Simplified IT Helps Iowa School for the Deaf Better Serve Students and Staff

For 150 years, Iowa School for the Deaf (ISD) has led a mission to ensure children who are deaf and hard of hearing have access to the same resources and academic opportunities as their hearing counterparts. From pre-Kindergarten playground games to college preparatory lectures, ISD has provided all of the desktop computers, servers, email systems, and specialized software applications that give deaf students critical hands-on experiences during the learning process.

"Our staff and students are very appreciative of the enhanced abilities for mail and Internet usage." - Mike Wolf
IT Director
Iowa School for the Deaf

ISD is even set up with campus residency-a great resource, but one that depends heavily on a growing use of email, Web-based activities and other communications technologies to keep students, faculty, parents and IT staff connected.

The Challenges

Growth is great, but only if you have the technology to keep up with it. In ISD's case, it was time to revamp the IT infrastructure in order to continue providing excellent service to students, faculty and IT staff.

Before the switch, the school's email, back-office business applications, campus management software, reporting, Internet site and other vital systems were run by two stand-alone Intel® processor-based servers and an older AS/400®. These servers were consistently going down and the staff was stretched scrambling to manage and back up the systems.

Each server had to be backed up individually and remotely one to two hours before the start of every business day. ISD was running DHE tapes, which required multiple tapes to be switched out continuously by an IT person for 30 to 45 minutes late every afternoon.

Not only were these activities tedious and costly, but several other business initiatives and forecasts were also driving ISD's decision to upgrade the infrastructure:

• Expected increase in email and Internet usage
• Desire to open new possibilities to students and staff
• Backbone capacity to accomplish goals and expand to the needs of the entire campus and buildings
• Fiber optic cabling requirements
• Push to accommodate increasing communications
• Drive to keep up with new technology
• Consistent monitoring requirements

The MSI Solution

To accommodate these goals and streamline the administrative workload, ISD teamed up with MSI Systems Integrators to successfully consolidate its IT infrastructure with a much more intelligent IBM® System i™ platform.

When the IT department examined the potential savings with the superintendent, the decision was easy. ISD needed a smooth transformation, MSI worked quickly to have everything switched over to an IBM System i5 520, replacing the old Windows® servers with three Integrated System x ™ Servers (IXSs) and an IBM System x platform attached via an Integrated System x Adapter(IXA). MSI automated ISD's backup operations with an IBM TotalStorage® 3581 Tape AutoloaderExpress Model.

The solution centralized all applications to a main server that can be run by a single IT person both from home and remotely. Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS) for the System i enable ISD to schedule automatic overnight backups of the systems to tape-all at once-with no human intervention needed.

For ISD, these capabilities deliver ROI in the form of stability and ability. ISD can now operate in a single-view environment, with the System i platform acting as the administration and management hub.

The Benefits

Since implementation the school has slashed maintenance and support costs by 30 percent, cut backup times by 50 percent, improved overall total cost of ownership and freed up half of its computer room's floor space. In addition, the new tape storage device has boosted tape storage capacity from a modest 2GB to a tenacious 1.6TB.

System i has brought all of ISD's components together into one centralized, easy-to-manage backup solution that runs itself through the night. The only daily human intervention needed is to replace a tape each morning.

Backups aren't the only thing running easier and faster as a result of the new infrastructure. ISD is delivering on its promise to the school's most important assets, its students and faculty, to provide around-the-clock access to email and applications that maximize the learning experience.

Day-to-day operations such as reporting are taking only five minutes as opposed to 40 minutes with the former system. The expanded i5 processor runs the student information ISD needs while allowing the school to store years of business data online. The system then archives anything older than three years to keep things running at maximum efficiency.

"Our staff and students are very appreciative of the enhanced abilities for mail and Internet usage," said Mike Wolf, IT Director, Iowa School for the Deaf. "The return on investment was that it provided us the ability to continue to upgrade and grow, while giving us capabilities that we never had before."