The Challenge

There had been restricted investment in ICT infrastructure for several years and limited strategy spanning the technology needs of Antonine’s two campuses.

The infrastructure refresh was to deliver major improvements in all areas of use and access – including to Antonine’s expanding 1-to-1 laptop policy, initially introduced to its Years 9-12 students. The investment was to be protected by long term, comprehensive vendor support. And it had to have the flexibility to cater for growth in student, and associated staffing, numbers in coming years.

Tightly linked to the update project was a determination to continue the evolution of Antonine’s technology – ensuring ongoing excellence across its platforms.

The Solution

CompNow’s detailed solution proposal provided full descriptions of the server, switching and backup technologies for this major refresh: “With that transparency we understood the what and the why, as well as the upfront and ongoing costs of everything being suggested for each campus,” Rob Fomiatti, Deputy Principal – College Operations and Development at Antonine College, says.

The Dell VRTX converged storage and compute solution converted Antonine’s physical servers to a structured virtualised platform. CompNow also proposed well priced HP/Aruba switching gear, with the modular nature of its 12 bay chassis to deliver scalability and exceptional speeds over the next decade. 

The back up solution is based on Software Package Exchange SPX storage software, launched with 60TB of drive space. This true DR level recovery has full back up at both sites and recovery from either site. It gives Antonine a return to ‘usable’ status within two hours and full restoration on new hardware within 24 hours. 

This best practice environment was designed to provide drastically increased flexibility, speed of data access and redundancy. It combined value, performance and quality vendor support.

CompNow undertook the engineering, deployment, installation & commissioning of the project. The focus was on great architecture and risk minimisation with a structured rollout across the two campuses over several months.

“We had an all star cast from CompNow working with us on this project. It was an enormous task but they dealt with everything so well. They were available, present and knowledgeable. The highly technical solutions were explained in a way we could understand and have confidence in,” Rob says.

The Benefits

Rob sees the Dell VTRX virtualised server environment as a perfect fit for an educational setting in its “bang for buck”. With the quality network link between the campuses, it is delivering 10 times the processing power of Antonine’ previous capability.

“The new infrastructure has improved our overall ICT dynamic. We have comfort in the safety and stability of our environment. And it’s had a positive flow on effect to how our staff relate to technology, how we deliver it and how it’s adopted.

As Antonine introduces BYOD to the next cohort – Year 5 & 7 for staff and students – Rob says: “The rollout is much more streamlined. Everything is easier to use and keep up to date.

“The infrastructure project has been a highly successful foundation. With CompNow’s expertise we have a clear vision of what where we need to invest to make our ICT systems even better. Next in line is to audit the wireless connections for both campuses as that’s the area where expectations are growing.”