The University of Oxford reduces storage expansion costs by adopting hyperconvergence with
 StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford had vSphere-based high availability (HA) storage, which was becoming prohibitively expensive to expand. The sophisticated setup, built on Dell SAN and Viglen Storage servers with third-party HA storage software, offered the necessary scalability. However, the costs associated with any increase in compute or storage resources were high due to major vendor lock-in and the numerous proprietary hardware components required for expansion.

The Department needed a flexible solution to continue scaling its IT infrastructure.

We chose StarWind mainly because of the cost compared to other vendors. Simplicity of setup was also a major factor and I like the fact that you don’t need a vendor-certified engineer to perform the installation.

John Harris,
Windows System Administrator

SOLUTION

By deploying StarWind VSAN, the Department of Physics successfully reduced the cost of expanding its storage for the vSphere cluster. This solution eliminated the dependency on expensive proprietary hardware, enabling a more economical and straightforward expansion process.

Looking ahead, the Department plans to extend the use of StarWind VSAN to its Hyper-V deployment, replacing the CA ARCserve RHA setup for virtual file servers. This strategic move aims to cut down the resynchronization time required during Hyper-V host reboots, particularly during patching cycles. By using StarWind VSAN, the Department not only lowered its storage expansion costs but also streamlined its IT operations.