Racks of computer servers crammed a building at Volusia County Schools in Florida, while the air conditioner chugged along, trying to pump out enough air to keep them cool. Meanwhile, the district's engineers struggled daily with managing incoming requests to build servers and add new applications.
“It really became almost a daunting task every time a new product would come in,” said Ken Richmond, the district's manager of system engineering.
The IT department couldn’t maintain its frenzied pace for long. To avoid revamping its data center or downsizing its hardware, the Florida school district turned to virtualization to cut costs and improve efficiency. Other districts are following suit.
By virtualizing desktops, applications and servers, schools are actually creating virtual versions of these physical resources. Here’s a snapshot of what each type of virtualization can do.
Ninety-eight percent of the 3,400 computers that students used at the Donna Independent School District in Texas were out of warranty when Marie Evans became the district’s director of technology. She had to find a cost-effective solution to provide more computers for the 14,000 students at the district’s 21 campuses.
Enter Andrew Costenbader from Austin Ribbon & Computer, who turned Evans on to virtual desktops. Rather than spending more than $5 million to deploy 5,000 PCs, the district spent $3.5 million on technologies — including thin clients, servers and software — and professional services that provided 5,200 virtual desktops.
“It’s made all of our technology products accessible to all of our students,” Evans said. “We had a lot of inequities, and now we have equity at every campus.”
