We are very happy with StarWind. Easy to use and support
is great. The savings allowed us to purchase all-flash storage
which significantly increased our performance
John Entrup, Server Administrator
PROBLEM
Before introducing StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) into its IT infrastructure, John Wood Community College had Dell servers for hosts plus Dell EqualLogic SAN and NetApp SAN for shared storage with Hyper-V on top. Complicated configuration on SANs and inordinate cost to maintain the equipment were the main pain issues of the organization’s IT environment. John Wood Community College needed a hyperconverged platform to replace the piles of servers and SANs and achieve simplicity in use.
SOLUTION
StarWind HCA became a painkiller for the organization’s issues. Thanks to a single StarWind solution, all hosts and storage were replaced, while many old pieces of hardware were consolidated into a redundant cluster. John Wood Community College no more worries about its SAN’s complex configuration since StarWind HCA is easy-to-use. The StarWind product allowed the organization to save a lot of money and buy all-flash storage, which further improved the IT infrastructure performance. Considering all that, John Wood Community College plans to expand storage as needed with StarWind for future growth.
| StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Configuration | |
|---|---|
| Appliance Model | HCA V-Spec 25 |
| Cluster Size | 2 nodes |
| Cluster density | 4U |
| Servers | Dell PowerEdge R740xd |
| CPU | 2 x Intel Silver 4214, 12 cores, 24 threads per node |
| Memory | 20 x 32GB RDIMM, 2400MT/s (640 GB total) per node |
| Cluster Storage Capacity | 25 TB of All-Flash storage |
| Disk Configuration | PERC H740P LP Adapter 8GB NV Cache 15 x Dell 1.92TB 6Gbps SATA Read Intensive TLC 2.5 SSD S4500 per node Dell BOSS Controller Full Height Card with 2 x 480GB M.2 SSD (RAID 1) |
| Networking | Intel X520 Dual Port 10Gb SFP & I350 Dual Port 1Gb RJ45 rNDC Mellanox ConnectX-4 CX4121A Dual Port 25GbE SFP+ Full Height |
| Hypervisor | Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019 |
About the Company
John Wood Community College is a two-year community college located in Quincy, Illinois, that offers a variety of associate degrees, certificates, and community classes on many topics. The college was founded in 1974 to provide residents with high-quality, low-cost higher education.
Company Profile
Education
Contact Person
John Entrup, Server Administrator