CASE STUDY
Sometimes the biggest challenges create the greatest opportunities for transformation. When New College Leicester experienced a catastrophic server failure that resulted in three weeks of data recovery efforts, it didn’t just want to fix the problem. It wanted to make sure it could never happen again.
New College Leicester is a secondary school and sixth form with approximately 1200 users relying on its IT infrastructure to learn, teach, and succeed.
See how the secondary school and sixth form responded to a catastrophic failure with increased resilience.
Industry:
Education
Size:
800+ students, 500 workstations, 1200 users
Solution:
Storage solutions, data recovery strategy
Managing vast amounts of media-rich student data across 500 workstations and supporting 1200 users, plus peripheral functions like websites, door security, and CCTV, the college generates enormous data volumes that demand both performance and scalability.
Naturally, the failure was devastating in its scope and impact. As Iain Fallon, IT Manager, explained: “It was a pretty catastrophic failure. The server which went down was old and although we were just about able to source some replacement parts, we went through three new drives and a raid controller trying to fix it – none of which worked, resulting in a degree of data loss. Any data loss is unacceptable.”
The three-week recovery effort highlighted the vulnerability of New College Leicester’s legacy direct-attached storage system. With a major network upgrade on the horizon, the institution needed a solution that could address immediate resilience needs while positioning it for future growth.
Our storage specialist, Lee Smith, brought fresh perspective to the challenge: “New College had been looking at many of the mainstream vendors but the solutions under consideration didn’t deliver as much punch for your pound in my opinion. With one eye on the new upgraded infrastructure, I felt that they could get something more functionally rich that delivered better performance.”
We introduced the college to Nimble Storage – an emerging technology we’d successfully deployed elsewhere. The solution offered compelling advantages: fully hot-swappable components, online monitoring, and the ability to mix flash and traditional SATA disk for optimised performance and capacity.
An online demonstration impressed the college team, and it chose to install the array itself after witnessing its simplicity. We scoped the solution with more than twice the immediate capacity needs, providing substantial room for growth.
The implementation exceeded all expectations. Fallon was amazed by the simplicity: “I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I literally followed the instructions in the box and had the array fully operational in less than half a day.”
The college now operates three daily backup routines covering shared areas, user data, and the School Information Management System (SIMS), yet it’s only using 25% of available capacity. The array initially served as file storage and backup before being repurposed as part of the college’s disaster recovery strategy when the new network was commissioned.
Most importantly, the risk of catastrophic data loss has been eliminated, giving the college confidence in its ability to protect critical student data while supporting continued growth.
We introduced an emerging technology with compelling advantages for optimised performance and capacity.
The college was able to quickly install the array and was fully operational in less than half a day.
The college has gone from a three-week recovery period to completely eliminating the risk of catastrophic data loss.
Our storage expertise helps educational institutions build bulletproof resilience while planning for growth.
Contact us to ensure your critical data – and your students’ futures – are properly protected.
Our proven partnership approach ensures we understand your business deeply enough to deliver solutions that truly work. Contact us to discover how we can put the Advania advantage to work for your organisation.
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