Southern College of Optometry saves $150,000 in upfront costs by replacing its aging Fibre Channel storage infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) deployment, Southern College of Optometry relied on Fibre Channel (FC) switches and SANs to provide shared storage for its VMware ESXi virtualization hosts. However, the aging infrastructure had reached its end-of-life and end-of-support, making maintenance increasingly difficult and expensive.

Replacing the entire FC-based system with new hardware would have been a costly endeavor. Additionally, SCO sought to transition to iSCSI, recognizing it as the future direction of the industry.

We try to keep tuition low for our students and consider StarWind VSAN a win, allowing us to provide enterprise-class services at the lowest possible cost.

Bill Hopper, Manager of Network Services

SOLUTION

Initially, Southern College of Optometry deployed the StarWind solution to provide additional storage for archiving. The system proved to be exceptionally reliable and robust, prompting the institution to adopt StarWind VSAN as the backbone of its entire storage infrastructure.

The college replaced its outdated FC infrastructure with two StarWind SANs using spinning disks forбgeneral storage needs and an SSD-based SAN for critical VMs requiring high performance. This transition resulted in an immediate cost savings of approximately $150,000 and provided long-term financial benefits due to iSCSI’s lower maintenance costs. StarWind’s flexibility ensures that SCO can easily scale and expand its storage capabilities as needed while continuing to provide enterprise-class services at an affordable price.