IBM Blade Workstation

Blade workstations give the International Grammar School the grunt it needs

The International Grammar School needed a responsive, robust, reliable computer system for its students. Ideally, the solution would provide a powerful, reliable, scalable platform to support high-end technical and visual arts applications, as well as free up valuable classroom space, produce little or no heat and have low energy consumption – in line with the school’s sustainability policy.

The International Grammar School engaged The Missing Link to help it move to blade computing with the installation of 42 IBM HC10 high-end blade workstations, coupled with the IBM BladeCenter E Chassis and Cool Blue technology. The Missing Link presented the school with the workstations as an out-of-the-box solution that could be implemented quickly, easily and reliably.

The Benefits

Technical, music and visual and graphic arts students no longer have to fight for limited access to a few under-powered machines in specific locations. They can access applications running at their true capabilities from any of the blade workstations across the campus. The implementation is the school’s first step on a road to a virtual desktop and server environment. This will further reduce power consumption and the load on its air conditioning, as well as free up more valuable classroom and data centre space.

Power increase and performance drop

The school operates an unconventional style of client/server environment, with high-end desktop computers as (thick) clients and lower-end (thin) servers. It has Hewlett Packard servers, almost 500 IBM, Lenovo and Hewlett Packard desktops and laptops, and Cisco communications and networking equipment.

Patrick Skagerfalt, facilities manager of the International Grammar School, says upgrading these desktops was a priority. He says between 40 and 50 new high-end desktops were urgently needed for technical and visual arts students. The school evaluated the highest end desktops available in late 2007, because they were seen as the only viable option. However, Skagerfalt says they were not ideal and had many short-comings - mainly in performance, reliability and scalability.

Blades to the rescue

Skagerfalt was almost resigned to having to settle for a less-than-ideal solution The Missing Link proposed a smarter alternative, featuring IBM BladeCenter HC10 blade workstations, coupled with the BladeCenter chassis, are designed for high throughput and, when combined with blade-thin density, make them ideal for space and power constrained environments. They also include IBM Director, a highly integrated systems management software solution.

The International Grammar School’s configuration of blade workstations and server is unlike most virtualised environments. The school runs the blades in a 1:1 set-up, with blade for each user. Normally, one blade caters for multiple users. However, the school’s students need the full power of each blade.

“Our solution is more hardware-based than software-based, which is unusual for virtualisation,” explains Skagerfalt, “but we need all the hardware power so we can run the likes of Photoshop, PremierPro [movie editing], and SolidEdge and VectorWorks [three-dimension design] software applications at top speed and peak performance. The IBM blade workstation configuration gave us the grunt we needed to do this. The decision to buy them was a no-brainer.”

Benefits

While he might have paid a bit more for the blade workstation-based system than for one based on lower performing desktops, Skagerfalt says the extra cost is being more than off-set by the savings the school is gaining from reduced power use and costs, freeing up valuable desk and floor space in the classrooms, centralised systems management, and reduced heat load on its air conditioning. “The only things in the classroom now are screens, keyboards, mice and cables,” he adds.

Deployment of blade computing has also enabled the International Grammar School to postpone and scale back large scale renovation works that were needed to provide more space. As well, the school’s computing load has been consolidated to its data centre.

An unexpected extra benefit has been the greater use of computing resources by students and staff. Instead of computers being idle, due to the previous limitations and frustrations, resources are being increasingly accessed across the campus.

A virtual future

Even though they are not being used in a traditionally virtualised manner, the purchase and installation of the IBM HC10 blade workstations marks the International Grammar School’s first step towards desktop and server virtualisation.

In mid-2008, the school began stage two of its virtualisation program – server consolidation. It has purchased two IBM xSeries servers and the Citrix virtualisation system. Server virtualisation will not only increase systems power and performance using fewer resources and reduce the space in its data centre, but also further reduce its environmental footprint through decreased power consumption.

“We are pretty much revamping our whole ICT environment,” says Skagerfalt. “The old way of computing was costing us a bomb, in terms of support and maintenance costs. With virtualisation, the days of constantly upgrading our systems will be long gone.”