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Pacific Academy ensures consistent access to academic and administrative systems by creating a hyperconverged environment around StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

June 16, 2026
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Russ Reid
IT Manager. Has more than 15 years of experience managing and supporting IT infrastructure across educational organizations, with expertise in Windows Server administration and Microsoft Exchange.
IT Manager. Has more than 15 years of experience managing and supporting IT infrastructure across educational organizations, with expertise in Windows Server administration and Microsoft Exchange.

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), Pacific Academy operated an aging virtualization stack built on three unsupported VMware hosts connected to an equally unsupported SAN. The environment posed increasing operational risk: limited vendor support, aging firmware, and constrained performance.

Scaling or upgrading required significant capital and complex re-architecture. The legacy design also introduced unnecessary management overhead, making routine maintenance and troubleshooting inefficient. A straightforward in-place upgrade was not viable due to compatibility constraints and cost, driving the need for a simpler, modernized infrastructure approach.

Thanks to StarWind VSAN, we are now running a simpler model on new hardware. It is working as I would expect and is so far meeting all of our requirements.

Russ Reid, IT Manager

SOLUTION

Pacific Academy chose StarWind VSAN for consolidating storage into a software-defined layer on new hardware and migrating to a Hyper-V-based environment. StarWind VSAN eliminated the need for a dedicated SAN by mirroring storage between nodes, delivering high availability and improved I/O performance. The resulting architecture reduced complexity, streamlined management, and aligned with supported platforms. The deployment met all operational requirements while improving reliability and scalability. Additionally, the academy estimates lifecycle savings of $20,000 $30,000 due to reduced hardware and licensing costs.

About the Company
Pacific Academy is a private Christian school located in Surrey, British Columbia, serving students from junior kindergarten through grade 12 since its establishment in 1985. The institution is organized into four divisions – Primary, Intermediate, Middle School, and High School – and offers a broad academic program.
Region
NA (North America)
Country
Canada
Industry
Education
Product
StarWind Virtual SAN
Inspired by Russ Reid’s success? Want to improve business continuity for your business-critical apps and services?
Dmytro Malynka StarWind Virtual SAN Product Manager
We’ve got you covered! StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) is specifically designed to provide highly-available shared storage for Hyper-V, vSphere, and KVM clusters. With StarWind VSAN, simplicity is key: utilize the local disks of your hypervisor hosts and create shared HA storage for your VMs. Interested in learning more? Book a short StarWind VSAN demo now and see it in action!