. Mr. Tennant says: “If we introduced a virtualized hardware layer to the virtual learning environment, it was important it was available 24/7 so we also wanted to look at high availability solutions.”
Fortunately, the solution has been a resounding success. Mr. Tennant says:
“There’s has been very little downtime considering the scale of solution we were implementing, and all of it was scheduled. I’ve had a very good experience. Most of the time HP knows if there is a problem and fixes it before we notice. If there is an issue, we don’t normally see any degradation in service. I’ve had to do very little on the solution – and that’s a good sign.”
Education supplier
However, Mr. Tennant believes it is XMA he really has to thank for the success of the solution. He explains: “I’m pleased XMA convinced me to buy the solution. The company really pulled out the stops to secure the deal.”
“XMA had a very good partner status in the education sector of HP and were able to secure us a very good price that another vendor, quoting for the same solution, was not able to match. The value for money they offered was excellent. They gave the better price with what I believe was better technical support and back-up.”
He adds: “We also wanted to use a supplier that was well established in the education market. XMA staff were very professional and knew what we were trying to achieve from day one.”
Ongoing relationship
For Mr. Tenant having a trusted relationship with XMA was particularly important. He explains: “I used XMA in my previous job and when I moved to Warwickshire the relationship came with me. I’ve always found their sales staff attentive, their technical staff knowledgeable, their processes good and their prices competitive. The staff are very approachable and are prepared to listen to you.”
“We’ve agreed to a five year maintenance deal with XMA and, when the SAN needs expanding, XMA will be our first port of call. I can give them no better reference than that.”