A school district’s production and disaster recovery environments were aging, costly to maintain and run by a stretched IT team. Weaver delivered a right-sized Dell and VMware refresh with K-12 lifecycle management built in, so the new environment does not add to the team’s daily load.
The challenge: two aging environments and a small team
The district is a Texas public school district with students and staff across multiple campuses. It relies on steady infrastructure for administrative systems, digital learning tools and secure data. At the same time, it has to balance tight budgets and limited in-house IT staff.
Its production and disaster recovery environments ran on old infrastructure that had become hard and costly to maintain. Still, the team lacked the time and technical staff to plan a modern replacement on its own. It needed a low-cost, low-complexity design that would not force the team to keep the lights on by hand.
Our approach: K-12 lifecycle management by design
Weaver designed a right-sized refresh for K-12 IT demands. The design leaned on automation, simple K-12 lifecycle management and a clean fit with the district’s existing VMware ecosystem. That way, the internal team carries less of the day-to-day burden.
The result is a VxRail-style experience built on Dell PowerEdge, PowerStore and PowerSwitch. We sized it to the district’s budget. Then we paired Weaver ELM lifecycle services with a 3-2-1 architecture, so the environment stays current as it grows.
What Weaver delivered
- Compute. Eight Dell PowerEdge R660 servers run VMware Cloud Foundation across production and DR.
- Storage. Two Dell PowerStore 500T arrays support full replication between environments.
- Networking. Four Dell PowerSwitch S5224 switches tie the design together.
- Failover. The architecture lets the district fail over from production to DR with confidence.
- Weaver ELM. Our lifecycle services keep the environment current without adding to the team’s workload.
Results: a modern environment with K-12 lifecycle management
The district moved off legacy infrastructure to a cost-effective, modern design across both production and DR. As a result, the risk of aging hardware failure dropped. The team also spends less time on daily IT management, because K-12 lifecycle management now runs through Weaver ELM.
The hardware rollout went smoothly. In fact, Weaver’s ability to deploy without disruption helped build long-term trust with the IT staff. The district picked Weaver for a long-standing relationship and a clear grasp of its limits. Next, the environment is ready for future Fortinet integration and data protection services.
“This is what we mean by ‘build smart.’ With ELM and the right design, we gave this district a modern DR and production environment.”
Solutions Architect, Weaver Technologies
A common challenge in Texas K-12
Many districts run production and DR on infrastructure that has outlived its support. Often, their IT teams are too small to plan a replacement on top of daily work. However, a right-sized design on Dell Technologies infrastructure, with lifecycle management built in, can modernize both. It does so without adding to the team’s load, and without paying for more platform than the district needs.
Are production and DR both aging out?
Weaver can review your environment and design a refresh that fits your budget and your team’s capacity. Talk with our team, or browse more case studies.
