Manchester Grammar School makes data leap with LIMA

Manchester Grammar School, one of the UK’s leading independent schools for boys, has chosen NetApp technology to revamp its data infrastructure and underpin the school’s business growth and reputation.

Over the past seven years, with the opening of its new junior school, Manchester Grammar School has grown to approximately 1,500 students and 300 staff. As a result, the school’s IT department has expanded from 400 workstations to 1,100 devices, including tablets and other mobile devices.

In line with this growth, the existing IT infrastructure, which relied on traditional disk-to-disk to tape, was unable to cope with demand. It became inefficient, with data backup taking an entire weekend to complete, which was difficult to maintain and limited the scope for expansion.

Manchester Grammar School opted for a new infrastructure, which incorporates the NetApp FAS2552, FAS2520 and NetApp SnapMirror technology. The solutions, deployed by IT services firm and NetApp partner LIMA, accelerate workloads and increase usable capacity, which helps address the school’s surge in data requirements.

Using both the FAS2552 and FAS2520 systems, a SAN-to-SAN replication model was created to a disaster recovery location in the event of a system failure.

The NetApp platform has helped Manchester Grammar School reclaim 40 percent of its disk storage, whilst improving the ability to recover the most critical data in the school. A full backup is now performed every two hours in order to capture data changes 24/7, with around 8TB of data backed up almost instantly.

Richard Wilcock, head of computer services, Manchester Grammar School, said: “Manchester Grammar School is a prestigious organisation. Within this context, storage platform failures could be damaging to our reputation.

“With the NetApp platform, we do not have these concerns because it’s so reliable. It is a storage solution with added benefits, such as smarter backups, quick restores and more storage in a few simple clicks. We have been able to shrink our storage environment while also gaining greater storage capacity as a result.”

@AntonySavvas