A Texas public university had end-of-life hardware under its production, disaster recovery and virtual desktop systems. Weaver delivered a full-stack data center and university VDI refresh on current Dell infrastructure and VMware. We finished in eight months, on time and without a single service disruption.
The challenge: end-of-life hardware under critical workloads
The university is a Texas public university. Its data center carried the production environment, disaster recovery systems and virtual desktops that students, faculty and staff rely on. However, that hardware had reached end of life, which put critical workloads and services at risk.
With production, DR and VDI all in scope, the university needed a complete overhaul. It wanted better performance, redundancy and reliability. The work also had to follow strict change controls and fit around other IT projects already underway on campus.
Our approach to a university VDI refresh
Weaver built a full-stack modernization plan around current Dell infrastructure. Our team owned every stage, from architecture and planning to deployment and testing. That covered the hyperconverged infrastructure, backup systems, NAS and the university VDI refresh.
Next, we lined up each step with the university’s change control windows and outage schedule. We also coordinated with the other IT projects running at the same time. As a result, the refresh stayed on schedule, even with competing initiatives across campus.
What Weaver delivered
- Dell hyperconverged infrastructure. We refreshed the platform for production and DR workloads, with full system redundancy.
- Dell NAS and backup appliances. We added modern backup and file storage, with failover across Dell and VMware.
- VMware VDI. We rebuilt the virtual desktop environment for higher performance.
- End-to-end ownership. We designed, deployed and tested every layer ourselves.
- Change-controlled delivery. We followed the university’s change order process from start to finish.
Results of the university VDI refresh
Today, the university runs fully redundant, modern infrastructure with higher performance across production, DR and VDI. The migration from legacy systems went smoothly, and disaster recovery readiness improved. In addition, failover across VMware and Dell supports business continuity for the systems students and faculty use every day.
Most importantly, we delivered the work on time and with zero service disruption. The project also gives other universities a proven model for a university VDI refresh and a data center upgrade with minimal risk.
A common challenge in higher education
Universities often run production, disaster recovery and virtual desktops on hardware that ages out at the same time. Refreshing all three without an outage depends on careful sequencing around change control and the academic calendar. For that reason, it pays to plan the whole stack together. Current hyperconverged systems from Dell Technologies make that kind of phased, low-risk refresh easier to schedule.
Hardware nearing end of life?
Weaver can review your data center and VDI environment and map a refresh plan that fits your change windows. Talk with our team, or browse more case studies.
