Virtualisation in Education

Meeting Challenges

Against a backdrop of budgetary constraint, Secondary Schools are faced with increasing demands on IT resources. These demands include increasing data storage combined with the need for secure backups, identifying and testing new curriculum software and providing fault tolerance to ensure no downtime during the school day.
Coniston IT is working with Secondary Schools to deliver solutions to the following challenges:

Fault tolerance enabling partial system failure without impacting on lessons
Carrying out server maintenance and upgrade whilst continuing to deliver the services to the curriculum user
The requirements to improve the schools green credentials and reduce operating costs
Shortage of flexible data storage on network servers
Secure backups for student curriculum data and coursework

How can we help?

Coniston IT helps schools face these challenges with proven solutions.

Specialist Education Systems Consultant

Our education specialists combine several years in the IT reseller business with previous appointments in Secondary School IT management. This understanding of the sector combined with the latest technologies deliver solutions tailored to meet individual school requirements.

“I have never had such a fruitful, professional working relationship with a computer company as that which we currently have with Coniston IT. I can truthfully say that I have the highest confidence in their ability to meet all of our needs, both now and in the future.”

David Trace, Ramsey Grammar School

Storage Area Network Solutions

We understand the ever increasing data storage requirement in the sector and have experience in delivering SAN technology that makes best use of the school budget to meet this demand. SAN technology also enables faster and more reliable secure backups to be taken of student data.

Virtualisation Solutions

Virtualisation of server infrastructure backed by a SAN provides more fault tolerance and greater flexibility whilst minimising any downtime for maintenance and upgrade. It also enables the configuration of additional servers for curriculum software testing that would be otherwise impractical.

In addition to timesaving and resilience, consolidation of several servers onto a virtual environment with less physical servers will significantly increase the resource utilisation and as a result, reduce both hardware maintenance and operating costs.

“VMware allows us to provide levels of flexibility and fault tolerance to our IT which was previously impossible within the constraints of a school budget. It also allows us to make new servers within minutes at virtually no cost, which is ideal for the demands of testing new teaching & learning software”

Noel Reynolds, Lawnswood School