Dedicated to the “Value-Add” in VAR

Gordon College, a top Christian, liberal arts college, is committed to providing its 1,600 students with an environment that fosters both academic excellence and spiritual growth. With this two-pronged commitment, building relationships is one of Gordon’s top priorities.

Challenge

Thirteen years ago, the IT environment at Gordon College consisted of only three servers. Then as software applications became more user-centric, and we entered the Electronic Age, data requirements boomed. The Gordon College server farm grew rapidly and they experienced some growing pains. At one point the intranet server crashed. “We lost everything,” said Russ Leathe, Director of Networking and Computer Services. “There were so many people working on the problem, and we had no back up plan—it took days to get everything back up and running.” Situations like this helped catalyze Gordon to upgrade.

“We determined we needed a resource who would partner with us, answer high-level technical “what-ifs,” and provide options for solutions. We looked at various local VARs to determine a good fit. And while pricing was a factor for us, company culture was just as important. We immediately gravitated toward Winslow Technology Group to help us build a new storage foundation,” tells Leathe.

solution

WTG worked with Gordon to create an efficient and cost effective storage solution that integrates Compellent for centralized primary storage, CommVault for backup and restore capabilities, and Data Domain for data de-duplication technologies.

Tapes have been totally eliminated. The integration was seamless, efficient, and the new system was so intuitive to use—all training was provided on-site by WTG engineers.

Today, the Gordon College network is comprised of seventy-five servers with a SAN that replicates data back and forth across the campus, and allows the IT department to support nearly every facet of Gordon’s operations—Exchange Email; SQL data bases that support financial aid, admissions, and purchasing; and the Gordon College web site, just to name a few.

results

Leathe points to a reduced human resources cost and improved productivity. “If I had the same storage infrastructure as ten years ago, and the data requirements I have today, I’d need five people, at least. Today, I have one—Chris.”

Chris Hansen, Systems Manager at Gordon College, explains, “I am the one person managing the whole system, but with its user-friendly design, the task is stress-free.”

Hansen points to exceptional time savings provided by the new storage and data management solution. When one of his team accidentally deleted an entire database of critical information, he was able to pull up the most recent CommVault backup, a perfect clone of the deleted database, and push it live incredibly quickly. “It was 20 minutes from the time I heard about the problem to us being able to leave for the night—problem solved,” said Hansen. “Before, it could have taken days to resolve.”

Additionally, the confidence that their data is secure is tremendous. “We have people coming to us regularly, asking if we can recover data, or even build an entire new server,” says Hansen. Using the Compellent Replay function, a “golden image” template of a server with basic specifications, allows for easy server deployment. “It is a matter of minutes until a new server can be ready” says Chris. “And, I feel confident in huge resources behind me—with WTG and Compellent CoPilot monitoring the SAN system from off-campus. At times they’ve alerted us to the potential for a problem before we even knew there was one.”

As Gordon College continues to move from paper data to digital, and the administration starts using the new ERP system, Leathe projects data growth by 50% annually. So his plans for the future include WTG. “They provide a huge added value for us, with their continued interaction and problem-solving expertise,” says Leathe. “We have great faith in their ability to provide the best plan for us—they are like an extension of our staff. We’re sold on WTG.”