Customer:
Richmond, BC School District 38
Industry:
Academia
Challenge:
With the need to adhere to stringent
public sector budget guidelines, this
progressive school district needed
remote KVM access to its data center
housed in locations.
ATEN Solutions:
• ALTUSEN KM0216 -
16-port Matrix KVM Switch
• ATEN CN-6000 - KVM on the
NET remote access device
• ALTUSEN KL0116 - Hideaway
LCD KVM Switch
(New version of this model: Please see KL1116)
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• ALTUSEN
KM0216 |
• ATEN
CN-6000
|
• ALTUSEN KL0116
(New version of this model: Please see KL1116)
|
Many people would not view Richmond, British
Columbia as a technology haven. However,
with a software behemoth located only two
hours away in Redmond, Washington, some
of that technology pixie dust has been sprinkled
on a progressive school district that is
optimizing KVM solutions to power its data
center.
Richmond School District No. 38 is a Public
School District in the province of British
Columbia, Canada that prides itself on providing
a safe and caring environment for its 24,000
students of all backgrounds and ability
levels. The School District offers a diversity
of programs for a well-rounded education
- academic, fine arts, technical, social
development, and athletics. The district
uses the latest technology to support student
learning. Demonstrating its commitment to
technology, the Technology and Information
Services Department even does in-house development
creating custom applications to generate
revenue for the district. This department
recently completed centralization of its
technology and can now administer 80% of
the devices from its cutting-edge Technology
Services Center.
I. The Challenge
The Richmond School District is comprised
of 55 different sites all connected via
a WAN powered by the British Columbia Provincial
Learning Network (PL/Net). According to
Chad Dupuis, Computer Systems Technologist,
the data center is housed in two locations.
His department provides IT support and services
for the K-12 schools, continuing education
program, as well as administration systems
including accounting, student records, etc.
The Technology Services Center manages a
majority of the district's servers and the
Board office houses the required IT infrastructure
that supports several administration systems.
The Technology Services Center currently
houses 18 Intel-based servers running Windows
2000 Server, one XServe G5 running MAC OSX
and an XRAID for hosting data storage. These
servers are split between two racks that
are protected by UPS systems. The second
site hosts administration systems that consist
of one rack with five servers running Windows
2000 Server, one XServe G5 running MAC OSX
and a UPS battery backup system.
Dupuis has been primarily focused on implementing
this technology in a centrally managed environment
and, as more rack mounted servers were added
to the center, he determined the need for
a KVM management solution. "Without a KVM
solution, we were restricted to remote access
only through Terminal Services," said Dupuis.
"That option did not help us diagnose a
server that was not loading the operating
system. If there was a configuration problem
preventing the server from loading Windows,
we would have been forced to manually pull
it out of the rack to fix the problem. We
knew that a KVM solution would allow us
to diagnose the server from a central console
at the rack."
II. The Solution
The driving force behind Dupuis' decision
on the selected KVM vendor rested upon remote
access to manage servers from any location,
even during off hours. Given this need,
the district opted for a KVM over IP solution.
Dupuis' first foray into KVM was not too
fruitful. "We quickly found that the
product did not perform as advertised. After
attempting numerous troubleshooting techniques
suggested to us by the vendor, we gave up
on the solution and promptly returned it,"
he added. Dupuis then consulted with SoftChoice,
a leading North American supplier of technology
products, and was led to ATEN Technology,
Inc.'s ALTUSEN line of enterprise KVM solutions.
"ATEN had the exact products we needed
at a highly affordable price point,"
said Dupuis. "We put the solution through
extensive testing and had the product installed
in under an hour. Even the cable supplied
was high quality and easy to run due to
its thinness." In one rack, Dupuis
installed ATEN CN-6000 - KVM on the NET,
ALTUSEN KM0216 - 16-port Matrix KVM Switch
and ALTUSEN KL0116 - Hideaway LCD KVM Switch
with 15" LCD. The deciding factor was
the cost. "We could outfit one rack
with these three devices and cabling for
2/3 the cost of our previous solution --
which did not even include a console,"
said Dupuis. "We used the remaining
1/3 to buy an additional Matrix KVM for
the other rack and the cables."
III. Benefits
ATEN KVM solutions have given Richmond
School District 38 ease-of-use, outstanding
support and highest quality -- all at an
affordable cost.
IV. The Results
Richmond School District 38 has been using
ATEN's KVM products since July 2004 with
problem-free administration. "We set high
standards for this product and ATEN met
and exceeded our expectations," said Dupuis.
"The biggest benefit to the district has
been the ability to save enough money to
deploy KVM solutions in both locations --
and all within the parameters of the stringent
budget of a public sector office. Prior
to ATEN, it was a real problem to manage
these machines." According to Dupuis, these
solutions have provided him with ease-of-use,
outstanding support and highest quality
-- all at an affordable cost.
V. The Future
Dupuis hopes that he will never need to
access his data center from outside the
District in the event of an emergency. However,
he can be rest assured that the ATEN products
will be instrumental when confronted with
the technical challenge.
In the future, Dupuis may have to expand
his data centers to scale with the growth
in School District 38. "If we add more racks
into these locations, ATEN will be the first
company we turn to for a solution," concluded
Dupuis.
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