The StarWind meets all of our current needs for storage and performance,
and we believe it will continue to do so for a long time to come.
Bill Hopper, Manager of Network Services
PROBLEM
Before StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) deployment, SCO had Fibre Channel (FC) switches and SANs with VMware ESXi on top that provided shared storage to its virtualization hosts. The main problem with the existing IT infrastructure was that the FC switches and SANs reached the end of life and end of support. To change them was going to be very expensive. SCO wanted to replace its old FC infrastructure and switch to iSCSI because it believed that iSCSI had become much more cost-effective and futureproof for its storage needs.
SOLUTION
Initially, StarWind VSAN was brought to provide additional storage for archiving. But it was so reliable and robust that SCO decided to deploy StarWind for its entire storage infrastructure. Thanks to StarWind VSAN the organization replaced the old FC infrastructure entirely with two SANs based on a spinning disk for most storage and an SSD-based SAN for the critical virtual machines (VMs) requiring high performance. By changing its FC infrastructure with StarWind iSCSI, SCO had an immediate cost saving of about $150,000. Because StarWind VSAN is very flexible, the organization will continue to use and expand it as needed. By using the StarWind product, SCO also got a boost for its development. The college tries to keep tuition fees as low as possible and can now achieve this through ongoing savings because iSCSI is less expensive to maintain. That is why the organization considers StarWind a win, allowing it to provide enterprise-class services at the lowest possible cost.
About the company
Southern College of Optometry (SCO) is an American private non-profit school of optometry. It was founded in 1932 in Memphis, Tennessee, and is one of only 21 schools and colleges of optometry in the United States.
Company Profile
Education
Contact Person
Bill Hopper,
Manager of Network Services