Saginaw Intermediate School District Deploys a Flexible, Virtualized Cloud Infrastructure Using DataCore and VMware

DataCore Software announced that Saginaw Intermediate School District (ISD) has replaced a legacy SAN and embraced virtualization in its centralized data center built on DataCore, VMware and Xiotech. Moreover, Saginaw ISD’s VMware- DataCore-based cloud for servers and storage serves as both a centralized data center and a hosting service for the majority of school districts in the county.
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The implementation at Saginaw ISD is one that incorporates DataCore for storage virtualization, VMware for server virtualization, and Xiotech as the hardware platform providing the actual storage. DataCore’s SANmelody storage virtualization software powers two SANs that comprise DataCore software and Xiotech servers at two separate data centers, five miles apart, which are configured to mirror to each other. The data pool consists of 10 TBs on each end of the remote configuration.

"Our goal was to virtualize everything and have that supported by storage," states Jeff Johnson, Director of Technical Services, Saginaw Intermediate School District.

Saginaw ISD has deployed seven VMware ESX boxes in the VMware farm - all running on HP servers. These hosts service 35-40 VMs, which span everything from a utility machine running Windows XP - to five SQL servers. For replication purposes, the mirrored site has three ESX boxes that also make up the VMware cloud between the two sites. DataCore is at the heart of the virtualized infrastructure, powering the VMware cloud in Saginaw ISD’s virtual, private data center.
http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/07/27/saginaw-intermediate-school-district-deploys-a-flexible-virtualized-cloud-infrastructure-using-datacore-vmware-and-xiotech.aspx