Hutchins School

Tasmania

Making the Grade - Data Storage for Education

Schools and Colleges face a data challenge

IT service professionals working with education are facing data storage challenges. Schools need more access to secure, reliable data storage options. The modern server room for schools needs to:

  • Meet the necessary environmental standards for data protection, cooling and fire safety
  • Meet the necessary privacy requirements when storing data
  • Reduce energy costs and reduce carbon footprint
  • Provide a safe and stable environment for on-site data
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The Environment

IT services college growing pains

The Hutchins School is the preeminent boy’s school in Hobart, Tasmania. The private school has approximately 1000 students and 250 staff on a single campus. The School also has two satellite locations catering to an outdoor education program. The students and staff needed a durable solution that could outlive the growing pains of evolving technology and school studies.

The Challenge

The server room rite of passage has passed

The problem was the Hutchins School began to outgrow the current server room environment. The aging server room was energy inefficient. The existing server room’s cooling systems consumed large amounts of power to compensate for fluctuations in humidity and temperature within the room.

The Hutchins School uses a typical hybrid cloud storage solution. All data is stored on-site and then is backed up intermittently to an off-site data centre. However, the older, on-site server rooms were not keeping up with the changing data protection requirements.

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The Outcome

Sitting the micro data centre in the building

The School decided to replace the old server room with two Zella Pro 38. This translated in:

Cost saving

The Zella Pro is very efficient and it’s easy to understand you will be saving money when you have to cool only your servers, rather than a whole server room. The school has seen 30% - 60% savings on power expenses.
Scaling

The school purchased and installed two Zella Pro 38 as that’s what they needed at the time but they know they can easily add more units if and when required. The process will be smooth, easy and fast as the Zella Pro is scalable and modular.
Mute

The Zella Pro is very quiet so it can be placed anywhere, even near people. This is why it’s easy to find the perfect spot for it in a school: a classroom, the teachers’ room, an office, a meeting room, and even in a library.
Small-footprint

The school was able to reclaim much needed space by eliminating the need for an on-premise server room. The size of an average fridge, the Zella Pro is very compact and it’s easy to find room for it in an office, meeting room, classroom, or even in a shed.
temp

Temperature control is very important for servers, especially if they are located in hot or humid environments. The Zella Pro is fully enclosed, which means the temperature and humidity inside the micro data center are easily kept constant by the precision cooling system.
Security-Shield

By keeping the servers on site, the school was able to reduce latency but also to provide a safe and stable environment for on-site data. The Zella Pro includes many security protocols including encryptions, password policies, firewalls, in depth security and digital certificates.
Hutchins School

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