Central Falls School DistrictTakes OffWith Lenovo

CASE STUDY

OverviewTo help students build their technological skills, and as part of its overall technology transformation, Central Falls School District knew that it needed to replace the outdated IT systems it had in place. Central Falls chose to replace its existing hardware with a powerful, highly-affordable Lenovo ThinkServer TS130 solution. Today, Central Falls can easily manage and maintain student virtual desktops in schools across the district.

Central Falls School District is an urban school district serving the community of Central Falls, Rhode Island. The district is comprised of one high school, one middle school and four elementary schools, which totals approximately 2,700 students.

Out-of-date ITEquipped with outdated technology, Central Falls School District sought to update the obsolete hardware systems in its schools to help students build their technological skills. As part of its technology transformation, Central Falls School District

needed powerful tower servers to host 25-30 virtual desktop devices in its middle school and four elementary schools.

Without room for another rack server and little space left in each school’s server closet, Central Falls School District requires compact, quiet tower servers that have the flexibility of being housed in an office or class rooms the district does not have a dedicated systems engineer or the budget to hire one, they require a solution that can be easily maintained by someone who is not a systems engineer, eliminating the need to outsource this work. Finally, as an urban school district, Central Falls has to remain very price conscious as budgets are extremely tight. They need a very affordable server that still meets all of these requirements.

“Like the TS130, the ThinkServer RD430 offers impressive specs

at an astonishingly affordable price.”

—Michael St. Jean,Assistant Superintendent of Academic Data and Technology,Central Falls School District

Central Falls School District is on the fast track thanks to Lenovo

EDUCATION

CASE STUDYEDUCATION

Partnering with LenovoHired at the start of the 2012-2013 school year as Assistant Superintendent of Academic Data and Technology, Michael St. Jean began an aggressive plan to rapidly and affordable transform the district’s outdated hardware, streamline systems management

and consolidate its servers, systems and software.

Concurrently, the Rhode Island Department of Education selected Lenovo’s ThinkPad X131e as its preferred wireless-enabled device for K-12 in the state, prompting St. Jean to test the device. He was very impressed with the build and quality, and began looking at the rest of the Lenovo product line to fulfill the district’s technology needs. St. Jean began searching for a potential host server tosupport the schools’ virtual desktops and the Lenovo ThinkServer TS130 satisfied all of his criteria.

With an Intel® Xeon® processor, 16GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD and dual 1GB NICs, the ThinkServer TS130 provides all the power Central Falls School District needs to run its virtual desktop devices. “The ThinkServer TS130 is unmatched in performance, pricing and stainability,” said Michael St. Jean, Assistant Superintendent of Academic Data and Technology. “The server operates in near silence, so it gives us the luxury of placing the machine in an office or classroom unnoticed. Priced at hundreds of dollars less than other competitive machines, the TS130 provides amazing value and powerful specs without compromising the district’s budget.”

St. Jean was so pleased with the initial trial of the TS130 running NComputing vSpace Server that he installed 18 Lenovo ThinkServer TS130s over a three-week period to power 450 virtual desktops across five schools for the students in grades PK-8.

When the district needed a new rack mount server to replace its aging finance servers in the business office, St. Jean turned to Lenovo again. “Like the TS130, the ThinkServer RD430 offers impressive specs at an astonishingly affordable price,” said St. Jean.

Equipped with four Intel Xeon processors, 24GB of RAM and 1TB HDD space, just one ThinkServer RD430 had enough power to replace the three old servers. The Lenovo ThinkServer RD430 cost St. Jean only half of his budgeted price, even with three years of onsite service included. With the savings, St. Jean was able to add a second RD430 to the order, which he used to replace multiple old servers and consolidate all employee home directories, shared directories and backup and recovery services. “Like the TS130, the ThinkServer RD430 offers impressive specs at an astonishingly affordable price,” said St. Jean.

“It was a breeze to configure the ThinkServer RD430 with the ThinkServer Easy Startup software,” said St. Jean. “From a smaller district standpoint, the ease of setup and manageability was a welcome change.” With its intuitive interface,

Solution componentsHardwareThinkServer RD430 with Intel® Xeon® E5 family of

processorsThinkServer TS130 with Intel Xeon E3 family of processors

CASE STUDYEDUCATION

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Lenovo’s ThinkServer Easy Startup software provides quick configuration and setup for rapid deployment, even for non-technically inclined users.

Technology transformationThe virtual desktop model coupled with the ThinkServer TS130 replaces hundreds of old tower model stand-alone computers. Therefore, IT only needs to support relatively few ThinkServer hosts versus hundreds of individual PCs.

“With the Lenovo ThinkServers, space requirements, electrical costs, and maintenance hours drop significantly, and responsiveness and efficiency increase dramatically,” said St. Jean.

St. Jean is also deploying various other Lenovo products in Central Falls School District, including 160 Lenovo ThinkPad X131e student laptops and14 ThinkPad Edge E430 laptops for administrators. He is currently piloting the Lenovo ThinkCentre M72e “Tiny” as the school district’s next generation desktop, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 for special education case management and the ThinkPad Twist as part of an early elementary and community grant.

“The price point, superior performance and ease of management are all indications that the Lenovo ThinkServers will be seamless for years to come, said St. Jean.“I fully intend to use Lenovo’s products and technology for the district’s full technology transformation.”

For more informationTo learn more about Lenovo Data Center Systems solutions, contact your Lenovo Sales Representative or Lenovo Business Partner, or visit: lenovo.com/systems

For more information about Central Falls School District, visit: www.cfschools.net

“With the Lenovo ThinkServers, space requirements, electrical costs, and maintenance hours drop significantly, and responsiveness and efficiency increase dramatically.”

—Michael St. Jean,Assistant Superintendent of Academic Data and Technology,Central Falls School District

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