Texas School District Makes the Grade with 1,500 Virtual Desktops

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Texas School District Makes the Grade with 1,500
Virtual Desktops
Robert Keith Director of Technology
Rem Mascardo Network System Engineer
Sponsored By
February 27, 2014
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About Waxahachie Independent School District

• Located in Waxahachie, Texas
• 30 minutes south of Dallas and 40 minutes
  southeast of Fort Worth
• Public School District
• Our IT Team
• 3 Engineers and 6 Technicians
• Who We Serve
• 8,000 students
• 1,200 faculty and staff
• 1 Pre-Kindergarten School
• 6 Elementary Schools
• 2 Junior High Schools
• 3 High Schools

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What Were Our Drivers for VDI?

• Physical PCs IT Nightmare
• Countless use cases, different from classroom to
  classroom and even machine to machine
• Business Office, front desk clerks, lab settings,
  Principals, non-instructional positions, etc.
• Multiple labs on each campus
• Updating physical machines was time-consuming and
  inefficient
• Constantly having to deploy apps and updates to
  meet teacher needs
• Expand education beyond the walls of the
  classrooms (support BYOD!)
• Lay foundation for new educational standards and
  computer-based testing
• Provide the best possible educational experience
  for the community

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Our First Attempt at VDI

• 900 non-persistent desktops
• Mix of thin and zero clients and repurposed PCs
• VMware Horizon View for connectivity
• Cisco and IBM blade servers for hosting

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Grading Our First Attempt C

• Connectivity and protocol performance
• Mobile device and client support
• IO performance and uptime / user experience
• Keep pace with application change requirements
• Configure desktops for different use cases with 1
  image
• Manage VDI with internal IT headcount

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Decision Point

• Had to buy new PCs for teachers who had bad VDI
  experience
• Two choices moving forward
• Fix VDI management and storage issues and try
  again
• Abandon VDI and go back to physical PCs

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VDI Has Too Many Benefits Not to Try Again!

• VDI Management Solution Unidesk
• Easy, all-in-one platform for desktop
  provisioning, app virtualization, and image
  management
• Simple enough that no longer needed 3rd party
  consultant
• 1 gold image to patch for all desktops and all
  use cases
• Layer apps and app updates in minutes, and
  rebuild desktops at any time
• Push applications to teachers at a moments
  notice
• VDI Storage Solution Pure Storage
• All-flash storage array
• Virtual Desktop uptime of 99
• 111 data de-duplication for outstanding desktop
  density
• Greater efficiency to keep our ever-ballooning
  data manageable
• Latency is less than one millisecond incredible
  user experience

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Our VDI Retest The Numbers

• 900 virtual desktops
• Mostly labs, some staff
• 15 application layers
• 1 Windows 7 gold image
• 1000 mobile devices
• 5 TB Pure Storage array
• 75 desktops per Blade

NEW
NEW
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Benefits of Unidesk

• Provision non-persistent desktops (labs) or
  persistent desktops (faculty/staff) with one
  solution
• One Gold Windows OS layer for easy patching
• Fast and easy application virtualization
• Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF Editor, Audacity,
  Movie Maker, Doceri, ActivInspire, Skyward, Java
  SDK, Firefox, Google Chrome, drivers, plug-ins
• 70 less storage persistent and non-persistent
• Rollback Personalization layer for instant
  break/fix
• Installs quickly as vSphere appliances
• Integrates with VMware Horizon View

The Magic of Layers
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Benefits of Pure Storage

• 5 TB all flash array
• Only 56 used to date for 900 desktops
• Equates to only 3.1 GB per desktop
• 111 data reduction
• Made even better combined with Unidesks storage
  reduction
• Provides consistent, seamless uptime
• Incredible end user experience with lt1
  millisecond latency

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Grading Our Retest Straight As!

• Connectivity and protocol performance
• Mobile device and client support
• IO performance and uptime / user experience
• Keep pace with application change requirements
• Configure desktops for different use cases with 1
  image
• Manage VDI with internal IT headcount

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VDI Adoption Now Accelerating

• VDI with Pure Storage, Unidesk, and VMware
  Horizon View is a success
• Adding 600 more virtual desktops to the current
  900
• Repurposing old PCs for future virtual machines
• Supporting BYOD for students
• Establishing a foundation for upcoming
  educational standards and computer-based testing

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Live Demo
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Other Unidesk Webinars (www.unidesk.com/resources
/webinars)

• Higher Education
• Colby-Sawyer College
• Gateway Technical College
• Massachusetts Maritime Academy
• Menlo College
• Mercer University
• Southeastern Community College
• Southwestern Michigan College
• Tennessee Tech University
• University of Connecticut
• University of Maryland
• University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
• William Woods University

• Public Sector (State/Local Government)
• County of Hamilton, Indiana
• County of Vigo, Indiana
• County of Tulare, California
• City of Kent, Washington
• City of Yuma, Arizona
• Port Authority of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
• South Taranaki District Council, NZ
• State of Minnesota Dept. Human Services
• State of Ohio Dept. of Developmental Disabilities
• State of Wisconsin Dept. of Children and Families
• Tarrant Regional Water District, Texas

• Architecture and Engineering
• STV
• Construction
• Egan
• Legal
• Bernstein Shur Law Firm
• Manufacturing
• TIPPER TIE, Inc.

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QA and Next Steps

• Connect with Robert Keith
• rkeith_at_wisd.org
• www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-keith/27/38/6a0
• _at_wisdtechnology
• Connect with Rem Mascardo
• rmascardo_at_wisd.org
• www.linkedin.com/pub/rem-mascardo/4b/bb7/80

• Learn more about
• Web site www.unidesk.com
• Bi-weekly technical webinar
• Date Tuesday, March 4 at 2pm ET
• Register www.unidesk.com/demo
• Learn more about
• Web site www.purestorage.com
• Product overview
• www.purestorage.com/flash-array